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Full-Text Articles in Law

Death, Dying, And Domination, Marc Spindelman Jan 2008

Death, Dying, And Domination, Marc Spindelman

Michigan Law Review

This Article critiques conventional liberal arguments for the right to die on liberal grounds. It contends that these arguments do not go far enough to recognize and address private, and in particular structural, forms of domination. It presents an alternative that does, which is thus more respectful of true freedom in the context of death and dying, and also more consistent with liberalism. After discussing obstacles to the achievement of a right to die that encompasses freedom from both public and private domination, the Article closes with a significant reform project within bioethics that might help bring it about.


Looking Backward: Richard Epstein Ponders The "Progressive" Peril, Michael Allan Wolf Apr 2007

Looking Backward: Richard Epstein Ponders The "Progressive" Peril, Michael Allan Wolf

Michigan Law Review

In the 1888 novel Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy dreamed up a twentieth century America that was a socialist utopia, a vision invoked four years later by the conservative Justice David J. Brewer as a warning against government regulation. In How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution, Richard Epstein, looking back at the twentieth century through an interpretive lens much more similar to Brewer's than Bellamy's, sees and bemoans the growth of a dominant big government of which the novelist could only dream. Epstein pulls no punches in his attack on those he deems responsible for the shift in the American …


Individual Vulnerability And Cultural Transformation, Eric J. Mitnick May 2003

Individual Vulnerability And Cultural Transformation, Eric J. Mitnick

Michigan Law Review

Perhaps the most pressing problem in multicultural theory and practice today is the problem of individual vulnerability. Most interested theorists and multicultural states now accept the basic premise that some degree of state accommodation of minority cultural practice is required as a matter of justice. Debate then shifts to the best justifications for, and the appropriate extent of, such groupdifferentiated policy. Too often lost amid these discussions is the plight of vulnerable members of accommodated cultural groups: individuals subject to repression within their cultural groups, but who lose a critical aspect of their identities upon exit; individuals who would retain …


Toward A More Communitarian Future? Fukuyama As The Fundamentalist Secular Humanist, June Carbone May 2003

Toward A More Communitarian Future? Fukuyama As The Fundamentalist Secular Humanist, June Carbone

Michigan Law Review

With The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama established himself as the prophet of liberal democracy and free markets, heralding their triumph as the only form of governance capable of commanding legitimacy. Asked to reflect on his predictions a decade later, Fukuyama concluded that the greatest threat to liberalism comes from biotechnology because it alone has the potential to remake the human nature that liberal democracy was designed to serve. Fukuyama makes a compelling case that biotechnology may produce developments that should concern us; he is ironically less persuasive in articulating a liberal-democratic framework for governing the …


The Impossibility Of Citizenship, Peter J. Spiro May 2003

The Impossibility Of Citizenship, Peter J. Spiro

Michigan Law Review

These are interesting times at the constitutional margins. Questions about where the Constitution takes up and leaves off are more frequently in play; one can no longer so readily assume the Constitution to supply an authoritative metric as we confront prominent cases of nonapplication. At the same time, the increasing robustness of international norms has prompted a vigorous reconsideration of their relationship to domestic ones. Where the twentieth century was marked by deep segmentation among national legal regimes, with minimal transboundary interpenetration, recent years have seen the advent of complex, overlapping regimes: subnational, national, regional, and global, public, and private. …


Retrying Race, Anthony V. Alfieri Mar 2003

Retrying Race, Anthony V. Alfieri

Michigan Law Review

This Essay investigates the renewed prosecution of long-dormant criminal and civil rights cases of white-on-black racial violence arising out of the 1950s and 1960s. The study is part of an ongoing project on race, lawyers, and ethics within the criminal-justice system. Framed by this larger project, the Essay explores the normative and sociolegal meaning of that resurgent prosecution. My hope in pursuing this inquiry is to better understand, and perhaps begin to refashion, the prosecutor's redemptive role in cases of racial violence. Both descriptive and prescriptive in nature, the inquiry addresses race in relation to law and community. Grappling with …


Individualism In The Age Of Internationalism, Alyson Cole May 2001

Individualism In The Age Of Internationalism, Alyson Cole

Michigan Law Review

In the brief conclusion to The Empowered Self: Law and Society in the Age of Individualism, Thomas M. Franck asserts that he cannot satisfactorily summarize his book's argument. Even if it were achievable, he clarifies, he would not engage in such an endeavor, since it would "preempt the reader's autonomy and subvert his or her individual rights" (p. 278). That the author himself rejects the desirability of doing what reviewers generally do (i.e., condense and inevitably simplify complex tomes) is perhaps a somewhat awkward way to commence a discussion of his book. Nevertheless, this comment illustrates the extent to which …


Governmental Illegitimacy And Neocolonialism: Response To Review By James Thuo Gathii, Brad R. Roth May 2000

Governmental Illegitimacy And Neocolonialism: Response To Review By James Thuo Gathii, Brad R. Roth

Michigan Law Review

The essence of James Thuo Gathii's criticism of Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law is that my study seeks to answer a doctrinal question rather than to challenge the "Eurocentric" assumptions that pervade doctrinal thinking. Although I (inevitably) take exception to some of Professor Gathii's characterizations of the book's details, an elaborate clarification and defense of these finer points would amount to an uninteresting response to an interesting essay. Indeed, since Gathii characterizes the book as "well written, well-argued, and well-researched," and since I am in sympathy with the considerations that prompt him to go beyond the scope of what I …


Rejoinder: Twailing International Law, James Thuo Gathii May 2000

Rejoinder: Twailing International Law, James Thuo Gathii

Michigan Law Review

Brad Roth's response to my Review of his book seeks to privilege his approach to international law as the most defensible. His response does not engage one of the central claims of my Review - that present within international legal scholarship and praxis is a simultaneous and dialectical coexistence of the dominant conservative/liberal approach with alternative or Third World approaches to thinking and writing international law. Roth calls these alternative approaches critical and does not consider them insightful for purposes of dealing with issues such as anticolonialism. Roth's characterization of my Review as falling within critical approaches to international law …


Saying No To Stakeholding, Jeffrey S. Lehman, Deborah C. Malamud May 2000

Saying No To Stakeholding, Jeffrey S. Lehman, Deborah C. Malamud

Michigan Law Review

What if America were to make good on its promise of equal opportunity by [XXX]? That's the bold proposal set forth by Yale law professors Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott.... The quotation above is from the Yale University Press announcement describing Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott's new book, with one change: we have substituted "[XXX]" for the authors' catchphrase summary of their proposal. What do you think the missing words might be? How would you enable America "to make good on its promise of equal opportunity"? As you ponder that question, you might consider the following feature of the Ackerman/ …


Neoliberalism, Colonialism, And International Governance: Decentering The International Law Of Government Legitimacy, James Thuo Gathii May 2000

Neoliberalism, Colonialism, And International Governance: Decentering The International Law Of Government Legitimacy, James Thuo Gathii

Michigan Law Review

Brad R. Roth's Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law is a neoconservative realist response to liberal internationalists (or universalists). As a critique, the book unsurprisingly legitimizes the subject of its attack: liberal internationalism. That is so since in their opposition to each other, liberal internationalists and neoconservative realists fall within the same discursive formation - a Euro-American hegemony of thinking, writing, critiquing, engaging, producing, and practicing international law. This Review is an antihegemonic critique. It seeks to decenter this Euro-American opposition between liberal internationalism and neoconservative realism that has characterized the study of international law, especially in the post-Cold War period. …


History Unbecoming, Becoming History, Toni M. Massaro Jan 2000

History Unbecoming, Becoming History, Toni M. Massaro

Michigan Law Review

The last few decades have seen a torrent of legal commentary supporting gay equality and attacking the punishment, failure to protect, and refusal to affirm gay conduct and identity. William Eskridge, a prominent voice in this fin-de-siecle literature, now draws together and expands on his previous work in Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet. Though far more successful in shaping the uses of the past than in showing the way to the future, the book instructs even where it fails. It augurs a century that could well witness the end of official discrimination against gay individuals, and the relegation …


The Foundations Of Liberty, Lawrence B. Solum May 1999

The Foundations Of Liberty, Lawrence B. Solum

Michigan Law Review

Randy Barnett's The Structure of Liberty is an ambitious book. The task that Barnett sets himself is to offer an original and persuasive argument for a libertarian political theory, a theory that challenges the legitimacy of the central institutions of the modern regulatory-welfare state. The Structure of Liberty is that rare creature, a book that delivers on most of the promises it makes. Already the book is on its way to becoming a contemporary classic, the successor in interest to Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia as a source of ideas and arguments for the revitalization of an important intellectual …


Subversive Thoughts On Freedom And The Common Good, Larry Alexander, Maimon Schwarzschild May 1999

Subversive Thoughts On Freedom And The Common Good, Larry Alexander, Maimon Schwarzschild

Michigan Law Review

Richard Epstein is a rare and forceful voice against the conventional academic wisdom of our time. Legal scholarship of the past few decades overwhelmingly supports more government regulation and more power for the courts, partly in order to control businesses for environmental and other reasons, but more broadly in hopes of achieving egalitarian outcomes along the famous lines of race, gender, and class. Epstein is deeply skeptical that any of this is the shining path to a better world. Epstein's moral criterion for evaluating social policy is to look at how fully it allows individual human beings to satisfy their …


Rights And Wrongs, John C.P. Goldberg May 1999

Rights And Wrongs, John C.P. Goldberg

Michigan Law Review

If one were to ask an American lawyer or legal scholar for a definition of liberalism, her explanation would likely include mention of constitutional provisions such as the First and Fourth Amendments. This is because liberalism is today understood primarily as a theory of what government officials may not do to citizens. Its most immediate expression in law is thus taken to be those parts of the Bill of Rights that set limits on state action. This tendency to conceive of liberalism exclusively as a theory of rights against government is a twentieth century phenomenon. To be sure, liberalism has …


Law's Territory (A History Of Jurisdiction), Richard T. Ford Jan 1999

Law's Territory (A History Of Jurisdiction), Richard T. Ford

Michigan Law Review

Pop quiz: New York City. The United Kingdom. The East Bay Area Municipal Utilities District. Kwazulu, South Africa. The Cathedral of Notre Dame. The State of California. Vatican City. Switzerland. The American Embassy in the U.S.S.R. What do the foregoing items have in common? Answer: they are, or were, all territorial jurisdictions. A thesis of this Article is that territorial jurisdictions - the rigidly mapped territories within which formally defined legal powers are exercised by formally organized governmental institutions - are relatively new and intuitively surprising technological developments. New, because until the development of modern cartography, legal authority generally followed …


The Empty Circles Of Liberal Justification, Pierre Schlag Oct 1997

The Empty Circles Of Liberal Justification, Pierre Schlag

Michigan Law Review

American liberal thinkers are fascinated with the justification of the liberal state. It is this question of justification that inspires and organizes the work of such leading liberal thinkers as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Frank Michelman, and Bruce Ackerman. The manifest import and prevalence of the question of justification among liberal thinkers makes it possible to speak here of a certain "practice of liberal justification." This practice displays a certain order and certain recursive characteristics. It is composed of a common ontology and a common narrative. It poses for itself a series of recursive intellectual problems answered with a stock …


Foreword: "Racialism" And Reason, Frank I. Michelman Feb 1997

Foreword: "Racialism" And Reason, Frank I. Michelman

Michigan Law Review

Clueless, I am not; but still I can wonder why I, of all people, was recruited to write a foreword for this symposium - sight unseen, before its component papers had even been submitted. Neither legal representation nor the teaching of it has ever been for me a main activity or focus of scholarly reflection. Although I have written occasionally about race - in defense of busing, on the side of affirmative action - no one could mistake me for a critical race theorist. I am the original-model imperial scholar, as of last report only partially redeemed. "Liberal" is the …


The Anatomy Of Antiliberalism, Jeffrey R. Costello May 1994

The Anatomy Of Antiliberalism, Jeffrey R. Costello

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Anatomy of Antiliberalism by Stephen Holmes


A More Democratic Liberalism, Joshua Cohen May 1994

A More Democratic Liberalism, Joshua Cohen

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Political Liberalism


Law, Politics, And The Claims Of Community, Stephen A. Gardbaum Feb 1992

Law, Politics, And The Claims Of Community, Stephen A. Gardbaum

Michigan Law Review

This article aims to provide this needed analysis and then to show how it illuminates many of the exchanges taking place within the legal academy. It argues that the first step toward understanding "the claims of community" - whether in law or moral and political theory - is to recognize that, as the phrase itself suggests, more than one claim is involved. Merely to observe that the various proponents of community have as yet failed to establish a common and coherent communitarian position, though certainly true, is to miss the more critical insight: they are not engaged in such an …


Liberal Theory And The Need For Politics, Steven Shiffrin May 1991

Liberal Theory And The Need For Politics, Steven Shiffrin

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Liberalism and the Good Edited by R. Bruce Douglass, Gerald M. Mara, and Henry S. Richardson


History's Challenge To Feminism, Jeanne L. Schroeder May 1990

History's Challenge To Feminism, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe by James A. Brundage


Moralistic Liberalism And Legal Moralism, Robert P. George May 1990

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


Happy Slaves: A Critique Of Consent Theory, Adam C. Sloane May 1990

Happy Slaves: A Critique Of Consent Theory, Adam C. Sloane

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Happy Slaves: A Critique of Consent Theory by Don Herzog


Reconstructing Public Philosophy, Michigan Law Review Feb 1984

Reconstructing Public Philosophy, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Reconstructing Public Philosophy by William M. Sullivan


Murphy: Congress And The Court, Robert B. Mckay Apr 1962

Murphy: Congress And The Court, Robert B. Mckay

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Congress and the Court. By Walter F. Murphy


Freund: On Understanding The Supreme Court., Michigan Law Review Jun 1950

Freund: On Understanding The Supreme Court., Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of ON UNDERSTANDING THE SUPREME COURT. By Paul A. Freund.