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Articles 1 - 13 of 13

Full-Text Articles in Law

So Reason Can Rule, Michigan Law Review Mar 1983

So Reason Can Rule, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of So Reason Can Rule by Scott Buchanan


Promises, Morals, And Law, Michigan Law Review Mar 1983

Promises, Morals, And Law, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Promises, Morals, and Law by P.S. Atiyah


Contract As Promise: A Theory Of Contractual Obligation, Michigan Law Review Mar 1983

Contract As Promise: A Theory Of Contractual Obligation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Contract as Promise: A Theory of Contractual Obligation by Charles Fried


Laws, Norms And Authority, Michigan Law Review Mar 1983

Laws, Norms And Authority, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Laws, Norms and Authority by George C. Christie


The Limits Of Obligation, Michigan Law Review Mar 1983

The Limits Of Obligation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Limits of Obligation by James S. Fishkin


Troubling Questions: A Review Of The Decline Of The Rehabilitative Ideal, Sheldon L. Messinger Mar 1983

Troubling Questions: A Review Of The Decline Of The Rehabilitative Ideal, Sheldon L. Messinger

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal: Penal Policy and Social Purpose by Francis A. Allen


Is Equality A Totally Empty Idea?, Anthony D'Amato Jan 1983

Is Equality A Totally Empty Idea?, Anthony D'Amato

Michigan Law Review

Professor Peter Westen's essay asserting that the concept of equality has no substantive content whatsoever usefully brushes aside much of the equal-protection rhetoric that, as Westen carefully explains, appropriately belongs to substantive due process. However, his absolutist position is open to challenge. I would like to posit one hypothetical case that I used in my classes when I taught Constitutional Law that I think contradicts Professor Westen's thesis. If it does, then there will be other cases as well, and his position cannot stand as the logically tight construct that he repeatedly asserts that it is.


Suicide And The Failure Of Modern Moral Theory, Donald H. Regan Jan 1983

Suicide And The Failure Of Modern Moral Theory, Donald H. Regan

Articles

The question I want to address is when and why suicide is morally wrong. There is something peculiar in my writing on this question at all. It will soon become apparent that although I think suicide involves genuine moral issues. I also think that the moral problem of suicide is a problem which most people answer correctly. That is, I think that in the vast majority of cases where people ought not to commit suicide, they do not. They are not even tempted. Conversely, most people who do commit suicide, or who want to, are either justified or at least …


The Ethics Of Argument: Plato's Gorgias And The Modern Lawyer, James Boyd White Jan 1983

The Ethics Of Argument: Plato's Gorgias And The Modern Lawyer, James Boyd White

Articles

In what follows I shall analyze Plato's text and do my best to suggest a response to it. But I should say at the outset that for the modern lawyer and law teacher this is not merely an academic exercise, for we in fact are rhetoricians very much as Plato defines them. What is at stake for us in reading this dialogue is what it means to have devoted ourselves to the set of social and intellectual practices that define the profession of law. We have a special relation to this text, for we can in the full Platonic sense …


Paternalism, Freedom, Identity, And Commitment, Donald H. Regan Jan 1983

Paternalism, Freedom, Identity, And Commitment, Donald H. Regan

Book Chapters

Some years ago, I wrote an essay entitled "Justifications for Paternalism." That essay is here revised, and expanded by the addition of a new topic. Many readers of the original version did not understand that the two principal sections presented arguments that were quite independent. I would therefore emphasize that in the present version the three principal sections (II, III, and IV) are separable one from another. Not surprisingly, in an essay so disconnected, I reach no general conclusions I have much confidence in. I suspect the reason for the failure is that I have been insufficiently daring in rejecting …


Against Evaluator Relativity: A Response To Sen, Donald H. Regan Jan 1983

Against Evaluator Relativity: A Response To Sen, Donald H. Regan

Articles

In a recent essay in this journal Amartya Sen introduced the notion of an evaluator-relative consequence-based morality. The basic idea can be described very simply. A consequence-based morality is a morality that instructs each agent to maximize some objective function defined over states of affairs. Such a morality is evaluator neutral if it assigns to every agent the same objective function. If different agents have different objective functions, then the morality is evaluator relative. For example, a morality would be evaluator relative if it assigned to Jones an objective function giving greater weight to the welfare of Jones's children than …


In Defense Of Equality: A Reply To Professor Westen, Erwin Chemerinsky Jan 1983

In Defense Of Equality: A Reply To Professor Westen, Erwin Chemerinsky

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this essay analyzes Professor Westen's arguments that the concept of equality is unnecessary. My contention is that Professor Westen never demonstrates that equality is meaningless; his arguments only prove the obvious, that equality by itself is insufficient. Part II argues that equality is a necessary principle: It is the only concept that tells us that different treatment of people does matter. Part III addresses Professor Westen's suggestion that equality is misleading and points out that none of his criticisms of the idea of equality are in any way inherent to that concept. Finally, Part IV demonstrates that …


The Meaning Of Equality In Law, Science, Math, And Morals: A Reply, Peter Westen Jan 1983

The Meaning Of Equality In Law, Science, Math, And Morals: A Reply, Peter Westen

Michigan Law Review

I shall set forth my thesis in Part I, using the Declaration of Independence ("all men are created equal") to illustrate that the emptiness of equality inheres in its very meaning, and that the confusions of equality result from neglecting its meaning. In Part II, I respond to Professors Chemerinsky's and D' Amato's reasons for believing that equality has independent normative content of its own. In Part III, I respond to Professor Chemerinsky's separate reasons for believing that equality is rhetorically useful.