Law Commons^™

Winking At Jubelirer’S Maneuvers, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Jubelirer’S Jubilee, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

The Constitutions Of Sustainable Capitalism And Beyond, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

Mathematics And The Legal Imagination: A Response To Paul Edelman, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article, a response to a review by Prof. Paul Edelman of Prof. Meyerson's book "Political Numeracy: Mathematical Perspectives on Our Chaotic Constitution," explains how the study of mathematics can spur creative legal thinking.

Wrestling With Jefferson: The Struggles Of A Biographer, Richard B. Bernstein

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Contradictions, Open Secrets, And Feminist Faith In Enlightenment, Heather Hughes

Feminist Scholarship

INTRODUCTION: Judges often malign exception making as the erosion of legal rules, yet in the same breath sanction the territory that exceptions have eclipsed to date. Judges may embrace as precedent the course of exceptions that has shaped doctrine so far, but then cite the importance of enforcing common law rules to refuse exceptions that would redress violence against women. This paradoxical stance prompts many feminists to target ignorance of violence in women's lives as the source of judicial resistance to establishing exceptions to rules that prevent recovery for women's harms. These feminists call for education, for increased awareness, to …

Contradictions, Open Secrets, And Feminist Faith In Enlightenment, Heather Hughes

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION: Judges often malign exception making as the erosion of legal rules, yet in the same breath sanction the territory that exceptions have eclipsed to date. Judges may embrace as precedent the course of exceptions that has shaped doctrine so far, but then cite the importance of enforcing common law rules to refuse exceptions that would redress violence against women. This paradoxical stance prompts many feminists to target ignorance of violence in women's lives as the source of judicial resistance to establishing exceptions to rules that prevent recovery for women's harms. These feminists call for education, for increased awareness, to …

The Aesthetics Of American Law, Pierre Schlag

Publications

Before the ethical dreams and political ambitions of law can even be articulated, let alone realized, the aesthetics of law have already shaped the medium within which those projects will have to do their work. This work attempts to retrieve and expose those recurrent forms that shape the creation, apprehension, and identity of law. What is at stake is an attempt to reveal the aesthetics within which American law is cast. The point is not simply to appreciate these aesthetics, but to understand how "substantive" conflicts in law are often motivated, sustained and circumscribed by the aesthetics through which they …

Comparative Forum Non Conveniens And The Hague Judgments Convention, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This article begins with a discussion of the application of the forum non conveniens doctrine in four common law legal systems. It then briefly notes related concepts applied in the courts of two civil law systems. This discussion is followed in Part IV by a brief history of the negotiations at the Hague Conference on Private International Law for a Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters and a review of Articles 21 and 22 of the Interim Text of that Convention created at the June 2001 portion of the Diplomatic Conference. This review allows conclusions …

The Mote In Thy Brother’S Eye: A Review Of Human Rights As Politics And Idolatry, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Michael Ignatieffs provocatively titled collection of essays, Human Rights As Politics and Idolatry [hereinafter Human Rights], is a careful examination of the theoretical underpinnings and contradictions in the area of human rights. At bottom, both of his primary essays, Human Rights As Politics and Human Rights As Idolatry, make a claim that is perhaps contrary to the instincts of human rights thinkers and activists: namely, that international human rights can best be philosophically justified and effectively applied to the extent that they strive for minimal ism. Human rights activists generally argue for the opposite conclusion: that international human rights be …

Understanding "Depolicing": Symbiosis Theory And Critical Cultural Theory, Frank Rudy Cooper

Scholarly Works

Doctrinal analyses help us understand what law does. Identity theory helps us understand why law operates in certain ways. Cultural studies can help us understand that where law operates is crucial to both how it operates, and on whom.

Nancy Ehrenreich's Subordination and Symbiosis: Mechanisms of Mutual Support Between Subordinating Systems is especially valuable because her symbiosis theory expands identity theory. Ehrenreich turns our attention to the subjectivities of those who are partly subordinated but mostly privileged-those who accept their own oppression in return for the "compensation" of being able to use the law to subordinate others. Nonetheless, symbiosis theory …

Don't Abandon The Model Penal Code Yet! Thinking Through Simons's Rethinking, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Force Of Ancient Manners: Federalist Politics And The Unitarian Controversy, Marc Arkin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Can A Theory Of Interpretation Make A Difference?, George H. Taylor

Articles

Can a theory of interpretation make a difference? The question has been posed most prominently by Judge Richard Posner, who, in recent work, has criticized the ability to make a difference of both theory writ large and of a theory of interpretation in particular. In other work I contend, contrary to Posner, that a theory of interpretation can make a difference at the level of methodology. Using the example of constitutional and statutory interpretation in law, I develop a theory that argues for the propriety and value of certain methods of interpretation over others. In the present essay, my concern …

Behavioral Genetics And The Best Interests Of The Child Decision Rule, David J. Herring

Articles

This article proposes that modern child custody law should be reassessed in light of recent scientific findings. Judicial determinations of custody use the "best interests of the child" rule. The rule is justified to a large extent by the goal of maximizing child developmental outcomes. The assumption is that a child whose "best interests" are protected stands a better chance of becoming a socially well-adjusted, productive and prosperous citizen.

Recent child development studies have shown that so-called "shared environment," or home environment factors have little effect on child development so long as the shared environment is minimally adequate. Genetics and …

Community Competence For Matters Of Judicial Cooperation At The Hague Conference On Private International Law: A View From The United States, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The Amsterdam Treaty's introduction of Article 65 into the European Community Treaty took little time to achieve practical importance. In fact, the questions were practical as early as they were theoretical. A 1992 request by the United States that the Hague Conference on Private International Law negotiate a global convention on jurisdiction and the recognition of civil judgments resulted in a laboratory for the new-found competence of the Community. Thus, negotiations already underway--which included delegations from all 15 EU Member States--were affected significantly by the transfer of competence from those states to the Community institutions for matters under consideration at …

Book Review, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

How Theology Might Learn From Law (Symposium: The Theology Of The Practice Of Law), James Boyd White

Articles

I want to start today with an account of the way lawyers think and speak, and then ask whether it might be useful for the theologically minded to take these practices and procedures seriously as a ground of comparison from which to look at their own. In doing this I shall look at the practice of law with an emphasis not on its social effects or ethical difficulties but on the nature of the activity itself, viewed from the inside, asking in particular what kind of knowledge it requires and creates in its practitioner. What does the lawyer learn from …

Legal Knowledge, James Boyd White

Articles

What do we know when we know the law? I asked a rabbi I know how he would answer that question with respect to Jewish law. Does someone know the law when he can repeat the rules that tell him what to do? Or when he can engage in the activity of reading them, sepa­rately or in conjunction with each other, and applying them sensibly to new circumstances? Is even that enough? My friend said it was not: he must know who he is in relation to the law, both as an individual and as a member of a people; …

Is There An Implicit Theology In The Practice Of Ordinary Law?, Joseph Vining

Articles

We should have a text to help us-lawyers and theologians almost always do. Consider this from Wordsworth, and ask whether it goes too far if Wordsworth were thought to be speaking to the practicing lawyer: Here you stand, Adore, and worship, when you know it not; Pious beyond the intention of your thought; Devout above the meaning of your will. -Yes, you have felt, and may not cease to feel. The estate of Man would be indeed forlorn If false conclusions of the reasoning Power Made the Eye blind, and closed the passages Through which the Ear converses with the …

The Value Of Rational Nature, Donald H. Regan

Articles

Kant tells us in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals that rational nature is an end in itself; that it is the only thing which is unconditionally valuable; and that it is the ultimate condition of all value.1 A striking trend in recent Kant scholarship is to regard these value claims, rather than the formalism of universalizability, as the ultimate foundation of Kant’s theory.2 But does rational nature as Kant conceives it deserve such veneration? Can it really carry the world of value on its shoulders? I think not. As will become clear, I do not doubt the value …

The Fault Of Not Knowing, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the outpouring of interest in tort and criminal theory over the last thirty years, not much progress has been made toward understanding the basic concepts for analyzing liability. Common law theorists of torts and criminal law tend to accept the conventional distinction between objective and subjective standards and the view that objective negligence is not really fault in the way that subjective negligence is. The author's view is that this distinction between objective and subjective standards is misunderstood and that, in fact, so-called objective negligence is a test of fault or culpability in the same way that subjective standards …

The Storrs Lectures: Liberals And Romantics At War: The Problem Of Collective Guilt, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Somehow we in the West thought the age of war was behind us. After nuking Hiroshima, after napalming Vietnam, we had only distaste for the idea and the practice of war. The thought of dying for a noble cause, the pursuit of honor in the name of patria, brotherhood in arms – none of this appealed to us anymore. "I hate war and so does Eleanor," opined FDR in the oft-repeated lyrics of Pete Seeger. War became a subject for ironic disdain. As Tom Lehrer caught the mood of the 1960s: "We only want the world to know that …