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Legal Fictions And Juristic Truth, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 2010

Legal Fictions And Juristic Truth, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This Essay cautions against the revisionist trend in legal scholarship to dismiss discredited legal regimes and burdensome statutory schemes as mere "legal fictions." In the first instance, the expansive view of legal fictions employed in this new scholarship dilutes the analytic force of the classic definition proposed by Lon L. Fuller. More importantly, it misapprehends the constitutive power of law and the nature of juristic truth. The classic legal fiction is a curious artifice of legal reasoning. In a discipline primarily concerned with issues of fact and responsibility, the notion of a legal fiction should seem an anathema or, at …


Gay And Lesbian Elders: History, Law, And Identity Politics In The United States, Nancy J. Knauer Dec 2009

Gay And Lesbian Elders: History, Law, And Identity Politics In The United States, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The approximately two million gay and lesbian elders in the United States are an underserved and understudied population. At a time when gay men and lesbians enjoy an unprecedented degree of social acceptance and legal protection, many elders face the daily challenges of aging isolated from family, detached from the larger gay and lesbian community, and ignored by mainstream aging initiatives. Drawing on materials from law, history, and social theory, this book integrates practical proposals for reform with larger issues of sexuality and identity. Beginning with a summary of existing demographic data and offering a historical overview of pre-Stonewall views …