Jurisprudence Commons^™

Nonmoral Theoretical Disagreement In Law, Alani Golanski

Alani Golanski

I agree with Dworkin that there is widespread theoretical disagreement in law. I hope to show, however, why this disagreement should not be seen as moral in nature. Legal philosophers have nearly always viewed the existence of theoretical disagreement in law as the indicium of moral dispute. If that is so, and if such disagreement is widespread, then this would be compelling evidence of law’s incorporation of moral standards. Thus, theoretical disagreement has posed a powerful challenge to the "positivist" approach, which claims that, for the most part, legality can be determined without resort to moral criteria. This paper draws …

Roe V. Wade: The Case That Changed Democracy, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

No abstract provided.

Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

AbstractOver thirty years have passed since the Bhopal chemical disaster began,and in that time scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR) havediscussed and debated several frameworks for improving corporate responseto social and environmental problems. However, CSR discourse rarelydelves into the fundamental architecture of legal thought that oftenbuttresses corporate dominance in the global economy. Moreover, CSRdiscourse does little to challenge the ontological and epistemologicalassumptions that form the foundation for modern economics and the role ofcorporations in the world.I explore methods of transforming CSR by employing the thought ofMohandas Gandhi. I pay particular attention to Gandhi’s critique ofindustrialization and principle of swadeshi (self-sufficiency) …

Rights Without Remedies, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

The Court should modify the standing doctrine in some contexts for the same reason that, in Shelby County, it invalidated two provisions of the Voting Rights Act: the legislature cannot and will not fix the problem. No legal doctrine should be applied without examining whether elected representatives are capable of remedying specific harms and accounting for the relative unfairness in democratic governance. When the traditional standing requirements are rigidly applied without considering these factors, the Court undermines the separation of powers and prevents sound judicial decision-making. In essence, rigid application of the standing doctrine sends a message to litigants …

The New Affirmative Action After Fisher V. University Of Texas: Defining Educational Diversity Through The Sixth Amendment's Cross-Section Requirement, Adam Lamparello, Cynthia Swann

Adam Lamparello

Skin color and diversity are not synonymous, and race provides no basis upon which to stereotype individuals or groups, regardless of whether the reasons are malevolent or benign.

Affirmative action policies in higher education should focus on the things that individuals have overcome, not the traits that individuals—and groups—cannot change. Currently, the opposite is true, as such policies typically equate racial diversity with educational diversity, thereby precluding consideration of factors such as family and personal background, life experience, and the overcoming of adversity that would result in true educational diversity. This is not to say that race is irrelevant, …

Democracy And Torture, Patrick A. Maurer

Patrick A Maurer

September 11th spawned an era of political changes to fundamental rights. The focus of this discussion is to highlight Guantanamo Bay torture incidents. This analysis will explore the usages of torture from a legal standpoint in the United States.

The Intelligibility Of Extralegal State Action: A General Lesson For Debates On Public Emergencies And Legality, François Tanguay-Renaud

François Tanguay-Renaud

Some legal theorists deny that states can conceivably act extralegally in the sense of acting contrary to domestic law. This position finds its most robust articulation in the writings of Hans Kelsen and has more recently been taken up by David Dyzenhaus in the context of his work on emergencies and legality. This paper seeks to demystify their arguments and ultimately contend that we can intelligibly speak of the state as a legal wrongdoer or a legally unauthorized actor.

The Constitutional Rhetoric Of White Innocence

Cecil J. Hunt II

This article discusses the Supreme Court’s use of the rhetoric of white innocence in deciding racially inflected claims of constitutional shelter. It argues that the Court’s use of this rhetoric reveals that it has adopted a distinctly white-centered-perspective which reveals only a one-sided view of racial reality and thus distorts its ability to accurately appreciate the true nature of racial reality in contemporary America. This article examines the Court’s habit of consistently choosing a white-centered-perspective in constitutional race cases by looking at the Court’s use of the rhetoric of white innocence first in the context of the Court’s concern with …

Obergefell V. Hodges: How The Supreme Court Should Have Ruled, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

In Obergefell, et al. v. Hodges, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion legalizing same-sex marriage was based on “the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie,” and “indefensible as a matter of constitutional law.” Kennedy’s opinion was comprised largely of philosophical ramblings about liberty that have neither a constitutional foundation nor any conceptual limitation. The fictional opinion below arrives at the same conclusion, but the reasoning is based on equal protection rather than due process principles. The majority opinion holds that same-sex marriage bans violate the Equal Protection Clause because they: (1) discriminate on the basis of gender; (2) promote gender-based stereotypes; and …

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 …

The Power Of The Body: Analyzing The Corporeal Logic Of Law And Social Change In The Arab Spring, Zeina Jallad, Zeina Jallad

Zeina Jallad

The Power of the Body:

Analyzing the Logic of Law and Social Change in the Arab Spring

Abstract:

Under conditions of extreme social and political injustice - when human rights are under the most threat - rational arguments rooted in the language of human rights are often unlikely to spur reform or to ensure government adherence to citizens’ rights. When those entrusted with securing human dignity, rights, and freedoms fail to do so, and when other actors—such as human rights activists, international institutions, and social movements—fail to engage the levers of power to eliminate injustice, then oppressed and even quotidian …

The High Price Of Poverty: A Study Of How The Majority Of Current Court System Procedures For Collecting Court Costs And Fees, As Well As Fines, Have Failed To Adhere To Established Precedent And The Constitutional Guarantees They Advocate., Trevor J. Calligan

Trevor J Calligan

No abstract provided.

The Eu's Human Rights Obligations Towards Distant Strangers, Aravind Ganesh

Aravind Ganesh

The EU has perfect human rights obligations towards distant strangers. My argument has two limbs: Firstly, in numerous policy areas, the EU asserts jurisdiction via ‘territorial extension’, which combines territorially limited enforcement jurisdiction with a claim of geographically unbounded prescriptive jurisdiction. Doctrinally, this strongly resembles the Lotus principle, and viewed analytically, amounts to a claim not just of power but of political authority. Thus, the EU creates not just factual effects, but legal effects abroad. Secondly, assertions of political authority, even if only de facto, give rise to perfect human rights obligations. I illustrate this by reference to the Strasbourg …

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 …

Justice Kennedy's Decision In Obergefell: A Sad Day For The Judiciary, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage under the Equal Protection Clause, not under Justice Kennedy’s self-serving and ever-changing definition of liberty. The long-term impact of Kennedy’s decision will be to the Court’s institutional legitimacy. Chief Justice Roberts emphasized that the legitimacy of this Court ultimately rests “upon the respect accorded to its judgments,” which is based on the perception—and reality—that we exercise humility and restraint in deciding cases according to the Constitution and law.” Justice Kennedy’s decision eschewed these values, giving the Court the power to discover “new dimensions of freedom,” and to ensure that all citizens, through …

Cleaning The Muck Of Ages From The Windows Into The Soul Of Income Tax, John Passant

John Passant

The aim of this paper is to provide readers with an insight into Marx’s methods as a first step to understanding income tax more generally but with specific reference to Australia’s income tax system. I do this by introducing readers to the ideas about the totality that is capitalism, appearance and form, and the dialectic in Marx’s hands. This will involve looking at income tax as part of the bigger picture of capitalism, and understanding that all things are related and changes in one produce changes in all. Appearances can be deceptive and we need to delve below the surface …

Fundamental Unenumerated Rights Under The Ninth Amendment And Privileges Or Immunities Clause, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

The failure to link the Ninth Amendment and Privileges or Immunities Clause for the purpose of creating unenumerated fundamental rights has been a persistent but rarely discussed aspect of the Court’s jurisprudence. That should change. There need not be an ongoing tension between the Court’s counter-majoritarian role and the authority of states to govern through the democratic process. If the Constitution’s text gives the Court a solid foundation upon which to recognize new rights and thereby create a more just society, then the exercise of that power is fundamentally democratic. The Ninth Amendment and Privileges or Immunities Clause provides that …

Why Chief Justice Roy Moore And The Alabama Supreme Court Just Made The Best Case For Same-Sex Marriage, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

The Alabama Court of the Judiciary should remove Roy Moore from the Supreme Court of Alabama for a second and final time. Over ten years after being ousted from the Alabama Supreme Court, Chief Justice Moore is embroiled in yet another controversy that involves disregarding the federal courts and creating chaos in the legal system. In fact, Moore recently stated that he would ignore the Supremacy Clause and not respect a U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating same-sex marriage bans. That statement brings back memories of Governor Wallace’s infamous stand at the schoolhouse door. At least Wallace had a change of …

A Government Of Laws Not Of Precedents 1776-1876: The Google Challenge To Common Law Myth, James Maxeiner

James R Maxeiner

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States is a common law country of precedents where, until the 20th century (the “Age of Statutes”), statutes had little role. Digitization by Google and others of previously hard to find legal works of the 19th century challenges this common law myth. At the Centennial in 1876 Americans celebrated that “The great fact in the progress of American jurisprudence … is its tendency towards organic statute law and towards the systematizing of law; in other words, towards written constitutions and codification.” This article tests the claim of the Centennial Writers of 1876 and finds …

The Law's Duty To Promote The Kinship System: Implications For Assisted Reproductive Techniques And For Proposed Redefinitions Of Familial Relations, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

Kinship relations, in our society and in most, are organized systematically. That is to say, each kinship connection is constructed, conducted, and considered, not in isolation but by reference to the others. Your uncle is your father’s brother, in just about the same way as your own sibling is your brother and your children are one another’s brothers and sisters. Your spouse is the mother or father of your children, in just about the same way as your mother and father are your parents and the parents of your siblings. One’s beliefs and expectations about what each kinship relationship entails …

The Impossibility Of A Prescriptive Paretian, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Most normatively oriented economists appear to be “welfarist” and Paretian to one degree or another: They deem responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the Pareto criteria, to be a desirable attribute of any social welfare function. I show that no strictly “welfarist” or Paretian social welfare function can be normatively prescriptive. Economists who prescribe must embrace at least one value apart from or additional to “welfarism” and Paretianism, and in fact will do best to dispense with Pareto entirely.

The Case For Defamatory Opinion, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

The law should not allow revenge porn in the name of the First Amendment, just as it should not allow private citizens to purchase AK-47’s in the name of the Second Amendment. Citizens can abuse fundamental rights just as governments can infringe them. At some point, courts have to acknowledge that the First Amendment was not intended to give people a fundamental right to trash an individual’s reputation while seeking cover under the self-serving blanket of opinion and taste. It is one thing to stroll into a courthouse with a shirt that says Fuck the Draft, but quite another to …

Nigger Manifesto: Ideological And Intellectual Discrimination Inside The Academy, Ellis Washington

Ellis Washington

Draft – 22 March 2014

Nigger Manifesto

Ideological Racism inside the American Academy

By Ellis Washington, J.D.

Abstract

I was born for War. For over 30 years I have worked indefatigably, I have labored assiduously to build a relevant resume; a unique curriculum vitae as an iconoclastic law scholar zealous for natural law, natural rights, and the original intent of the constitutional Framers—a Black conservative intellectual born in the ghettos of Detroit, abandoned by his father at 18 months, who came of age during the Detroit Race Riots of 1967… an American original. My task, to expressly transcend the ubiquitous …

It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Living constitutionalism may achieve “good” results, but with each Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore, the Constitution’s vision takes more shallow breaths, and democracy fades into elitism’s shadow. The debate over constitutional interpretation is, in many ways, reducible to this question: if a particular outcome is desirable, and the Constitution’s text is silent or ambiguous, should the United States Supreme Court (or any court) disregard constitutional constraints to achieve that outcome? If the answer is yes, nine unelected judges have the power to choose outcomes that are desirable. If the answer is no, then the focus must be on …

It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Living constitutionalism may achieve “good” results, but with each Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore, the Constitution’s vision takes more shallow breaths, and democracy fades into elitism’s shadow. The debate over constitutional interpretation is, in many ways, reducible to this question: if a particular outcome is desirable, and the Constitution’s text is silent or ambiguous, should the United States Supreme Court (or any court) disregard constitutional constraints to achieve that outcome? If the answer is yes, nine unelected judges have the power to choose outcomes that are desirable. If the answer is no, then the focus must be on …

The Presentment Clause Meets The Suspension Power: The Affordable Care Act’S Long And Winding Road To Implementation, Mitchell Widener

Mitchell Widener

The presentment clause MEETs the Suspension Power: The Affordable Care Act’s Long and Winding Road to Implementation

Mitchell J. Widener

Abstract

To enact a law, the Presentment Clause of the Constitution mandates that both Houses of Congress present a bill to the President who either signs it into law or vetoes it. The Founders included this provision to prevent presidents from emulating King James II, who would routinely suspend Parliament’s laws to favor political constituents. Additionally, the Presentment Clause served to enhance the separation-of-powers principle implied in the Constitution.

Within the past year, President Obama has suspended multiple portions of …

Cross, Crucifix, Culture: An Approach To The Constitutional Meaning Of Confessional Symbols, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Pasquale Annicchino

Frederick Mark Gedicks

In the United States and Europe the constitutionality of government displays of confessional symbols depends on whether the symbols also have nonconfessional secular meaning (in the U.S.) or whether the confessional meaning is somehow absent (in Europe). Yet both the United States Supreme Court (USSCt) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) lack a workable approach to determining whether secular meaning is present or confessional meaning absent. The problem is that the government can nearly always articulate a possible secular meaning for the confessional symbols that it uses, or argue that the confessional meaning is passive and ineffective. What …

Tell Us A Story, But Don't Make It A Good One: Resolving The Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories And Federal Rule Of Evidence 403, Cathren Page

Cathren Page

Abstract: Tell Us a Story, But Don’t Make It A Good One: Resolving the Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories and Federal Rule of Evidence 403 by Cathren Koehlert-Page Courts need to reword their opinions regarding Rule 403 to address the tension between the advice to tell an emotionally evocative story at trial and the notion that evidence can be excluded if it is too emotional. In the murder mystery Mystic River, Dave Boyle is kidnapped in the beginning. The audience feels empathy for Dave who as an adult becomes one of the main suspects in the murder of his friend Jimmy’s …

Behavioral International Law, Tomer Broude

Tomer Broude

Economic analysis and rational choice have in the last decade made significant inroads into the study of international law and institutions, relying upon standard assumptions of perfect rationality of states and decision-makers. This approach is inadequate, both empirically and in its tendency towards outdated formulations of political theory. This article presents an alternative behavioral approach that provides new hypotheses addressing problems in international law while introducing empirically grounded concepts of real, observed rationality. First, I address methodological objections to behavioral analysis of international law: the focus of behavioral research on the individual; the empirical foundations of behavioral economics; and behavioral …