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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Miranda'S Fall?, Kenji Yoshino May 2000

Miranda'S Fall?, Kenji Yoshino

Michigan Law Review

If one wishes to revisit a classic, Albert Crunus's The Fall is a riskier choice than Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which Steven Lubet eloquently discussed last year in these pages. It is not only that Camus's work will be less familiar to legal audiences than Lee's, despite the fact that The Fall is becoming recognized through critical "revisitation" as perhaps Crunus's greatest novel. It is also that the legal protagonist of The Fall, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, does not have Atticus Finch's immediate appeal. Finch is idealistic, Clamence is existential; Finch is pious, Clamence is debauched; Finch is hopeful, Clamence …


Analogical Reasoning As Translation: The Pragmatics Of Transitivity, Jonathan Yovel Jan 2000

Analogical Reasoning As Translation: The Pragmatics Of Transitivity, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

This paper attempts to examine the underlying structure of analogical reasoning in decision making. The immediate (but not exclusive) context is the form of reasoning commonly seen as prevalent in common-law judicial decision making. Following Wittgenstein and Strawson the paper identifies the problem of the contingency of transitivity of analogical relations as a serious impediment to analogical reasoning. It then proceeds to offer a method of translation that delineates the borders of contingency and analyticity of transitivity in such cases, as well as proposes how these borders may be manipulated. The theoretical insight is to treat analogical relations anaphorically, as …


What Is Contract Law 'About'? Speech Act Theory And A Critique Of 'Skeletal Promises', Jonathan Yovel Jan 2000

What Is Contract Law 'About'? Speech Act Theory And A Critique Of 'Skeletal Promises', Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

What is contract law about? One way of looking at it is to conceive of the subject-matter of contract law in terms of promises - just as tort law arguably revolves around the concepts of accident or harm. Much like accidents - first-year law students are taught - promises are out there in the world, to be classified and distinguished so as to privilege some with legal enforceability. There is a language/world of promises, this approach seems to indicate, and a language/world of contracts. It is a main function of contract law to perform translations from the one to the …