Jurisprudence Commons^™

Judges As Superheroes: The Danger Of Confusing Constitutional Decisions With Cosmic Battles, H. Jefferson Powell

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Dorothy Moser Medlin Papers - Accession 1049, Dorothy Moser Medlin

Manuscript Collection

(The Dorothy Moser Medlin Papers are currently in processing.)

This collection contains most of the records of Dorothy Medlin’s work and correspondence and also includes reference materials, notes, microfilm, photographic negatives related both to her professional and personal life. Additions include a FLES Handbook, co-authored by Dorothy Medlin and a decorative mirror belonging to Dorothy Medlin.

Major series in this collection include: some original 18th century writings and ephemera and primary source material of André Morellet, extensive collection of secondary material on André Morellet's writings and translations, Winthrop related files, literary manuscripts and notes by Dorothy Medlin (1966-2011), copies …

La Personalidad Del Embrión: La Filosofía Ante Los Límites De La Imaginación, Richard Stith

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Tragedy Of Justice Scalia, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Beyond Punks In Empty Chairs: An Imaginary Conversation With Clint Eastwood’S Dirty Harry—Toward Peace Through Spiritual Justice, Mark L. Jones

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This Article is based on a presentation at the 2012 conference on “Struggles for Recognition: Individuals, Peoples, and States” co-sponsored by Mercer University, the Concerned Philosophers for Peace, and the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and it seeks to help combat our human tendency to demonize the Other and thus to contribute in some small way to the reduction of unnecessary conflict and violence. The discussion takes the form of a conversation in a bar between four imagined protagonists, who have participated in the conference, and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, who is having a bad day questioning his …

Freedom, Legality, And The Rule Of Law, John A. Bruegger

John A Bruegger

There are numerous interactions between the rule of law and the concept of freedom, looking at Fuller’s eight principles of legality, the positive and negative theories of liberty, coercive and empowering laws, and the formal and substantive rules of law. Adherence to the rules of formal legality promote freedom by creating stability and predictability in the law, on which the people can then rely to plan their behaviors around the law – this is freedom under the law. Coercive laws can actually promote negative liberty up to pulling people out of a Hobbesian state of nature, and then thereafter can …

Hegelian Dialectical Analysis Of United States Election Laws, Charles E. A. Lincoln Iv

Charles E. A. Lincoln IV

This Article uses the dialectical ideas of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1833) in application to the progression of United States voting laws since the founding. This analysis can be used to interpret past progression of voting rights in the US as well as a provoking way to predict the future trends in US voting rights. First, Hegel’s dialectical method is established as a major premise. Second, the general accepted history of United States voting laws from the 1770s to the current day is laid out as a minor premise. Third, the major premise of Hegel’s dialectical method weaves …

Facing The Unborn, Richard Stith

Richard Stith

Modern science tells us of the identity of each individual human being from conception to adulthood, but our imagination does not fully cooperate. It is difficult to look at a photograph of a zygote and see a fellow human being. There are, however, two strong ways to better align our knowledge and our intuition. One is to look backward in the developmental process. It is easy to grasp that our fellow human beings all used to be zygotes. A second method is now becoming available. DNA can be used to reveal the future face and even the eyes of each …

Do We Know How To Punish?, Benjamin L. Apt

Benjamin L. Apt

A number of current theories attempt to explain the purpose and need for criminal punishment. All of them depend on some sort of normative basis in justifying why the state may penalize people found guilty of crimes. Yet each of these theories lacks an epistemological foundation; none of them explains how we can know what form punishments should take. The article analyses the epistemological gaps in the predominant theories of punishment: retributivism, including limited-retributivism; and consequentialism in its various versions, ranging from deterrence to the reparative theories such as restorative justice and rehabilitation. It demonstrates that the common putative epistemological …

Book Review: Julie Dickson And Pavlos Eleftheriadis, Philosophical Foundations Of European Union Law, Arthur Dyevre

Arthur Dyevre

Change in the legal academy tends to be spurred by changes in the legal reality itself rather than by methodological and conceptual innovation emerging from within the discipline. In that sense, legal developments in the real world habitually seem to be ahead of the scholarship. A new phenomenon emerges, which legal scholars then try to apprehend via the established tools and categories of legal thought, soon to discover that these fail to capture the essence of the new reality. The first to experience the changed legal world are usually the scholars who are closest to practice; those who are intimate …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Bewitched By Language: Wittgenstein And The Practice Of Law, Bruce A. Markell

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Due Process In The American Identity, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

In the last four years, public opinion polls have found an increasingly high level of public support for the methods applied in the war on terror. A significant majority of the population now expresses support for targeted killing through drone strikes and for the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. While there are undoubtedly many dynamics at play in the public's changing views of national security and due process, this Article examines one piece of the puzzle: how the concept of due process fits within the structure of the American identity.

This Article examines due process and national …

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 …

A Planet By Any Other Name…, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

Michigan Law Review

In case you haven't heard, Pluto isn't a planet anymore (and maybe it never was). In grade school, we all memorized the planets, giving little thought to what made something a planet besides revolving around the Sun and being part of some familiar mnemonic. However, scientific discoveries about Pluto and other parts of space led scientists to question Pluto's planetary status and ultimately, to strip Pluto of its standing among the planets. This leads to the inevitable question-what is a planet?-which turns out to be a more difficult and fascinating question than one might think. The Pluto Files grapples with …

Filosofia Antropológica?, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Muito do que se passa nas nossas sociedades, actualmente, depende de termos ou não termos um olhar filosófico, e de termos ou não termos a capacidade perspectivista do antropólogo. O presente artigo chama a atenção para a necessidade de a Filosofia, tentando furtar-se à tirania do Logos na versão dos ares "grão senhores", de que falava Kant, procure o olhar de "terceiro", e o despojamento de recursos da Antropologia cultural.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …

At War With The Eclectics: Mapping Pragmatism In Contemporary Legal Analysis, Justin Desautels-Stein

ExpressO

This article has two primary goals. The first is descriptive, and seeks to respond to what appears to be an increasing degree of confusion over the word “pragmatism,” especially as it is used in a good deal of legal literature. This descriptive aim begins by separating out three general categories of pragmatism: (1) the so-called “everyday” pragmatism familiar to the American vernacular, (2) the classical philosophy of the early pragmatist authors like William James and John Dewey, and (3) pragmatism as understood in the context of law. The majority of the article is subsequently concerned with exploring this last category, …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Questioning Attitude: Questions About Derrida, Martin J. Stone

Articles

No abstract provided.

A Contractarian Argument Against The Death Penalty, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

All Faculty Scholarship

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Popular Constitutionalism And The Rule Of Recognition: Whose Practices Ground U.S. Law?, Matthew D. Adler

All Faculty Scholarship

The law within each legal system is a function of the practices of some social group. In short, law is a kind of socially grounded norm. H.L.A Hart famously developed this view in his book, The Concept of Law, by arguing that law derives from a social rule, the so-called “rule of recognition.” But the proposition that social facts play a foundational role in producing law is a point of consensus for all modern jurisprudents in the Anglo-American tradition: not just Hart and his followers in the positivist school, most prominently Joseph Raz and Jules Coleman, but also the anti-positivist …

A Chilling Of Discourse, David R. Barnhizer

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

I argue that the key consequence of the collectives of multicultural, postmodernists, radical feminists, critical race activists, sexuality advocates and others working for radical change is not only the politicization of knowledge in what is after all a realm of politics we call law, but the incoherence of knowledge and the loss of the quality and integrity of our pursuit of knowledge through scholarship. One result is that much of the scholarship and teaching found in the humane and political or noncumulative disciplines such as law are forms of self-interested propaganda in which honesty is muted or excluded and truth-seeking …

Moralizing In Public, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Jurisprudential Foundation Of Law, Especially International Law: The Basis For True Progess & Reform, Morse Tan

ExpressO

This essay makes a unique case for the existence of justice, higher law and virtue by drawing on classic thinkers from both East and West. It asserts that no better jurisprudential foundation can be found. The need for this foundation emerges more clearly in the international context, but it applies to all legal systems.

After introducing the topic, explaining the relevance of this jurisprudence, responding to objections, and critiquing competing approaches, this essay presents pertinent sources from the East. Well-regarded in the East but less known to the West, writers such as Mencius, Tao, Hsuntze, and the Neo Confucianists from …

The Jurisprudential Foundation Of Law, Especially International Law: The Basis For True Progress & Reform, Morse Tan

ExpressO

This essay makes a unique case for the existence of justice, higher law and virtue by drawing on classic thinkers from both East and West. It asserts that no better jurisprudential foundation can be found. The need for this foundation emerges more clearly in the international context, but it applies to all legal systems.

After introducing the topic, explaining the relevance of this jurisprudence, responding to objections, and critiquing competing approaches, this essay presents pertinent sources from the East. Well-regarded in the East but less known to the West, writers such as Mencius, Tao, Hsuntze, and the Neo Confucianists from …