Law Commons^™

Review Of The Choice Theory Of Contracts, Nicolas Cornell

Reviews

This book aims to provide a new approach to thinking about the role of contract law in a liberal state. The fundamental idea is that the law should affirmatively facilitate citizens' autonomy by creating and sustaining various different types of contractual relationships so that citizens have the option to choose among them. The authors start from the idea that "bargaining for terms is not the dominant mode of contracting . . . the mainstay of present-day contracting is the choice among types" (2-3). We choose to relate as employees or independent contractors, married or just cohabiting, merchants selling goods or …

Taking States (And Metaphysics) Seriously, Sanford Levinson

Michigan Law Review

Sotirios A. Barber has written many incisive and important books, in addition to coediting an especially interesting casebook on constitutional law and interpretation. He is also a political theorist. An important part of his overall approach to constitutional theory is his philosophical commitment to “moral realism.” He believes in the metaphysical reality of moral and political truths, the most important of which, for any constitutional theorist, involve the meanings of justice and the common good. He not only believes in the ontological reality of such truths — that is, that these truths are more than mere human conventions or social …

Credible Coercion, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar

Articles

The ideal of individual freedom and autonomy requires that society provide relief against coercion. In the law, this requirement is often translated into rules that operate "postcoercion" to undo the legal consequences of acts and promises extracted under duress. This Article argues that these ex post antiduress measures, rather than helping the coerced party, might in fact hurt her. When coercion is credible-when a credible threat to inflict an even worse outcome underlies the surrender of the coerced party-ex post relief will only induce the strong party to execute the threatened outcome ex ante, without offering the choice to surrender, …

The Case Against Assisted Suicide Reexamined, Ani B. Satz

Michigan Law Review

In Toni Morrison's acclaimed novel Beloved, Sethe, a runaway slave woman on the brink of capture, gruesomely murders one of her infant children and is halted seconds before killing the second. Cognizant of the approaching men, Sethe's actions are deliberate, swift, confident, and unflinching. Afterwards, she sits erect in the Sheriff's wagon. The reader is left to struggle, situating the horror of the event within the context of the reality of slavery. Was this an act of mercy tQ prevent the suffering Sethe's child would know as a slave? Is loss of autonomy, even rising to the condition of slavery, …

Toleration, Autonomy And Respect, Colin J. Harvey

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of On Toleration by Michael Walzer

Minority Cultures And The Cosmopolitan Alternative, Jeremy Waldron

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

I have chosen not to talk in this Article about the warning that Rushdie is sounding in his essay In Good Faith, but to discuss more affirmatively the image of the modern self that he conveys. Still, I hope that we do not lose sight of the warning. The communitarianism that can sound cozy and attractive in a book by Robert Bellah or Michael Sandel can be blinding, dangerous, and disruptive in the real world, where communities do not come ready-packaged and where communal allegiances are as much ancient hatreds of one's neighbors as immemorial traditions of culture.

Contract Law, Default Rules, And The Philosophy Of Promising, Richard Craswell

Michigan Law Review

Among the topics addressed by moral philosophy is the obligation to keep one's promises. To many philosophers, there is something strange (or, at least, something calling for explanatie1n) in the idea that moral obligations can be created simply by an individual's saying so yet this is what seems to happen when a person makes a promise. Consequently, there is by now a large body of literature attempting to identify the exact source and nature of this moral obligation.

Part I of this article presents a more detailed survey of recent philosophical writings about promises, for the benefit of legal readers …

Authority And Value: Reflections On Raz's Morality Of Freedom, Donald H. Regan

Articles

Joseph Raz's The Morality of Freedom1 is full of subtle, original, and thought provoking arguments. It also manifests abundantly Raz's philosophical good sense and sensitivity to the complexities of the moral life. These are reasons enough to class it with the handful of genuinely important books whose appearance in the last two decades has constituted a renaissance in political philosophy. But in my opinion, Raz has another, and even stronger claim on our attention: He comes closer to the truth about political morality than anyone has for nearly a century. (Possibly much longer, but we need not attempt to decide …

Law. Liberalism And Free Speech, M. Sean Laane

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law, Liberalism and Free Speech by D.F.B. Tucker

The Glittering Eye Of Law, Geoffrey P. Miller

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Authoritative and the Authoritarian by Joseph Vining