Jurisprudence Commons^™

Of Law And Other Artificial Normative Systems, Mitchell N. Berman

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Different theories of law are situated within different pictures of our normative landscape. This essay aims to make more visible and attractive one picture that reflects basic positivist sensibilities yet is oddly marginalized in the current jurisprudential literature. The picture that I have in mind tries to vindicate surface appearances. It maintains that the social world is densely populated by countless normative systems of human construction (“artificial normative systems”) whose core functions are to generate and maintain norms (oughts, obligations, powers, rights, prohibitions, and the like). The norms that these systems output are conceptually independent from each other, and may …

The Tragedy Of Justice Scalia, Mitchell N. Berman

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Justice Antonin Scalia was, by the time of his death last February, the Supreme Court’s best known and most influential member. He was also its most polarizing, a jurist whom most students of American law either love or hate. This essay, styled as a twenty-year retrospective on A Matter of Interpretation, Scalia’s Tanner lectures on statutory and constitutional interpretation, aims to prod partisans on both sides of our central legal and political divisions to better appreciate at least some of what their opponents see—the other side of Scalia’s legacy. Along the way, it critically assesses Scalia’s particular brand of …

What Is Positive Law, Philippe Nonet

Philippe Nonet

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Natural Law, Slavery, And The Right To Privacy Tort, Anita L. Allen

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In 1905 the Supreme Court of Georgia became the first state high court to recognize a freestanding “right to privacy” tort in the common law. The landmark case was Pavesich v. New England Life Insurance Co. Must it be a cause for deep jurisprudential concern that the common law right to privacy in wide currency today originated in Pavesich’s explicit judicial interpretation of the requirements of natural law? Must it be an additional worry that the court which originated the common law privacy right asserted that a free white man whose photograph is published without his consent in …

What Must We Hide: The Ethics Of Privacy And The Ethos Of Disclosure, Anita L. Allen

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Gaining Ground: Towards A Discourse Of Posthuman Animality, Anne Louise Schillmoller

Anne Schillmoller

Edit My Photo Join My Mailing List Edit Author InfoAnne Louise Schillmoller Southern Cross University ■Contact Information Edit Author Background Edit Links Search the Selected Works of Anne Louise Schillmoller Search All Sites User Guide Read Our FAQs Contact Support RSS Feed Print this page Bookmark Update Site Articles Next»Revise WithdrawCancelGaining Ground: Towards a Discourse of Posthuman AnimalityAnne Louise Schillmoller, School of Law and Justice Southern Cross University Abstract The paper seeks articulate possibilities for a reciprocal ground of animality, a non hegemonic conceptual frontier within which the sovereign terrain of liberal humanism might yield to networks of alliances and …

Gaining Ground: Towards A Discourse Of Posthuman Animality: A Geophilosophical Journey, Anne Louise Schillmoller

Anne Schillmoller

The paper seeks articulate possibilities for a reciprocal ground of animality, a non hegemonic conceptual frontier within which the sovereign terrain of liberal humanism might yield to networks of alliances and reciprocities among human and other animals. The objective is to locate topographies where the conditions of creaturely life may be conceptualised in relational and non anthropocentric terms. It seeks to identify possibilities for a discourse of animality which avoids the haunting spectre of humanism. Specifically, it explore routes which may avoid the dualisms of western thought and identify alternative ways by which animality might be conceptualised and represented. Its …

Zizek/Questions/Failing, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

In this article I am primarily concerned with presenting Slavoj Žižek3 as a legal theorist. Žižek has been a valuable contributor to critical theory and deserves a place in the pantheon of legal thinkers.

While his diverse writings are often relegated to other disciplines, they also position him as an important contributor to law and public discourse. I seek to illuminate how he mediates and interrogates the law by demonstrating how his scholarship is important to the lives of legal thinkers, questions of success and the law, capitalism, political practice, and terrorism. Because Žižek’s work is interdisciplinary and expansive, this …

Mental Disorders And The "System Of Judgmental Responsibility", Anita L. Allen

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The Role Of Moral Philosophers In The Competition Between Deontological And Empirical Desert, Paul H. Robinson

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Desert appears to be in ascendence as a distributive principle for criminal liability and punishment but there is confusion as to whether it is a deontological or an empirical conception of desert that is or should be promoted. Each offers a distinct advantage over the other. Deontological desert can transcend community, situation, and time to give a conception of justice that can be relied upon to reveal errors in popular notions of justice. On the other hand, empirical desert can be more easily operationalized than can deontological desert because, contrary to common wisdom, there is a good deal of agreement …

The Rhetoric Of Anti-Relativism In A Culture Of Certainty, Howard Lesnick

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A Contractarian Argument Against The Death Penalty, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

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Opponents of the death penalty typically base their opposition on contingent features of its administration, arguing that the death penalty is applied discriminatory, that the innocent are sometimes executed, or that there is insufficient evidence of the death penalty’s deterrent efficacy. Implicit in these arguments is the suggestion that if these contingencies did not obtain, serious moral objections to the death penalty would be misplaced. In this Article, Professor Finkelstein argues that there are grounds for opposing the death penalty even in the absence of such contingent factors. She proceeds by arguing that neither of the two prevailing theories of …

Hobbes And The Internal Point Of View, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

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Moralizing In Public, Anita L. Allen

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What Personal Rules Can Teach Us About Basic Institutions, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

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Harm, History, And Counterfactuals, Stephen R. Perry

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Two Concepts Of Immortality: Reframing Public Debate On Stem-Cell Research, Frank Pasquale

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Regenerative medicine seeks not only to cure disease, but also to arrest the aging process itself. So far, public attention to the new health care has focused on two of its methods: embryonic stem-cell research and therapeutic cloning. Since both processes manipulate embryos, they alarm those who believe life begins at conception. Such religious objections have dominated headlines on the topic, and were central to President George W. Bush's decision to restrict stem-cell research.

Although they are now politically potent, the present religious objections to regenerative medicine will soon become irrelevant. Scientists are fast developing new ways of culturing the …

Method And Principle In Legal Theory, Stephen R. Perry

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Excuses And Dispositions In Criminal Law, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

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Two Men On A Plank, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

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Can two individuals, each of whom needs a certain resource for his survival, have equal and conflicting rights to that resource? If so, is each entitled to try to exclude the other from its use? An old chestnut of moral and legal philosophy raises the problem. Following a shipwreck, two men converge simultaneously on a plank floating in the sea. There is no other plank available and no immediate hope of rescue. Unfortunately the plank can support only one; it sinks if two try to cling to it. Is it permissible for each to attempt to secure his own survival …

Positivism And The Notion Of An Offense, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

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While the United States Supreme Court has developed an elaborate constitutional jurisprudence of criminal procedure, it has articulated few constitutional doctrines of the substantive criminal law. The asymmetry between substance and procedure seems natural given the demise of Lochner and the minimalist stance towards due process outside the area of fundamental rights. This Article, however, argues that the "positivistic" approach to defining criminal offenses stands in some tension with other basic principles, both constitutional and moral. In particular, two important constitutional guarantees depend on the notion of an offense: the presumption of innocence and the ban on double jeopardy. Under …

Privacy And The Public Official: Talking About Sex As A Dilemma For Democracy, Anita L. Allen

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Preempting Oneself: The Right And The Duty To Forestall One's Own Wrongdoing, Leo Katz

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Economists and philosophers working on problems of rational choice have for some time been concerned with various puzzles raised by so-called "Ullysean" configurations: actors who rationally cause themselves to act irrationally. (e.g., the person who swallows Thomas Schelling's famous irrationality pill to preempt an attempted robbery). What has attracted less attention is that these configurations present fascinating problems for morality, most especially for non-consequentialist morality. This article undertakes the exploration of some of these problems and the implications they hold for the morality of preemptive detention, preemptive self-defense, the creation of prophylactic crimes (like our drug laws) and a variety …

Hart's Methodological Positivism, Stephen R. Perry

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Genetic Testing, Nature, And Trust, Anita L. Allen

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Hobbes, Formalism, And Corrective Justice, Anita L. Allen, Maria H. Morales

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The Wellsprings Of Legal Responses To Inequality: A Perspective On Perspectives, Howard Lesnick

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Alive And Well: Religious Freedom In The Welfare State, Anita L. Allen

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Look Before You Leap: Some Cautionary Notes On Civic Republicanism, Michael A. Fitts

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Reply To Cornel West, William Ewald

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