Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Series

Faculty Scholarship

Duke Law

2012

Law and Society

United States

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

American Natures: The Shape Of Conflict In Environmental Law, Jedediah Purdy Jan 2012

American Natures: The Shape Of Conflict In Environmental Law, Jedediah Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

There is a firestorm of political and cultural conflict around environmental issues,including but running well beyond climate change. Legal scholarship is in a bad position to make sense of this conflict because the field has concentrated on making sound policy recommendations to an idealized lawmaker, neglecting the deeply held and sharply clashing values that drive, or block, environmental lawmaking. This Article sets out a framework for understanding and engaging the clash of values in environmental law and, by extension,approaching the field more generally. Americans have held, and legislated based upon, four distinct ideas about why the natural world matters and …


The Liberty Of Free Riders: The Minimum Coverage Provision, Mill’S “Harm Principle,” And American Social Morality, Jedediah Purdy, Neil S. Siegel Jan 2012

The Liberty Of Free Riders: The Minimum Coverage Provision, Mill’S “Harm Principle,” And American Social Morality, Jedediah Purdy, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, the authors show that cost-shifting and adverse selection problems link the federalism dimension of the debate over the Affordable Care Act to the doctrinally separate and suppressed individual rights dimension. As the scope of these free-rider problems justifies federal power to require individuals to obtain health insurance coverage, so the very existence of the free-rider problems illuminates the difficulty of arguing directly — as opposed to indirectly through the Commerce Clause — that the minimum coverage provision infringes individual liberty. The interdependence between some people’s decisions to forgo insurance and the well-being of other people means that …