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Full-Text Articles in Law
Why Justice Scalia Should Be A Constitutional Comparativist ... Sometimes, David Gray
Why Justice Scalia Should Be A Constitutional Comparativist ... Sometimes, David Gray
David C. Gray
The burgeoning literature on transjudicialism and constitutional comparativism generally reaffirms the familiar lines of contest between textualists and those more inclined to read the Constitution as a living document. As a consequence, it tends to be politicized, if not polemic. This article begins to shift the debate toward a more rigorous focus on first principles. In particular, it argues that full faith to the basic commitments of originalism, as advanced in Justice Scalia's writings, opinions, and speeches, requires domestic courts to consult contemporary foreign sources when interpreting universalist language found in the Constitution. While the article does not propose a …
Devilry, Complicity, And Greed: Transitional Justice And Odious Debt, David C. Gray
Devilry, Complicity, And Greed: Transitional Justice And Odious Debt, David C. Gray
David C. Gray
The doctrine of odious debts came into its full in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century to deal with the financial injustices of colonialism and its stalking horse, despotism. The basic rule, as articulated by Alexander Sack in 1927, is that debts incurred by an illegitimate regime that neither benefit nor have the consent of the people of a territory are personal to the regime and are subject to unilateral recision by a successor government. While the traditional doctrine focused on the nature and circumstances of individual debts, it has been expanded in recent years, moving the focus from the …
An Excuse-Centered Approach To Transitional Justice, David Gray
An Excuse-Centered Approach To Transitional Justice, David Gray
David C. Gray
Transitional justice asks what successor regimes, committed to human rights and the rule of law, can and should do to seek justice for atrocities perpetrated by and under their predecessors. The normal instinct is to prosecute criminally everyone implicated in past wrongs; but practical conditions in transitions make this impossible. As a result, most transitions pursue hybrid approaches, featuring prosecutions of those most responsible, amnesties, truth commissions, and reparations. This approach is often condemned as a compromise against justice. This article advances a transitional jurisprudence that justifies the hybrid approach by taking normative account of the unique conditions that define …
A No-Excuse Approach To Transitional Justice: Reparations As Tools Of Extraordinary Justice, David C. Gray
A No-Excuse Approach To Transitional Justice: Reparations As Tools Of Extraordinary Justice, David C. Gray
David C. Gray
It is sometimes the case that a debate goes off the rails so early that riders assume the rough country around them is the natural backdrop for their travels. That is certainly true in the debate over reparations in transitions to democracy. Reparations traditionally are understood as material or symbolic awards to victims of an abusive regime granted outside of a legal process. While some reparations claims succeed—such as those made by Americans of Japanese decent interned during World War II and those made by European Jews against Germany after World War II—most do not. The principal culprits in these …
What Is Due To Others: Speaking And Signifying Subject(S) Of Rape Law, Penelope Pether
What Is Due To Others: Speaking And Signifying Subject(S) Of Rape Law, Penelope Pether
Penelope J Pether
Australian journalist Paul Sheehan's representation of the alleged and convicted immigrant Muslim/Arab rapists he demonises in Girls Like You, like his representation of the rape survivors in that text, has much to tell us about the law's production of rape law's speaking and signifying subjects, "real rape" victims and survivors, false accusers and perpetrators. This article uses a variety of texts, including Girls Like You, recent Australian rape law jurisprudence and legislative reform, texts involving two controversial recent US rape cases — one from Maryland and one from Nebraska — and a recent UK study on attrition in rape prosecutions, …
The Death Of The American Trial, Robert Burns
The Death Of The American Trial, Robert Burns
Robert P. Burns
This book analyzes and criticizes the loss of one of the great achievements of our public culture, the American trial.
Original Intention And Public Meaning In Constitutional Interpretation, Richard Kay
Original Intention And Public Meaning In Constitutional Interpretation, Richard Kay
Richard Kay
In recent years academic explanations of the originalist approach to constitutional interpretation have shifted the relevant inquiry from the subjective intent of the constitution-makers to the "original public meaning" of the Constitution's words. This article is a critical analysis of that development. In the actual course of adjudication by honest and competent judges either method should usually yield the same result. The reliance on public meaning, however, distracts the interpreter from the connection between the normative force of the Constitution and the founding events, a link that is essential to the legitimacy of constitutional judicial review. In the hands of …
On Realism's Own 'Hangover' Of Natural Law Philosophy: Llewellyn Avec Dooyeweerd, David Caudill
On Realism's Own 'Hangover' Of Natural Law Philosophy: Llewellyn Avec Dooyeweerd, David Caudill
David S Caudill
No abstract provided.
Exploring The Foundations Of Dworkin's Empire: The Discovery Of An Underground Positivist, Brian M. Mccall
Exploring The Foundations Of Dworkin's Empire: The Discovery Of An Underground Positivist, Brian M. Mccall
Brian M McCall
This review essay examines the jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin as presented in the anthology: Exploring Law's Empire: The Jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin, edited by Scott Hershovitz. Notwithstanding the influence Dworkin's jurisprudence has had on the reconsideration of moral reasoning within legal reasoning, the essay concludes that at its foundation Dworkin's jurisprudence is based upon Legal Positivist principles. The essay first summarizes the jurisprudence of Dworkin and then contrasts his jurisprudence with traditional Natural Law Legal Theory and finally exposes the Positivist foundations of Dworkin's Legal Empire.
Constituting Vanuatu: Societal, Legal And Local Perspectives,, Benedict Sheehy, Jackson Maogoto
Constituting Vanuatu: Societal, Legal And Local Perspectives,, Benedict Sheehy, Jackson Maogoto
Benedict Sheehy
Governance in Vanuatu has been a source of concern for Australia as it forms part of Australia’s ‘Arc of Instability.’ Vanuatu has adopted a modified Westminster system as that system is often advocated as the model for constitutions and governance around the world. In various former colonies local populations were expected to simply absorb its liberal democratic principles apparently on some assumption that such principles were an innate part of human nature. Most readings of history would come to a different conclusion. Vanuatu illustrates this error and the complexities of a society that not only creates a broad challenge for …
Haunted By History's Ghostly Gaps: A Literary Critique Of The Dred Scott Decision And Its Historical Treatments, Allen P. Mendenhall
Haunted By History's Ghostly Gaps: A Literary Critique Of The Dred Scott Decision And Its Historical Treatments, Allen P. Mendenhall
Allen Mendenhall
In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney eliminates Dred Scott the man from the text and divests Scott of a body, thereby transforming him into a sort of incorporeal ghost that signals the traces and tropes of slavery. Subsequent historians, journalists, and politicians have made Scott even more inaccessible by either relying on Taney’s text, which erases Scott, or by failing to recover Scott’s narrative. Taney’s opinion codified “the facts” of the case as official or authoritative despite a lack of reference to their human subject. Later writers relied on this received version despite its obvious …
Adequate (Non)Provocation And Heat Of Passion As Excuse Not Justification, Reid Griffith Fontaine, Jd, Phd
Adequate (Non)Provocation And Heat Of Passion As Excuse Not Justification, Reid Griffith Fontaine, Jd, Phd
Reid G. Fontaine
For a number of reasons, including the complicated psychological nature of reactive homicide, the heat of passion defense has remained subject to various points of confusion. One persistent issue of disagreement has been whether the defense is a partial justification or excuse. In this Article, I highlight and categorize a series of varied American homicide cases in which the applicability of heat of passion was supported although adequate provocation (or significant provocation by the victim) was absent. The cases are organized to illustrate that even in circumstances in which there is no actual provocation, or the provocation is not sourced …