Jurisprudence Commons^™

Truth And Politics: A Symposium On Peter Simpson's Political Illiberalism: A Defense Of Freedom., Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

There is no more important question in thinking about life-and actually living-in political community than whether it is to be permeated by, and purposefully oriented around, the main truths about human flourishing. It is at least paradoxical that, precisely when the state and its law and political life are shaping people's lives more and more, the professed roots of all this influence are growing thinner, more shallow. Lawmakers who profess and in many cases even think they should be "neutral" about values are more involved with how persons' lives go than, perhaps, ever before.

Of course, any community which has …

Law As Fact And As Reason For Action: A Response To Robert Alexy On Law's 'Ideal Dimension', John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Robert Alexy’s 2013 Natural Law Lecture, published in vol. 58 of the American Journal of Jurisprudence, presents law as having two dimensions, ideal and real, and thus a dual nature, to be elucidated by a conceptual analysis distinguishing between the observer’s and the participant’s perspective. It argues on this basis for a “non-positivist” theory of law that is “inclusive” in that it classifies some unjust laws as laws, but not all (and is thus not “super-inclusive”); it rejects the “exclusive non-positivism” that would treat every injustice in a law’s making or content as excluding it from the class of valid …

Coexisting Normative Orders? Yes, But No, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

There are indeed two normative orders. But not "coexisting" in the sense that French law coexists with English law, and English law with international law, and all of them with canon law. No, the relation between the normative orders is much more intimate than "coexistence" (in the focal sense of that term). The one is a necessary source of the full validity, and strategically important parts, of the other, and is a real but much less straightforward source (by determinatio) of all its other legitimate parts; and is also an ever-present source of legitimate, and in extreme cases delegitimising criticism …

Natural Law Theory: Its Past And Its Present, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

The past in which theory of this kind had its origins is notably similar to the present. For this is theory-practical theory-which articulates a critique of critiques, and the critiques it criticizes, rejects and replaces have much in common whether one looks at them in their fifth century B.C. Hellenic (Sophistic) or their modem (Enlightenment, Nietzschean or postmodern) forms.

Justice For Hedgehogs, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

Professor Dworkin begins this complex and ambitious book with a chapter called "Baedeker" after the nineteenth century guidebooks. In it, he gives an overview of his project, which is to show "the unity of value." The "title refers to a line by an ancient Greek poet, Archilochus, that Isaiah Berlin made famous for us. The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Value is one big thing" (1).

He articulates his overarching value in terms of human dignity: "[W]e each have a sovereign ethical responsibility to make something of value of our own lives, as a …

Equality And Differences, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This revised and annotated version of the H.L.A. Hart Memorial lecture in the University of Oxford in June 2011 has some significant differences in coverage from the essay of the same title published in the American Journal of Jurisprudence 56 (2011) 17-44, including a brief discussion of Waldron’s treatment of basic equality and Cohen’s “luck-egalitarianism”. The object of the lecture is to establish the grounds of basic human equality, and to indicate how neglect of non-basic inequalities and of preconditions for sustainable common good tends to ensure that legal measures promoting equality rights and condemning ‘discrimination’ yield serious injustices (violations …

A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy In A Democratic Age, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

Professor Markovits has given us in A Modern Legal Ethics a profound, provocative, and closely argued philosophical treatment of his subject. He begins by asserting "that adversary advocates commonly do, and indeed are often required to do, things in their professional capacities, which, if done by ordinary people in ordinary circumstances, would be straightforwardly immoral" (1). Noting that lawyers commonly take issue with such a claim, he sets out to prove it in a chapter called "The Lawyerly Vices," divided into two sections: "Lawyers Lie," and "Lawyers Cheat." Against these, he sets the "lawyerly virtues" of "professional detachment" and "fidelity."

The Interpretation Game, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, embarking on a powerful critique of John Stuart Mill, says: "In stating the grounds of one's dissent from wide-spread and influential opinions it is absolutely necessary to take some definite statement of those opinions as a starting point, and it is natural to take the ablest, the most reasonable, and the clearest." This is my justification for reviewing the present work. My disagreement with it is broad and deep, but, unlike many proponents of similar views, Professor Benson writes clearly and without jargon, and he brings to his work the experience of a working lawyer and …

Good Of Marriage And The Morality Of Sexual Relations, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This article examines the morality of sexual relations, referencing the views of many other scholars on the subject including Aquinas, Grisez, Noonan, and Koppelman.

Rights Talk: The Impoverishment Of Political Discourse And A Nation Under Lawyers (Book Review), Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

In these two lively, elegant, and lucid books, Mary Ann Glendon points to an increasing bloody-mindedness in our society, and argues persuasively that law and lawyers are in great part to blame for it. It seems that we are constantly pelting each other with non-negotiable demands backed by the threat of litigation, and that our legal profession has become too venal or too lacking in moral fiber to tell us to lighten up. The first part of the argument is presented in Rights Talk, the second in A Nation Under Lawyers. Both parts are presented with passion, charity, and a …

Response To Hittnger, Gerard V. Bradley

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No abstract provided.

Allocating Risks And Suffering: Some Hidden Traps, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

The economic analysis of which Adam Smith is a principal founder is helpful in practical reasoning about problems of justice precisely insofar as it systematically calls attention to the side-effects of individual choices and actions and behavior. Still, it would be a mistake to conclude that we need only a more adequate account of the benefits and burdens up for distribution or allocation by those responsible for the common good or general fate. We need also to bear in mind what Smith did not forget and what economics does not comprehend, the requirements of commutative justice. To see this, we …

Natural Law And Justice (Book Review), Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

Professor Weinreb's aim in this thoughtful and thought-provoking book is a drastic overhaul of the ongoing debate about natural law. Natural law as he sees it is not a mere theory about the relation of law and morality: it is a comprehensive theory about the place of human beings in the cosmos. As such, it has a profound bearing on legal questions, but not in the way its current proponents have in mind. By recasting the fundamental question of natural law, Weinreb sheds light on many subsidiary questions of legal theory. This is a difficult book, because it is closely …

Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Book Review), Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Book review of: Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, by Jerome Bruner; Time, Narrative, and History, by David Carr; Law, Freedom, and Story: The Role of Narrative in Therapy, Society, and Faith, by John C. Hoffman; and Narrative and Morality, by Paul Nelson.

On Reason And Authority In Law's Empire, John M. Finnis

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Law's Empire will shape jurisprudence by its admirably resourceful attention to understanding a community's law "internally". It promotes reflective understanding of the practical argumentation constitutive of the attitude(s) in which that law subsists. But the book neglects some of practical understanding's resources of political and moral theory, and overestimates practical reasoning's power to identify options as the best and the right)

The Unity Of Law & Morality: A Refutation Of Legal Positivism (Book Review), John H. Robinson

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Professor Robinson provides a critique of M.J. Detmold’s book, The Unity of Law & Mortality: A Refutation of Legal Positivism. He argues that the book is flawed for failure to present his adversary’s position and for failure to explain the reasons for embracing an ontological perspective towards all ethics. Despite its ambition, the argument does not get off the ground.

On "The Critical Legal Studies Movement", John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

"The present study critically examines the account of legal thought developed in Roberto Unger's very long article, ""The Critical Legal Studies Movement"" (1983), and tests it against Unger's own account of certain ""exemplary"" difficulties in the Anglo-American law of Contract. These scrutinies reveal that Unger's account fundamentally misunderstands the ways of legal thought, and disguises its misunderstanding behind equivocations on ""(in)determinate"" and ""(un)justified."""

Truthfulness And Tragedy (Book Review), Thomas L. Shaffer

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This is the third book in which Professor Stanley Hauerwas has developed his "story" approach to Christian ethics. It is a collection of essays, almost all of which appeared in periodicals, written while he was developing his theory more systematically in Vision and Virtue (1974), and in Character and the Christian Life (1975). One of the chapters here, on suicide and euthanasia, was written with Dr. Richard Bondi; two others, on story theology and on Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich, were written with Father David B. Burrell. The essays are arranged so that they explain and defend Hauerwas' thought …

Comparative Judicial Behavior (Book Review), Donald P. Kommers

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This book consists of several cross-cultural and exploratory studies of judicial decision-making, and is one of the first to appear in the developing field of comparative judicial politics. A product of many months of collaboration between American and Asian scholars at the East-West Center, University of Hawaii, it deals chiefly with decision-making processes in the high courts of Japan, Hawaii, India, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines. The Asian contributors are mainly law teachers with a strong interest in the sociology of law; the American scholars are mainly teachers of political science whose special interest is the study of judicial behavior. …

Developments In Judicial Jurisprudence, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

The purpose of this Comment is to explore briefly the fundamentals of what Prof. H. L. A. Hart has called "the contribution offered by the judges to the jurisprudence of our day", and to indicate in outline the disparity between this contribution and those of the most recent academic writings.