Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Constitutional Law (7)
- Religion Law (3)
- Family Law (2)
- Law and Economics (2)
- Law and Philosophy (2)
-
- Civil Rights and Discrimination (1)
- Common Law (1)
- Contracts (1)
- Courts (1)
- Criminal Law (1)
- First Amendment (1)
- Fourteenth Amendment (1)
- Land Use Law (1)
- Law and Politics (1)
- Law and Society (1)
- Legal Education (1)
- Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility (1)
- Legal History (1)
- Legal Profession (1)
- Legal Studies (1)
- Legal Theory (1)
- Legal Writing and Research (1)
- Military, War, and Peace (1)
- Natural Law (1)
- Property Law and Real Estate (1)
- Public Law and Legal Theory (1)
- Rule of Law (1)
- Social Welfare Law (1)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (1)
Articles 1 - 19 of 19
Full-Text Articles in Law
Specific Performance: On Freedom And Commitment In Contract Law, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller
Specific Performance: On Freedom And Commitment In Contract Law, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller
Faculty Scholarship
When should specific performance be available for breach of contract? This question — at the core of contract — divides common-law and civil-law jurisdictions and it has bedeviled generations of comparativists, along with legal economists, historians, and philosophers. Yet none of these disciplines has provided a persuasive answer. This Article provides a normatively attractive and conceptually coherent account, one grounded in respect for the autonomy of the promisor’s future self. Properly understood, autonomy explains why expectation damages should be the ordinary remedy for contract breach. This same normative commitment justifies the “uniqueness exception,” where specific performance is typically awarded, and …
Equity's Federalism, Kellen R. Funk
Equity's Federalism, Kellen R. Funk
Faculty Scholarship
The United States has had a dual court system since its founding. One might expect such a pronouncement to refer to the division between state and federal courts, but in the early republic the equally obvious referent would have been to the division between courts of common law and the court of chancery — the distinction, that is, between law and equity. This Essay sketches a history of how the distinction between law and equity was gradually transformed into a doctrine of federalism by the Supreme Court. Congress’s earliest legislation jealously guarded federal equity against fusion with common law at …
The Compensation Constraint And The Scope Of The Takings Clause, Thomas W. Merrill
The Compensation Constraint And The Scope Of The Takings Clause, Thomas W. Merrill
Faculty Scholarship
The idea I wish to explore in this Essay is whether the established methods for determining just compensation can shed light on the meaning of other issues that arise in litigation under the Takings Clause. Specifically, is it possible to “reverse engineer” the Takings Clause by reasoning from settled understandings about how to determine just compensation in order to reach certain conclusions about when the Clause applies, what interests in private property are covered by the Clause, and what does it mean to take such property?
The proposed exercise is positive or descriptive in nature rather than normative. The hypothesis …
In Defense Of Empiricism In Family Law, Elizabeth S. Scott
In Defense Of Empiricism In Family Law, Elizabeth S. Scott
Faculty Scholarship
It is fitting to include an essay defending the application of empirical research to family law and policy in a symposium honoring the scholarly career of Peg Brinig, who is probably the leading empiricist working in family law. While such a defense might seem unnecessary, given the expanding role of behavioral, social, and biological research in shaping the regulation of children and families, prominent scholars recently have raised concerns about the trend toward reliance on empirical science in this field. A part of the criticism is directed at the quality of the science itself and at the lack of sophistication …
A Cause Of Action, Anyone?: Federal Equity And The Preemption Of State Law, Henry Paul Monaghan
A Cause Of Action, Anyone?: Federal Equity And The Preemption Of State Law, Henry Paul Monaghan
Faculty Scholarship
I was not fortunate enough to have known Dan Meltzer well. I met Danny only a few times. We had only the thinnest of correspondence. Of his sterling reputation as a human being, I am of course fully aware. And I do know his work – all of it – thoroughly. On that point, a mountain of encomiums would iterate only a simple thought: Dan was the gold standard in federal courts scholarship. It is, therefore, a special honor to participate in a symposium to honor his memory.
In this very brief Essay, I focus on aspects of a topic …
Exclusion And Equality: How Exclusion From The Political Process Renders Religious Liberty Unequal, Philip A. Hamburger
Exclusion And Equality: How Exclusion From The Political Process Renders Religious Liberty Unequal, Philip A. Hamburger
Faculty Scholarship
Exclusion from the political process is a central question in American law. Thus far, however, it has not been recognized how religious Americans are excluded from the political process and what this means for religious equality.
Put simply, both administrative lawmaking and § 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code substantially exclude religious Americans from the political process that produces laws. As a result, apparently equal laws are apt, in reality, to be unequal for religious Americans. Political exclusion threatens religious equality.
The primary practical conclusion concerns administrative law. It will be seen that this sort of "law" is made …
Abolishing The Time Tax On Voting, Elora Mukherjee
Abolishing The Time Tax On Voting, Elora Mukherjee
Faculty Scholarship
A “time tax” is a government policy or practice that forces one citizen to pay more in time to vote compared with her fellow citizens. While few have noticed the scope of the problem, data indicate that, due primarily to long lines, hundreds of thousands if not millions of voters are routinely unable to vote in national elections as a result of the time tax, and that the problem disproportionately affects minority voters and voters in the South. This Article documents the problem and offers a roadmap for legal and political strategies for solving it. The Article uses as a …
Hands Off: When And About What, Kent Greenawalt
Hands Off: When And About What, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
I was very pleased to have the chance to comment on these four thoughtful and challenging papers when they were delivered orally at the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Convention in January, and I am glad to have the opportunity to share some of my unsystematic thoughts about their published versions. I begin with two general observations before addressing the individual essays in turn.
When I came up with the phrase "Hands Off' to liven the title of my article on judicial resolutions of property disputes generated by splits in religious groups, I had not reflected on the wide …
The Perils Of Theory, Peter L. Strauss
The Perils Of Theory, Peter L. Strauss
Faculty Scholarship
As I recall, Professor Clark had more sense than to be my student at Columbia, but I heard a lot about him from admiring colleagues. Clearly he has fulfilled the promise they saw, and this remarkable Symposium is only one indicator of that. The article to which our attention is properly drawn, more than two and a quarter centuries into our nation's history, has an originalist base, tightly and persuasively focused on original understandings of the Supremacy Clause. Professor Clark lays out a cogent account of the Clause's politics and the centrality of its language to the most fundamental of …
Mutual Dependency In Child Welfare, Clare Huntington
Mutual Dependency In Child Welfare, Clare Huntington
Faculty Scholarship
The child welfare system is in need of fundamental reform. To the great detriment of parents and children, in the current system the state waits for a crisis in a family and then intervenes in a heavy-handed fashion. The state pays scant attention to the prevention of child abuse and neglect. This Article argues that the principal conceptual barrier to the adoption of a prevention-oriented approach to child welfare is the dominant conception of family autonomy, which venerates freedom from state control. This Article proposes a novel reconception of family autonomy that encourages engagement with the state, rather than simply …
The Professional Responsibilities Of The Public Official's Lawyer: A Case Study From The Clinton Era, William H. Simon
The Professional Responsibilities Of The Public Official's Lawyer: A Case Study From The Clinton Era, William H. Simon
Faculty Scholarship
No one has sought more persistently to focus our attention on the relation of professional duty and personal integrity than Thomas Shaffer. Shaffer's work is the most powerful defense of integrity in the legal ethics literature, and it offers the most useful set of strategies for vindicating integrity in law practice. This Essay was conceived in the spirit of Shaffer's distinctive preoccupations and commitments, and it is a pleasure to present it in an issue dedicated to him.
How Persuasive Is Natural Law Theory?, Kent Greenawalt
How Persuasive Is Natural Law Theory?, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
This Article, in honor of John Finnis, evaluates the persuasiveness of one central element of natural law theory – its claim to an objective moral truth discoverable by reason. Although I stand outside the tradition, my interest in natural law theory goes back to my college days. John Finnis, especially in his work Natural Law and Natural Rights, has much enriched my understanding of moral, political, and legal philosophy. Prior to that book, natural lawyers and analytic jurists had little to say to each other; by and large, the members of each group had scant respect for the scholarly endeavors …
On The Socratic Maxim, Joseph Raz
On The Socratic Maxim, Joseph Raz
Faculty Scholarship
Many years ago John Finnis and I became interested in the Socratic view that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it. My interest was triggered by Anselm Müller's lecture on the subject given at Balliol at that time. Finnis discussed the issue in his Fundamentals of Ethics, where Müller's influence on him is acknowledged. At the time John Finnis and I debated the maxim and had a lengthy correspondence about it, but we did not convince each other. Now when I return to the issue, I can no longer remember the position I then took, except …
Diverse Perspectives And The Religion Clauses: An Examination Of Justifications And Qualifying Beliefs, Kent Greenawalt
Diverse Perspectives And The Religion Clauses: An Examination Of Justifications And Qualifying Beliefs, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
Some of the most complex questions about constitutional provisions governing religion concern the status of various kinds of convictions. Put most simply, how do undoubted religious convictions compare with convictions that appear to have little to do with religion, with convictions that derive from negative answers to religious questions, and with convictions that seem to be on some borderline of what may count as religion? In this Essay, I focus on two kinds of questions about this range of convictions.
Part I of the Essay explores justifications underlying the religion clauses of federal and state constitutions. It asks how explicitly …
Reading Holmes Through The Lens Of Schauer: The Abrams Dissent, Vincent A. Blasi
Reading Holmes Through The Lens Of Schauer: The Abrams Dissent, Vincent A. Blasi
Faculty Scholarship
Even the best scholars rarely persuade. Mostly, they illuminate. They make us more discerning readers and interlocutors.
Here I want to illustrate how Frederick Schauer's work on the law of free speech can help us to read what may be the single most influential judicial opinion ever written on that subject, Justice Holmes's famous dissent in Abrams v. United States. So far as I am aware, Schauer has not produced anything like a line-by-line parsing of the Holmes opinion. I claim nevertheless that a reader familiar with Schauer's ideas is far better prepared on that account to understand what Holmes …
Nature Of Rules And The Meaning Of Meaning, Kent Greenawalt
Nature Of Rules And The Meaning Of Meaning, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
This essay addresses two problems in legal theory. What is the nature of rules, especially legal rules? What is the meaning of a legal rule?
My main concern is the relation between these two questions. I inquire whether a sensible view of how rules work commits one to any particular approach to meaning. For this inquiry, I focus on Frederick Schauer's illuminating treatment of rules in Playing by the Rules, which he says is linked to a particular view of meaning. I assert that the linkage is much less tight than he supposes, and that competing theories about meaning are …
Trivial Rights, Philip A. Hamburger
Trivial Rights, Philip A. Hamburger
Faculty Scholarship
In the summer of 1789, when the House of Representatives was formulating the amendments that became the Bill of Rights, Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts argued against enumerating the right of assembly. The House, he urged, "might have gone into a very lengthy enumeration of rights; they might have declared that a man should have a right to wear his hat if he pleased, that he might get up when he pleased, and go to bed when he thought proper ... [Was] it necessary to list these trifles in a declaration of rights, under a Government where none of them were …
What's Next?: The Future Of Rico, G. Robert Blakey, John C. Coffee Jr., Paul E. Coffey, L. Gordon Crovitz
What's Next?: The Future Of Rico, G. Robert Blakey, John C. Coffee Jr., Paul E. Coffey, L. Gordon Crovitz
Faculty Scholarship
Opening Statement of Mr. Crovitz: Coming to the Notre Dame Law School to debate Robert Blakey on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law makes me feel like Daniel approaching the lion's den. I'm tempted to offer my own prayer, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no RICO."
The Meaning Of Morality, George P. Fletcher
The Meaning Of Morality, George P. Fletcher
Faculty Scholarship
Many lawyers, both inside and outside the law schools, suffer from insecurity about our discipline. Instead of thinking of ourselves as the curators of a grand tradition in Western thought, many of us think of the law as a collection of doctrinal formulas and rules imposed on us by legislatures and the highest courts. We are always looking elsewhere to find a source of wisdom that will give the law coherence and meaning. At various times in this century we have looked to sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis and, of course, economics in an effort to ground our ideas in firmer soil. …