Law Commons^™

Challenges To Fragile Democracies In The Americas: Legitimacy And Accountability, Martin Böhmer, A.R. Brewer-Carías, Helen Beatriz Mack Chang, Sarah H. Cleveland, Francisco Cox, Lourdes Flores Nano, H.W. Perry Jr., Steven Ratner, Carlos Rosenkrantz, Roberto Saba, Dean Michael Sharlot, Nicolas Shumway, Gerald Torres

Faculty Scholarship

February 25, 2000, the University of Texas School of Law hosted an extraordinary gathering to discuss the fragility of democracies in Latin America and the dangers that they face. The event was sponsored by several institutions at the University of Texas: the School of Law, the Institute of Latin American Studies, the Office of the Provost, the College of Liberal Arts Democracy in the Third Millennium Program, and the International Law Society at the School of Law.

Get Smart: The Rise Of Authoritarianism And Our Crackpot Culture, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

Review of "Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety", by Wendy Kaminer, Pantheon (2000)Abstract:This essay reviews a book by distinguished cultural critic Wendy Kaminer on the rise in American society of culturally and politically powerful forces of irrational belief that have become increasingly able to impose what amounts to their private pieties on the polity and the public square. Kaminer has a wide range of targets in mind, ranging across the religious and belief spectrum, from Christian creationists to New Age occultists. She argues that the prevalent multicultural ethic gives them ground to demand that their …

Where No Man Has Gone Before: Star Trek And The Death Of Cultural Relativism In America, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

This 1997 Times Literary Supplement (London) essay reviews the 1996 Star Trek (Next Generation) film First Contact, along with a book of essays in cultural studies about Star Trek (Taylor Harrison, et al., Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek). Of greatest long term interest in the moral and political philosophy of Star Trek is the so-called Prime Directive - non interference in local culture on local planets. This Vietnam era ethic of cultural relativism was prominent in the original 1960s Star Trek series as much for its assertion as for being regularly violated by Captain Kirk and his crew. …

Where No Man Has Gone Before: Star Trek And The Death Of Cultural Relativism In America, Kenneth Anderson

Kenneth Anderson

Authoritarianism And The Rule Of Law, Lynne Henderson

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Virtue Of Liberality In American Communal Life, Linda R. Hirshman

Michigan Law Review

This article attacks the barriers to articulation of a theory of the good and advocates discussion of the substance of a good regime, specifically, a good American regime. Part I of this article addresses in some detail the civic republicans' revival of interest in the common life. I propose that it is dauntingly difficult, if not impossible, to articulate a satisfying version of a common life without a theory of the good life, an undertaking traditionally associated with authoritarianism and elitism. Rather than abandoning the enterprise, however, I propose to reopen the assumption that the association automatically rules out any …

Whose Nature - Practical Reason And Patriarchy, Lynne Henderson

Cleveland State Law Review

My comments on John Finnis's Natural Law and Legal Reasoning grow out my concern about the relationship of law to authoritarianism. In this comment, I do not intend to go deeply into the relationship of law to authoritarianism but rather to sketch out the background of the argument. It seems to me that authoritarianism, properly understood, is of great relevance to a symposium on jurisprudence and legal reasoning, because at a minimum, authoritarianism overlaps with legality's ethic of rule-following and obedience to authority. Authoritarian attitudes about authority and morality also are relevant to the jurisprudential concern with the relation of …

Whose Nature? Practical Reason And Patriarchy, Lynne Henderson

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Harvey: Law And Social Change In Ghana, Max Rheinstein

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law and Social Change in Ghana By William Burnett Harvey

Dean Pound And The Immutable Natural Law, Karl Kreilkamp

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Constitution And Nationalism, Henry M. Bates

Articles

Dean Bates comments on the alarming trend of nationalism in America: "Blind indeed must he be who supposes that our legal and political institutions can escape profound modification by those great changes in commercial, industrial, political and social conditions which, in part, were caused by the world war, but were greatly intensified by it.... No intelligent person, who has any knowledge of history and of the protection which local government has always given to human freedom, can fail to feel a deep and at times shuddering sense of apprehension at the rapidity with which we are massing our governmental power …