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Full-Text Articles in Law
Private Rights And Private Wrongs, Andrew S. Gold
Private Rights And Private Wrongs, Andrew S. Gold
Michigan Law Review
Review of Private Wrongs by Arthur Ripstein.
On Strict Liability Crimes: Preserving A Moral Framework For Criminal Intent In An Intent-Free Moral World, W. Robert Thomas
On Strict Liability Crimes: Preserving A Moral Framework For Criminal Intent In An Intent-Free Moral World, W. Robert Thomas
Michigan Law Review
The law has long recognized a presumption against criminal strict liability. This Note situates that presumption in terms of moral intuitions about the role of intention and the unique nature of criminal punishment. Two sources-recent laws from state legislatures and recent advances in moral philosophy-pose distinct challenges to the presumption against strict liability crimes. This Note offers a solution to the philosophical problem that informs how courts could address the legislative problem. First, it argues that the purported problem from philosophy stems from a mistaken relationship drawn between criminal law and morality. Second, it outlines a slightly more nuanced moral …
Science, Humanity, And Atrocity: A Lawyerly Examination, Steven D. Smith
Science, Humanity, And Atrocity: A Lawyerly Examination, Steven D. Smith
Michigan Law Review
Joseph Vining's reflection on (as the subtitle indicates) the claims of science and humanity begins with a terse but disturbing recitation of these and similar scientific experiments conducted on human beings during the twentieth century in Manchuria, Nazi Germany, and Pol Pot's Cambodia. The incidents are conveyed through quotations, sometimes of the coldly clinical prose that the researchers themselves chose as most suitable for their purposes. These quotations are juxtaposed against others from an array of distinguished scientists and philosophers explaining the naturalistic cosmology that, in the view of these thinkers, modern science has given us: it is a stark, …
Was The Frog Prince Sexually Molested?: A Review Of Peter Westen's The Logic Of Consent, Heidi M. Hurd
Was The Frog Prince Sexually Molested?: A Review Of Peter Westen's The Logic Of Consent, Heidi M. Hurd
Michigan Law Review
Peter Westen's The Logic of Consent is nothing short of a tour de force. In the tradition of the very best and most significant contributions to legal theory, Professor Westen demonstrates that we do not know what we think we know about a capacity that on a daily basis turns trespasses into dinner parties, brutal batteries into football games, rape into lovemaking, and the commercial appropriation of name and likeness into biography. While we all employ claims of consent in everyday moral gossip to absolve some and withhold sympathy from others, and while courts of law across the nation commonly …
The Unruliness Of Rules, Peter A. Alces
The Unruliness Of Rules, Peter A. Alces
Michigan Law Review
Analytical jurisprudence depends on a posited relation between rules and morality. Before we may answer persistent and important questions of legal theory - indeed, before we can even know what those questions are - we must understand not just the operation of rules but their operation in relation to morality. Once that relationship is formulated, we may then come to terms with the likes of inductive reasoning in Law, the role of precedent, and the fit, such as it is, between Natural Law and Positivism as well as even the coincidence (or lack thereof) between inclusive and exclusive positivism. That …
Pragmatism Regained, Christopher Kutz
Pragmatism Regained, Christopher Kutz
Michigan Law Review
Jules Coleman's The Practice of Principle serves as a focal point for current, newly intensified debates in legal theory, and provides some of the deepest, most sustained reflections on methodology that legal theory has seen. Coleman is one of the leading legal philosophers in the Anglo-American world, and his writings on tort theory, contract theory, the normative foundations of law and economics, social choice theory, and analytical jurisprudence have been the point of departure for much of the most interesting activity in the field for the last three decades. Indeed, the origin of this book lies in Oxford University's invitation …
Rights Against Rules: The Moral Structure Of American Constitutional Law, Matthew D. Adler
Rights Against Rules: The Moral Structure Of American Constitutional Law, Matthew D. Adler
Michigan Law Review
The Bill of Rights, by means of open-ended terms such as "freedom of speech," "equal protection," or "due process," refers to moral criteria, which take on constitutional status by virtue of being thus referenced. We can disagree about whether the proper methodology for judicial application of these criteria is originalist or nonoriginalist. The originalist looks, not to the true content of the moral criteria named by the Constitution, but to the framers' beliefs about that content; the nonoriginalist tries to determine what the criteria truly require, and ignores or gives less weight to the framers' views. Bracketing this disagreement, however, …
Kahan On Mistakes, Daniel Yeager
Kahan On Mistakes, Daniel Yeager
Michigan Law Review
In Ignorance of Law Is an Excuse - but Only for the Virtuous, Professor Dan Kahan reconciles what I had thought was an irreconcilable body of law. To be sure, imposing order on whether and when mistakes of law should pass as responsibility-evading accounts of untoward actions is far from light work. Yet Kahan somehow pulls it off in just twenty-seven pages. In addition to acknowledging the importance of Professor Kahan's essay, I write here to point out if not correct what might have been two oversights in his view of the meaning and operation of mistakes. First, Kahan never …
Reply: Is Ignorance Of Fact An Excuse Only For The Virtuous?, Dan M. Kahan
Reply: Is Ignorance Of Fact An Excuse Only For The Virtuous?, Dan M. Kahan
Michigan Law Review
Professor Yeager's thoughtful response to my essay has convinced me that there is indeed a connection worth noting between the mistake of law doctrine and the mistake of fact doctrine. Yeager suggests that my position on mistake of law reduces to the view that someone who would be guilty of a "lesser wrong" were things as he perceived them to be may be punished for the "greater wrong" that he actually commits - a conception of mistake of fact that has provoked fierce denunciation from commentators. But I would in fact put things slightly differently: under both doctrines courts excuse …
Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan
Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan
Michigan Law Review
It's axiomatic that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." My aim in this essay is to examine what the "mistake of law doctrine" reveals about the relationship between criminal law and morality in general and about the law's understanding of moral responsibility in particular. The conventional understanding of the mistake of law doctrine rests on two premises, which are encapsulated in the Holmesian epigrams with which I've started this essay. The first is liberal positivism. As a descriptive claim, liberal positivism holds that the content of the law can be identified without reference to morality: one needn't be a …
A More Democratic Liberalism, Joshua Cohen
A More Democratic Liberalism, Joshua Cohen
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Political Liberalism
A Morality Fit For Humans, Joseph Raz
A Morality Fit For Humans, Joseph Raz
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Human Morality by Samuel Scheffler
Whose Loyalties?, Christina Whitman
Whose Loyalties?, Christina Whitman
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships by George P. Fletcher
Conceptions Of Value In Legal Thought, Richard H. Pildes
Conceptions Of Value In Legal Thought, Richard H. Pildes
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Love's Knowledge by Martha C. Nussbaum
Moral Foundations Of Constitutional Thought: Current Problems, Augustinian Prospects, Arthur J. Burke
Moral Foundations Of Constitutional Thought: Current Problems, Augustinian Prospects, Arthur J. Burke
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Moral Foundations of Constitutional Thought: Current Problems, Augustinian Prospects by Graham Walker
Beyond The Constitution, Christopher J. Peters
Beyond The Constitution, Christopher J. Peters
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Beyond the Constitution by Hadley Arkes
Hating Criminals: How Can Something That Feels So Good Be Wrong?, Joshua Dressler
Hating Criminals: How Can Something That Feels So Good Be Wrong?, Joshua Dressler
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Forgiveness and Mercy by Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton
Moralistic Liberalism And Legal Moralism, Robert P. George
Moralistic Liberalism And Legal Moralism, Robert P. George
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Harmless Wrongdoing: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law by Joel Feinberg
Lawyer's Justice, William A. Edmundson
Lawyer's Justice, William A. Edmundson
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Lawyers and Justice: An Ethical Study by David Luban, and The Social Responsibilities of Lawyers: Case Studies by Philip B. Heymann and Lance Liebman
The Right To Disobey, Joel Feinberg
The Right To Disobey, Joel Feinberg
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Conflicts of Law and Morality by Kent Greenwalt
Arguing About Rights, Charles M. Yablon
The Moral Dimensions Of Politics, Steven G. Bradbury
The Moral Dimensions Of Politics, Steven G. Bradbury
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Moral Dimensions of Politics by Richard J. Regan
Jurisprudence: A Descriptive And Normative Analysis Of Law, Christopher P. Portman
Jurisprudence: A Descriptive And Normative Analysis Of Law, Christopher P. Portman
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Jurisprudence: A Descriptive and Normative Analysis of Law by Anthony D'Amato
The Morality Of Obedience, Joseph Raz
The Morality Of Obedience, Joseph Raz
Michigan Law Review
A Review of A Theory of Law by Philip Soper
Law, Morality, And The Relations Of States, Michigan Law Review
Law, Morality, And The Relations Of States, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Law, Morality, and the Relations of States by Terry Nardin
Founders And Foundations Of Legal Positivism, David Lyons
Founders And Foundations Of Legal Positivism, David Lyons
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Essays on Bentham: Studies In Jurisprudence and Political Theory by H.L.A. Hart, and John Austin by W.L. Morison
Intuition And Security In Moral Philosophy, Stephen R. Munzer
Intuition And Security In Moral Philosophy, Stephen R. Munzer
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point by R.M. Hare
Injustice, Inequality And Ethics, Michigan Law Review
Injustice, Inequality And Ethics, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Injustice, Inequality, and Ethics by Robin Barrow
Promises, Morals, And Law, Michigan Law Review
Promises, Morals, And Law, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Promises, Morals, and Law by P.S. Atiyah
Utilitarianism Reformed, L. W. Sumner
Utilitarianism Reformed, L. W. Sumner
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Utilitarianism and Co-operation by Donald H. Regan