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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

An Originalist Approach To Prospective Overruling, John O. Mcginnis, Michael Rappaport Dec 2023

An Originalist Approach To Prospective Overruling, John O. Mcginnis, Michael Rappaport

Notre Dame Law Review

Originalism has become a dominant jurisprudential theory on the Supreme Court. But a large number of precedents are inconsistent with the Constitution’s original meaning and overturning them risks creating enormous disruption to the legal order. This article defends a prospective overruling approach that would harmonize precedent with originalism’s rise and reduce the disruption from overrulings. Under prospective overruling, the Court declares that an existing statute violates the original meaning but will continue to be enforced because declaring it unconstitutional would produce enormous costs; however, future statutes of this type will be voided as unconstitutional. Under our approach, the Court would …


Restatements Of Statutory Law: The Curious Case Of The Restatement Of Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell Jan 2021

Restatements Of Statutory Law: The Curious Case Of The Restatement Of Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell

Faculty Scholarship

For nearly a century, the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatements of the Law have played an important role in the American legal system. And in all of this time, they refrained from restating areas of law dominated by a uniform statute despite the proliferation and growing importance of such statutes, especially at the federal level. This omission was deliberate and in recognition of the fundamentally different nature of the judicial role and of lawmaking in areas governed by detailed statutes compared to areas governed by the common law. Then in 2015, without much deliberation, the ALI embarked on the task …


Rules, Tricks And Emancipation, Jessie Allen Jan 2020

Rules, Tricks And Emancipation, Jessie Allen

Book Chapters

Rules and tricks are generally seen as different things. Rules produce order and control; tricks produce chaos. Rules help us predict how things will work out. Tricks are deceptive and transgressive, built to surprise us and confound our expectations in ways that can be entertaining or devastating. But rules can be tricky. General prohibitions and prescriptions generate surprising results in particular contexts. In some situations, a rule produces results that seem far from what the rule makers expected and antagonistic to the interests the rule is understood to promote. This contradictory aspect of rules is usually framed as a downside …


The American Negligence Rule, Mark F. Grady Jan 2019

The American Negligence Rule, Mark F. Grady

Valparaiso University Law Review

No abstract provided.


Value Hypocrisy And Policy Sincerity: A Food Law Case Study, Joshua Ulan Galperin Jan 2017

Value Hypocrisy And Policy Sincerity: A Food Law Case Study, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

t is tempting to say that in 2017 there is a unique problem of hypocrisy in politics, where words and behaviors are so often in opposition. In fact, hypocrisy is nothing new. A robust legal and psychological literature on the importance of procedural justice demonstrates a longstanding concern with developing more just governing processes. One of the important features of this scholarship is that it does not focus only on the consequences of policymaking, in which behaviors, but not words, are relevant. Instead, it respects the intrinsic importance of fair process, lending credence not only to votes but also to …


An All Of The Above Theory Of Legal Development, Larry A. Dimatteo Jun 2013

An All Of The Above Theory Of Legal Development, Larry A. Dimatteo

Larry A DiMatteo

This paper reviews different theories of legal development in order to highlight their similarities and differences. In the end, as in contract theories, no monist view of legal development possesses the explanatory power needed to understand how law has come to be and where it may take us in the future. What we do have is a foundation built on at least two millennia of legal history. The intellectual starting point for this project is Nathan Isaacs’ unfinished work on a cycle theory of legal development. His view of legal development takes issue with Henry Sumner Maine’s thesis that development …


The Unwritten Law And Its Writers, Frederick J. Moreau May 2013

The Unwritten Law And Its Writers, Frederick J. Moreau

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


Legal Rhetoric And Social Science: A Hypothesis For Why Doctrine Matters In Judicial Decisionmaking, Brett Waldron Apr 2013

Legal Rhetoric And Social Science: A Hypothesis For Why Doctrine Matters In Judicial Decisionmaking, Brett Waldron

Pace International Law Review Online Companion

In the realm of American jurisprudence, little draws more excitement or controversy than investigating the role of federal judges in our constitutional order. Yet, at the same time, the scholarly literature has not settled upon a singular descriptive device to explain how federal judges actually carry out this role. In broad strokes, current academic commentary appears to be divided on the issue of whether fidelity to the law or fidelity to political ideology largely determines how judges decide cases. This division, however interesting it may be, should not be afforded the luxury of being examined on a level playing field. …


Separation Of Powers Doctrine On The Modern Supreme Court And Four Doctrinal Approaches To Judicial Decision-Making, R. Randall Kelso Nov 2012

Separation Of Powers Doctrine On The Modern Supreme Court And Four Doctrinal Approaches To Judicial Decision-Making, R. Randall Kelso

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


The Normativity Of Copying In Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh Nov 2012

The Normativity Of Copying In Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

Not all copying constitutes copyright infringement. Quite independent of fair use, copyright law requires that an act of copying be qualitatively and quantitatively significant enough or “substantially similar” for it to be actionable. Originating in the nineteenth century, and entirely the creation of courts, copyright’s requirement of “substantial similarity” has thus far received little attention as an independently meaningful normative dimension of the copyright entitlement. This Article offers a novel theory for copyright’s substantial-similarity requirement by placing it firmly at the center of the institution and its various goals and purposes. As a common-law-style device that mirrors the functioning of …


Echoes Of The Impact Of Webb V. Mcgowin On The Doctrine Of Consideration Under Contract Law: Some Reflections On The Decision On The Approach Of Its 75th Anniversary, Stephen J. Leacock Oct 2009

Echoes Of The Impact Of Webb V. Mcgowin On The Doctrine Of Consideration Under Contract Law: Some Reflections On The Decision On The Approach Of Its 75th Anniversary, Stephen J. Leacock

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Foreseeability And Copyright Incentives, Shyamkrishna Balganesh Apr 2009

Foreseeability And Copyright Incentives, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

Copyright law’s principal justification today is the economic theory of creator incentives. Central to this theory is the recognition that while copyright’s exclusive rights framework provides creators with an economic incentive to create, it also entails large social costs, and that creators therefore need to be given just enough incentive to create in order to balance the system’s benefits against its costs. Yet, none of copyright’s current doctrines enable courts to circumscribe a creator’s entitlement by reference to limitations inherent in the very idea of incentives. While the common law too relies on providing actors with incentives to behave in …


From Judging Culture To Taxing 'Indians': Tracing The Legal Discourse Of The 'Indian Mode Of Life', Constance Macintosh Jan 2009

From Judging Culture To Taxing 'Indians': Tracing The Legal Discourse Of The 'Indian Mode Of Life', Constance Macintosh

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article I consider how judicial decision making characterizes Indigenous peoples’ culture outside the context of determinations under section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. I am concerned with how contemporary jurisprudence sometimes subjects Indigenous people to stereotyped tests of Aboriginality when they seek to exercise legislated rights. These common law tests of Aboriginality tend to turn on troubling oppositional logics, such as whether or not the Indigenous person engages in waged labour or commercial activities. These tests arose in historic legislation and policy that were premised on social evolutionary theory and were directed at determining whether an Indigenous …


The Unseen Track Of Erie Railroad: Why History And Jurisprudence Suggest A More Straightforward Form Of Erie Analysis, Donald L. Doernberg Apr 2007

The Unseen Track Of Erie Railroad: Why History And Jurisprudence Suggest A More Straightforward Form Of Erie Analysis, Donald L. Doernberg

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.


Aesthetic Judgment And Legal Justification, Guyora Binder Jan 2007

Aesthetic Judgment And Legal Justification, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Although criticized as illegitimate, literary elements are necessary features of legal argument. In a modern liberal state, law motivates compliance by justifying controversial prescriptions as products of an appropriate process for representing the will of society. Yet because law constructs the will of individual and collective actors in representing them, its representations are necessarily figurative rather than mimetic. In evaluating law's representation of society, citizens of the liberal state are also shaping their own ends. Such self-expressive choices, subjective but non-instrumental, entail aesthetic judgment. Thus the literary elements of rhetorical figuration and aesthetic appeal are fundamental, rather than merely ornamental, …


Retroactivity And Legal Change: An Equilibrium Approach, Jill E. Fisch Jan 1997

Retroactivity And Legal Change: An Equilibrium Approach, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, Professor Fisch assesses currrent retroactivity doctrine and proposes a new framework for retroactivity analysis. Current law has failed to reflect the complexity of defining retroactivity and to harmonize the conflicting concerns of efficiency and fairness that animate retroactivity doctrine. By drawing a sharp distinction between adjudication and legislation, the law has also overlooked the similarity of the issues that retroactivity raises in both contexts. Professor Fisch's analysis, influenced by the legal process school, uses an equilibrium approach to connect retroactivity analysis to theories of legal change. Instead of focusing on the nature of the new legal rule, …


From Libertarianism To Egalitarianism, Justin Schwartz Jan 1992

From Libertarianism To Egalitarianism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard natural rights argument for libertarianism is based on the labor theory of property: the idea that I own my self and my labor, and so if I "mix" my own labor with something previously unowned or to which I have a have a right, I come to own the thing with which I have mixed by labor. This initially intuitively attractive idea is at the basis of the theories of property and the role of government of John Locke and Robert Nozick. Locke saw and Nozick agreed that fairness to others requires a proviso: that I leave "enough …


Interjurisdictional Preclusion, Full Faith And Credit And Federal Common Law: A General Approach, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 1986

Interjurisdictional Preclusion, Full Faith And Credit And Federal Common Law: A General Approach, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Reason Of The Common Law, Barbara A. Singer Sep 1983

The Reason Of The Common Law, Barbara A. Singer

University of Miami Law Review

Although the present meaning of reason has been reduced to discrete definitions, precise interpretations did not exist in medieval England. Rather, reason was defined by its role in the adjudicatory process. During the late medieval period, reason came to embody the very essence of the common law as courts recognized that it could be used to prevent procedural rules from infringing upon substantive rights. Relying upon Year Book cases and jurisprudential works, the author describes how the chameleon-like character of reason helped to shape the medieval English common law.


Book Review, Igor I. Kavass Jan 1978

Book Review, Igor I. Kavass

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The limited use of American case law in the Commonwealth countries should not be surprising. With the exception of English cases, the decisions of other Commonwealth countries receive the same indifferent treatment in all Commonwealth jurisdictions; the English courts studiously ignore the decisions of other Commonwealth countries. For that matter, American courts do not consult the case law of English and other Commonwealth countries all too frequently. Espinoza v. Farah Manufacturing Co. is a recent example in point. In that case, the Supreme Court was asked to interpret the meaning of the terms "nationality" and "national origin" as used. in …


The Interpretation Of Statutes In Modern British Law, W. Friedmann Apr 1950

The Interpretation Of Statutes In Modern British Law, W. Friedmann

Vanderbilt Law Review

Mr. Justice Frankfurter recently said that the number of cases coming before the Supreme Court of the United States which were not based on statutes was "reduced almost to zero." This growth of statutory as against pure case law is, of course, not confined to the United States. It inevitably accompanies the social welfare state and the increase in government which every modern industrial society has experienced and which two world wars, with their need for the total mobilization of resources, have further stimulated. Apart from these sociological factors which affect states with the most different legal systems, it is …


Our Changing Common Law, Ole E. Wyckoff Dec 1941

Our Changing Common Law, Ole E. Wyckoff

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.


Essays In Jurisprudence And The Common Law, Jeff B. Fordham Apr 1931

Essays In Jurisprudence And The Common Law, Jeff B. Fordham

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.