Jurisprudence Commons^™

Filosofía De La Responsabilidad Extracontractual: Un Llamado Al Debate, Jorge Luis Fabra

Jorge Luis Fabra Zamora

Recientemente se ha comenzado a hablar con fuerza de la “filosofía de la responsabilidad extracontractual” en Latinoamérica. La publicación de varias compilaciones de artículos, la traducción de uno de los textos fundacionales del área, y la publicación del primer libro con una contribución original al debate en español han hecho que este estudio filosófico se consolide un cuerpo académico por mérito propio. Sin embargo, a pesar de estos logros, la idea de una “filosofía de la responsabilidad extracontractual” puede sonar extraña al jurista práctico. Como señala Zipursky, desde la perspectiva de los jueces o abogados, la responsabilidad extracontractual –que se …

Four Challenges Confronting A Moral Conception Of Universal Human Rights, Eric Blumenson

Eric Blumenson

This Essay describes some fundamental debates concerning the nature and possibility of universal human rights, conceived as a species of justice rather than law. It identifies four claims entailed by such rights and some significant problems each claim confronts. The designation “universal human rights” explicitly asserts three of them: paradigmatic human rights purport to be (1) universal, in that their protections and obligations bind every society, regardless of its laws and mores; (2) human, in that the rights belong equally to every person by virtue of one’s humanity, regardless of character, social standing, disabilities, or other individual attributes; and (3) …

Les Codes De Conduite: Source Du Droit Global?, Gregory Lewkowicz

Gregory Lewkowicz

La doctrine récente en théorie et en philosophie du droit examine depuis plusieurs années les transformations du droit dans la mondialisation à partir de l’hypothèse de la formation d’un droit global. Les codes de conduites constitueraient un élément typique de ce droit global naissant.

Confrontés au phénomène massif de multiplication des codes de conduite, considéré comme extérieur au droit, selon la théorie et les critères classiques des normes juridiques, mais qui évolue pourtant en interaction sinon en concurrence avec lui, les auteurs examinent dans cette contribution le problème des rapports entre codes de conduite et sources du droit. Ce problème …

A Noble Cause: A Case Study Of Discrimination, Symbols, And Reciprocity, In: Diversity And European Human Rights, Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

This chapter is part of a volume dedicated to rewriting human rights cases issued by the European Court of Human Rights. It uses the case of De La Cierva Osorio De Moscoso v. Spain (1999) as a platform to discuss the inherent tension typifying signs such as nobility titles – as merely symbolic or as carrying substantive content. The problem of one’s ownership of signs is especially acute in the case of women. I will argue that the distinction between form and substance collapses in this case, as in many other cases that involve allocation of allegedly merely symbolic signifiers …

Ratings Contre Etats, Gregory Lewkowicz

Gregory Lewkowicz

Interview of Gregory Lewkowicz on credit rating agencies by I. de Laminne for the newspaper "La Libre Belgique"

Godsdienst Als Hype, Wouter H. De Been

Wouter H. de Been

No abstract provided.

Vanity Of Vanities, Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo

Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo

All that we see and all that we do are emptied into the eternal abyss of nothingness and vain glory. All the we have and all own us are intertwined in the great deception of man. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, all is vanity

Heidegger And The Essence Of Adjudication, George Souri

George Souri

This paper presents an account of adjudication based on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. As this paper argues, we can only hope to better understand adjudication if we recognize that adjudication is a socio-temporally situated activity, and not a theoretical object. Heidegger’s philosophical insights are especially salient to such a project for several reasons. First, Heidegger’s re-conception of ontology, and his notion of being-in-the-world, provide a truer-to-observation account of how human beings come to understand their world and take in the content of experience towards completing projects. Second, Heidegger’s account of context, inter-subjectivity, and common understanding provide a basis upon …

La Democracia Deliberativa A Debate, Leonardo García Jaramillo

Leonardo García Jaramillo

No abstract provided.

American Legal Realism: Sound And Fury Signifying Nothing?, Wouter H. De Been

Wouter H. de Been

No abstract provided.

Children's Oppression, Rights And Liberation, Samantha Godwin

Samantha Godwin

This paper advances a radical and controversial analysis of the legal status of children. I argue that the denial of equal rights and equal protection to children under the law is inconsistent with liberal and progressive beliefs about social justice and fairness. In order to do this I first situate children’s legal and social status in its historical context, examining popular assumptions about children and their rights, and expose the false necessity of children’s current legal status. I then offer a philosophical analysis for why children’s present subordination is unjust, and an explanation of how society could be sensibly and …

Distributive Justice Before The Eighteenth Century: The Right Of Necessity, Siegfried Van Duffel, Dennis Yap

Siegfried Van Duffel

Until recently, few people would have doubted that the idea of distributive justice is old, indeed ancient. Several authors have now challenged this assumption. Most prominently, Samuel Fleischacker argued that distributive justice originates in the eighteenth century. If accurate, this would upset much of what we have taken for granted about an important part of the history of Western political thought. However, the thesis is manifestly flawed. And since that it has already proven influential, it is important to set the record straight. We will focus on the principle of extreme necessity, developed in twelfth and thirteenth century canon law, …

Law In High Heels: Performativity, Alterity, And Aesthetics, Monica Lopez Lerma

Monica Lopez Lerma

Pedro Almodovar's High Heels (the original Spanish title, Tacones Lejanos, literally means "distant heels") is a 1991 postmodern film that celebrates performance, fluidity, and fragmentation as ways of being in and understanding the world. In a generic combination of melodrama, comedy, musical, and film noir, High Heels tells the story of a turbulent mother-daughter relationship, and a judge's criminal investigation following the murder of the daughter's husband (who also happens to be the mother's former lover). In recent years, Almodovar's film has received the attention of Orit Kamir, a law-and-film feminist scholar who opens up a refreshing line of inquiry. …

A Propósito Del Giro Historiográfico En Derecho Internacional, Ignacio De La Rasilla Del Moral

Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral, Ph.D.

Illiteracy rate in Spain at the turn of the 20th century was of 63.8% and 16.000 students - out of a total Spanish population of 18.6 million - attended the 10 existing Spanish universities. 2.000 university titles were accorded, half of which in Law in 1900, and 200 students obtained their doctorates by the Central University of Madrid which held the academic monopoly of doctoral studies at the time. In 1902, the Bulletin of the Institution of Free Teaching published a chronicle signed by Aniceto Sela y Sampil on the didactic methods he employed to teach Public and Private International …

Law Is Not (Best Considered) An Essentially Contested Concept, Kenneth M. Ehrenberg

Kenneth M Ehrenberg

I argue that law is not best considered an essentially contested concept. After first explaining the notion of essential contestability and disaggregating the concept of law into several related concepts, I show that the most basic and general concept of law does not fit within the criteria generally offered for essential contestation. I then buttress this claim with the additional explanation that essential contestation is itself a framework for understanding complex concepts and therefore should only be applied when it is useful to gain a greater understanding of uses of the concept to which it is applied (adducing criteria for …

La Protection Des Civils Dans Les Nouvelles Configurations Conflictuelles : Retour Au Droit Des Gens Ou Dépassement Du Droit International Humanitaire, Gregory Lewkowicz

Gregory Lewkowicz

In this paper, the development of alternative regulatory tools (codes of conduct, monitoring mechanisms, etc.) dealing with the protection of civilians during armed conflicts is scrutinized in the context of “new wars”. The paper analyses the connections between these alternative regulatory tools and classical international humanitarian law (IHL) instruments. The paper suggests that the profusion of alternative regulatory tools can help to disseminate classical IHL norms and to adapt them to contemporary warfare. The paper also envisages the possibility of a new “lex armorum” emerging from these new regulatory tools and challenging classical IHL.

El Canon Neoconstitucional, Leonardo García Jaramillo, Miguel Carbonell S

Leonardo García Jaramillo

No abstract provided.

From Objective Right To Subjective Rights: The Franciscans And The Interest And Will Conceptions Of Rights, Siegfried Van Duffel

Siegfried Van Duffel

What are subjective rights? And what makes Will and Interest conceptions of rights into conceptions of rights? I argue that they originate in two very different natural rights theories which are, however, grounded in the same philosophical anthropology.

Law As Referent, Craig G. Bateman

C. G. Bateman

In this article I suggest that “the Law,” (hereinafter the LAW) can be most functionally understood as a conglomeration of referent ideals which emanate from the minds of law creators, and are the source of what we regularly understand as laws. I separate from the concept of the LAW the usual suspects of constitutions, codes, acts, and charters, etc. I separate these from their inceptional ideals and suggest we ascribe a label to these familiar kinds of categories such as “lower order laws,” being careful to confine our discussions of them with the exclusive use of a small “l” (law), …

How Embedded Knowledge Structures Affect Judicial Decision Making: An Analysis Of Metaphor, Narrative, And Imagination In Child Custody Disputes, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

We live in a time of radically changing conceptions of family and of the relationships possible between children and parents. Though undergoing “a sea-change,” family law remains tethered to culturally embedded stories and symbols. While so bound, family law will fail to serve individual families and a society whose family structures diverge sharply by education, race, class, and income. This article advances a critical rhetorical analysis of the interaction of metaphor and narrative within the specific context of child custody disputes. Its goal is to begin to examine how these embedded knowledge structures affect judicial decision making generally; more specifically, …

Droits De L'Homme, Droits Du Citoyen: Les Présupposés De La Jurisprudence Américaine Et Européenne, Gregory Lewkowicz

Gregory Lewkowicz

This paper proposes a comparative analysis of some rulings of the US Supreme Court and of the European Court of Human Rights. Reviewing cases related to international legal problems or using comparative legal reasoning, the paper suggests that the difference of attitudes between the two courts in human rights cases is embedded in the classical opposition between men and citizen.

A Whale Of A Tale: Post-Colonialism, Critical Theory, And Deconstruction: Revisiting The International Convention For The Regulation Of Whaling Through A Socio-Legal Persepctive, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

This article is a critical interpretation of the indigenous whaling debate, which, although often discussed in legal academia, has received only passing critical attention. As a scholar in the critical theory/critical legal studies model, I am primarily concerned with the impact that law and debates about law have on divergent groups (racial, ethnic, gender, etc.). This article develops a criticism of the United States's postcolonial opposition to whaling, arguing, instead, for cultural relativism. The article indicts U.S. imperialism, and treatment of indigenous peoples, arguing for interdisciplinary analysis and a more keen appreciation for the voice of indigenous peoples. As I …

Corégulation Et Responsabilité Sociale Des Entreprises, Gregory Lewkowicz, Ludovic Hennebel

Gregory Lewkowicz

This paper analyses the evolution of corporate social responsibility from an empirical and a theoretical point of view. After having described the framework of a theory of coregulation, the authors scrutinize the main regulatory instruments used in the context of corporate social responsibility. They demonstrate that the evolution of corporate social responsaibility delineates a new regulatory logic peculiar to a globalizing legal world. The paper concludes stating that this logic could be a paradigm for the study of an emerging global law.

Troubling The Definition Of Pornography: Little Sisters, A New Defining Moment In Feminists' Engagement With The Law?, Lara Karaian

Lara Karaian

This article explores feminism’s relationship to the legal regulation of pornography. Of particular interest to the author is how the defining moment of the Butler decision has been opened up to contestation and complication by Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium et. al. v. Minister of Justice et al., a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision regarding Canada Customs violations of the free expression and equality rights of a Vancouver-based gay and lesbian bookstore. The focus of the article is on the role that the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) played in both Butler and Little Sisters. The …

September 11 Relief Efforts And Surviving Same-Sex Partners: Reflections On Relationships In The Absence Of Legal Recognition, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The criteria established by federal, state, and private relief efforts to assist the families of the victims of the September 11 attacks present a unique opportunity to examine the status of same-sex relationships in the United States. In the absence of uniform relationship recognition, surviving same-sex partners continue to struggle with a loss that legally is not cognizable. The stories from the September 11 survivors illustrate that a surviving partner is a legal stranger, who often must reconfigure her relationship with her partner to fit within the various legal categories where relief or compensation might be forthcoming. These legal categories …

The Seller's Right To Cure A Failure To Perform In International Sales, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

The right of a defaulting party to cure a non-performance under the condition that such cure does not create any – or at least any excessive – hardship for the aggrieved party, correlated by the aggrieved party’s obligation to receive such curative performance, has emerged as the single most innovative contribution of the Uniform Commercial Code to sales law in general. However, in comparative perspective the cure doctrine is by no means universal nor uniform. This study offers a construction of the meaning of contractual cure and in particular its relation to the aggrieved party’s power to terminate the contract …

Running Backs, Wolves, And Other Fatalities: How Manipulations Of Coherence In Legal Opinions Marginalize Violent Death, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

By examining legal cases that involve violent death and its marginalization by the courts, this essay looks into the relations between narrative coherence and narrative absurd in judicial opinions. Coherence, rather than a static, unequivocal characteristic of legal narratives, is studied here as a highly manipulable narrative and rhetorical performance. Giving a performative twist to reader-response approaches I do not really ask what is the meaning of this text (as construed by its reading)? but rather, working from the position of the text's discursive community, what does this text do? The reading of these cases explores how judicial narration and …

Science, Identity, And The Construction Of The Gay Political Narrative, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This Article contends that the current debate over gay civil rights is, at base, a dispute over the nature of same-sex desire. Pro-gay forces advocate an ethnic or identity model of homosexuality based on the conviction that sexual orientation is an immutable, unchosen, and benign characteristic. The assertion that, in essence, gays are "born that way," has produced a gay political narrative that rests on claims of shared identity (i.e., homosexuals are a blameless minority) and arguments of equivalence (i.e., as a blameless minority, homosexuals deserve equal treatment and protection against discrimination). The pro-family counter-narrative is based on a behavioral …

Two Conceptions Of Relevance, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

Courts use complex modes of relevance judgments in regulating the introduction of information and construction of factual narratives; likewise, common law works both through and around relevance presuppositions in determining doctrine. This study examines different functions of relevance - conceived as different conceptions, at times competing, at times interdependent. The distinctions between these conceptions are arranged on three levels: 1) a normative/"causal" level, arguing for the status of relevance as a requirement for a "meaning-based" conception of entailment and drawing on discussions from relevance logic (RL) and modal logic; 2) a pragmatic/metapragmatic level that explores the ways in which law's …

Rights Of Inequality: Rawlsian Justice, Equal Opportunity, And The Status Of The Family, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Is the family subject to principles of justice? In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls includes the (monogamous) family along with the market and the government as among the "basic institutions of society" to which principles of justice apply. Justice, he famously insists, is primary in politics as truth is in science: the only excuse for tolerating injustice is that no lesser injustice is possible. The point of the present paper is that Rawls doesn't actually mean this. When it comes to the family, and in particular its impact on fair equal opportunity (the first part of the the Difference …