Jurisprudence Commons^™

Os Perigosos Sábios Do Sião I, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Julga-se o grau de civilização de um país pelo relevo que nele têm os preconceitos enraízados, essas pseudo-verdades que não se discutem. Falta em espírito crítico o que sobra em demagogia. Estamos a assistir nalguns pontos da Europa, e mesmo em Portugal (onde os nossos brandos costumes e convivência ancestrais também convivem com um inconsciente coletivo de inquisição e polícia política), a um crescendo na criação de bodes expiatórios, que é uma das formas clássicas de fuga aos problemas sociais e económicos crescentes (a outra é a guerra: ainda aí não chegamos...). Descarregar a culpa sobre "os suspeitos do costume" …

Direct (Anti-)Democracy, Maxwell L. Stearns

Maxwell L. Stearns

Legal scholars, economists, and political scientists are divided on whether voter initiatives and legislative referendums tend to produce outcomes that are more (or less) majoritarian, efficient, or solicitous of minority concerns than traditional legislation. Scholars also embrace opposing views on which law-making mechanism better promotes citizen engagement, registers preference intensities, encourages compromise, and prevents outcomes masking cycling voter preferences. Despite these disagreements, commentators generally assume that the voting mechanism itself renders plebiscites more democratic than legislative lawmaking. This assumption is mistaken. Although it might seem unimaginable that a lawmaking process that directly engages voters possesses fundamentally antidemocratic features, this Article …

Rousseau, A Constituição De Cádis E A Renacença Portuguesa, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Todos os anos há muita coisa a comemorar. Comemoramos o que nos diz respeito, o que acarinhamos. Tal como os países consideram feriados os dias que mais dizem às forças políticas que em cada momento mandam. Comemorar Rousseau, a Constituição de Cádis e a Renascença Portuguesa parecem-nos a nós 3 celebrações importantes, no plano universal e europeu, ibero-americano e português. Não é serviço fúnebre, mas olhar de Janus, em que, contemplando o passado, se encara com nova face o futuro. Refletindo. Este ano são os centenários que vou pessoalmente comemorar, e ajudar a comemorar em conjunto. A menos que tenha …

The Missing Normative Dimension In Brian Leiter's "Reconstructed" Legal Realism, Edmund Ursin

San Diego Law Review

Legal Realism has undergone a revitalization in academia. In a series of articles over the past decade and a half, and in a 2007 book, Brian Leiter has offered a "philosophical reconstruction" of Legal Realism... In the forthcoming Article, I will seek to clarify further the normative dimension of Legal Realism. I will suggest that it is a mistake to divide Legal Realists into quietist camps. This is because these terms refer to two distinct phenomena. Nonquetism in a view of the lawmaking role: judges are legislators-they make law and policy plays a role in their lawmaking. Quietism reflects a …

Programa Mínimo Para A Democracia, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Muitos consideram já que a situação que se vive não é mais de Democracia. É um veredicto perigoso e grave. Mas deve ser considerado. Independentemente dele, porém, é preciso pensar e repensar a Democracia. Pessoalmente, pensamos que ela tem, em Portugal, uma excelente base consensual: a Constituição. E não é por acaso que verdadeiros inimigos de uma Democracia plena (política, cultural, social, ecológica...) são inimigos da Constituição. É sempre salutar discutir a Democracia. É sinónimo dela... Ou que, na sua falta, há quem com ela se preocupe. Contudo, mais que isso nos parece urgente defendê-la. E o programa mínimo de …

A Flecha De Nemrod, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Reflexões sobre o impulso criativo e comunicacional e sobre a dificuldade técnica ou de expressão, assim como a propósito da in-compreensão da crítica, e do público, quando os haja.

Clima Anticonstitucional, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

É complicado defender-se intransigentemente a ética republicana e apontar o dedo a quem a evidentemente despreze, e, ao mesmo tempo, conseguir deixar intocado o prestígio das instituições, sempre mais ou menos atingidas pela repercussão de atos de titulares de cargos eventualmente menos retos. É contudo o que deve fazer-se, mas pedagogicamente explicitando a diferença entre o ser e o dever-ser. Entre a pessoa e a instituição, etc., etc. Uma das grandes virtualidades de um regime democrático é que podem vir mais facilmente à luz do dia os erros e os crimes de políticos. E podem ser criticados e punidos. Por …

Proibição Do Retrocesso E Reserva Do Possível: Princípios Constitucionais Para Tempos De Crise, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Os princípios constitucionais mais susceptíveis de ser invocados em tempos de crise (quando se presta atenção à Constituição), o da proibição do retrocesso e o da reserva do possível, precisam de ser repensados. Não atirados um contra o outro, e defendidos, ora um ora outro, ao sabor de paixões, mas compreendidos ambos como concorrendo para a defesa da Constituição em situações limite. Certamente há algo maior por detrás desses dois princípios aparentemente contraditórios.

Inconstitucionalidade Do Orçamento Do Estado. A Caminho De Uma "Constituição" Flexível Infralegal?, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Não é salutar a banalização da afirmação mediática de inconstitucionalidades e de anti-constitucionalidades. Assim como não é sintoma de regular funcionamento das instituições democráticas o silêncio e o desprezo pela Constituição. A questão da constitucionalidade do OGE pode ser um teste muito significativo à nossa saúde e cultura constitucionais.

Veterans Court: Towards The Implementation Of A Collaborative Justice Model In San Luis Obispo County, Daniel Smee

Continuing Education (CAPSTONE)

Veterans’ treatment courts represent an emerging trend across the country of collaborative justice designed to deal with criminal justice issues stemming from problems linked to military service. This approach places the veteran in VA (Veterans Affairs) treatment programs as a diversion from incarceration. There are few such courts in California (nine) largely in non-rural counties. This study investigated two rural counties, Tulare and Santa Barbara with Veterans courts to develop a model for such a court in San Luis Obispo County. Early recidivism data at the one-year point for Tulare County showed a zero percent rate of criminal behavior (12 …

El Tribunal De Los Militantes: El Control Judicial De Los Conflictos Intrapartidistas En México, Javier Martín Reyes

Javier Martín Reyes

The Party Members’ Court: Judicial Control over Intraparty Disputes in Mexico.

This paper explains how the Electoral Court of the Federal Judicial Branch (TEPJF) of Mexico, without a supporting legislation, was able to establish a direct and far reaching control over intraparty disputes such as the election of party leaders, the selection of candidates, or the punishment of party members. Following a strategic behavior approach, I will provide empirical evidence to prove that there was a negative correlation between the level of judicial control over the parties’ internal life, on the one hand, and the vulnerability of the TEPJF from …

It Ain’T Necessarily So: The Misuse Of “Human Nature” In Law And Social Policy And Bankruptcy Of The “Nature-Nurture” Debate, 21 Tex. J. Women & L. 187 (2012))., Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Debate about legal and policy reform has been haunted by a pernicious confusion about human nature: and the idea that it is a set of rigid dispositions, today generally conceived as genetic, that is manifested the same way in all circumstances. Opponents of egalitarian alternatives argue that we cannot depart far from the status quo because human nature stands in the way. Advocates of such reforms too often deny the existence of human nature because, sharing this conception, they think it would prevent changes they deem desirable. Both views rest on deep errors about what kind of thing a “nature” …

Godsdienst Als Hype, Wouter H. De Been

Wouter H. de Been

No abstract provided.

The Right To Be Fat, Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

Policy discussions on the increasing weight of Americans, portrayed as a problem of monumental and grim outlook, preoccupy public health experts, scientists, economists, and the popular media. In the legal field, however, discussions have tended to focus on whether weight should be a protected category under antidiscrimination law and on cost-benefit models for creating incentives to lose weight. This Article takes a novel approach to thinking about weight in the legal context. First, it maps the diverse ways in which the law is recruited to “the war against obesity,” thus providing an unprecedented account of what it means to be …

The Discourse Of Judging, John Brigham

John Brigham

No abstract provided.

Direct (Anti-)Democracy, Maxwell L. Stearns

Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholars, economists, and political scientists are divided on whether voter initiatives and legislative referendums tend to produce outcomes that are more (or less) majoritarian, efficient, or solicitous of minority concerns than traditional legislation. Scholars also embrace opposing views on which law-making mechanism better promotes citizen engagement, registers preference intensities, encourages compromise, and prevents outcomes masking cycling voter preferences. Despite these disagreements, commentators generally assume that the voting mechanism itself renders plebiscites more democratic than legislative lawmaking. This assumption is mistaken.

Although it might seem unimaginable that a lawmaking process that directly engages voters possesses fundamentally antidemocratic features, this Article …

Confucian Virtue Jurisprudence, Linghao Wang, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Virtue jurisprudence is an approach to legal theory that develops the implications of virtue ethics and virtue politics for the law. Recent work on virtue jurisprudence has emphasized a NeoAristotelian approach. This essay develops a virtue jurisprudence in the Confucian tradition. The title of this essay, “Confucian Virtue Jurisprudence,” reflects the central aim of our work, to build a contemporary theory of law that is both virtue-centered and that provides a contemporary reconstruction of the central ideas of the early Confucian intellectual tradition.

This essay provides a sketch of our contemporary version of Confucian virtue jurisprudence, including a view of …

Introduction: Punishment And Culpability, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Obligatory Structure Of Copyright Law: Unbundling The Wrong Of Copying, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Alexander's Genius, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

Larry Alexander is one of the most creative, penetrating, and wide-ranging legal theorists working today. This short essay, prepared as a tribute for a special issue of the APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law, aims to convey a flavor of his work by introducing, and causing some trouble for, just a few of his more heterodox and provocative positions. The principal critical target of the essay is Alexander’s contention (a contention that he has pressed both alone and with Saikrishna Prakash) that extreme partisan gerrymandering does not violate the U.S. Constitution. The most persuasive grounding for the unconstitutionality of (extreme) …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Notice-And-Comment Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Richard A. Bierschbach

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Persistence Of Proximate Cause: How Legal Doctrine Thrives On Skepticism, Jessie Allen

Articles

This Article starts with a puzzle: Why is the doctrinal approach to “proximate cause” so resilient despite longstanding criticism? Proximate cause is a particularly extreme example of doctrine that limps along despite near universal consensus that it cannot actually determine legal outcomes. Why doesn’t that widely recognized indeterminacy disable proximate cause as a decision-making device? To address this puzzle, I pick up a cue from the legal realists, a group of skeptical lawyers, law professors, and judges, who, in the 1920s and 1930s, compared legal doctrine to ritual magic. I take that comparison seriously, perhaps more seriously, and definitely in …

The Politics Of Physical Education Reform, Ari Zyskind

CMC Senior Theses

The purpose of the paper is to determine why today's youth are so physically inactive by examining the role and efforts of physical education, and the state and federal governments responsibility in supporting these programs, in fighting today's obesity epidemic by creating generations of healthy and physically active children. Research led to the determination that states have failed to maintain and improve physical education resulting in a physically inactive youth. Therefore, the nation should look to federal legislation to support state-led physical education, which this paper found to be constitutional if the enactments followed the provisions established in South Dakota …

Tax Reform DisCourse, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

Our tax system is supposed to serve the public good by fairly raising the revenue that we need to fund public expenditures — for example, the common defense, social safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare, etc. But the tax reform debate has shifted away from discussing how best to distribute the burden of these common expenditures and instead has come to focus on how tax reform can be used to spur economic growth. Especially in times of economic crisis, these two goals — equitably funding public expenditures and spurring economic growth — sound equally important and somehow …

The Paradox Of Political Power: Post-Racialism, Equal Protection, And Democracy, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Racial minorities have achieved unparalleled electoral success in recent years. Simultaneously, they have continued to rank at or near the bottom in terms of health, wealth, income, education, and the effects of the criminal justice system. Social conservatives, including those on the Supreme Court, have latched onto evidence of isolated electoral success as proof of “post-racialism,” while ignoring the evidence of continued disparities for the vast majority of people of color.

This Essay will examine the tension between the Court's conservatives' repeated calls for minorities to achieve their goals through the political process and the Supreme Court's increasingly restrictive "colorblind" …

Befriar Leken Från Ansvar? Om Bdsm, Samtycke Och Social Adekvans, Linnéa Wegerstad

Linnéa Wegerstad

Våren 2012 arrangerade Juridisk Publikation i Lund en paneldebatt på temat ”BDSM och samtycke” som jag fick förmånen att moderera. Debatten utgick från det så kallade Malmöfallet som rör åtal för misshandel i samband med BDSM-utövning. Denna artikel tar avstamp i den fråga som fick avsluta debatten, nämligen om detta uppmärksammade fall har diskuterats klart. Min ståndpunkt är att genom fallet väcktes flera principiellt viktiga frågor som bör dryftas vidare. Dessa spörsmål, som rör hur sexuella praktiker som kan utgöra straffrättsligt relevant våld hanteras i straffrätten, vill jag synliggöra genom den här artikeln. Inledningsvis ges en redogörelse för samtyckes ansvarsbefriande …

Intersektionella Analyser. Att Begreppsliggöra Ojämlikheter I Och Genom Rätten, Linnéa Wegerstad, Niklas Selberg

Niklas Selberg

Inledning till tema intersektionalitet

I inbjudan till detta temanummer skrev den svenska redaktionen att nordisk rättsvetenskaplig forskning under de senaste decennierna allt mer har uppmärksammat olika maktrelationer i förhållande till rätten, men att interaktioner mellan olika maktrelationer inte har analyserats i någon större utsträckning. Däremot har genusvetenskaplig forskning behandlat interaktioner mellan kön, klass, etnicitet, sexualitet, ålder eller funktionshinder inom vad som har kommit att kallas intersektionalitet. I det följande introducerar vi föreliggande nummers intersektionella analyser, och diskuterar det sammanhang de kan placeras i. 1980 hade Retfærd sitt första temanummer om kvinnorätt som fem år senare följdes upp av tema ’kvinderetfærd’. …

Natural Rights To Welfare, Siegfried Van Duffel

Siegfried Van Duffel

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Many in the legal academy have heard of Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness. It has been making waves. One need only attend any number of legal conferences in the past year or so, or read through the footnotes in recent law review articles. Furthermore, this book has been reviewed in journals from a number of academic fields, suggesting Alexander has provided a text with profound insights across the university and public spheres. While I will briefly talk about the book as a book, I will spend the majority of this …