Jurisprudence Commons^™

Finding Lost & Found: Designer’S Notes From The Process Of Creating A Jewish Game For Learning, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article provides context for and examines aspects of the design process of a game for learning. Lost & Found (2017a, 2017b) is a tabletop-to-mobile game series designed to teach medieval religious legal systems, beginning with Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (1180), a cornerstone work of Jewish legal rabbinic literature. Through design narratives, the article demonstrates the complex design decisions faced by the team as they balance the needs of player engagement with learning goals. In the process the designers confront challenges in developing winstates and in working with complex resource management. The article provides insight into the pathways the team …

The Commercialisation Of Equity, Man Yip, James Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper analyses the jurisprudence on the relevance of the commercial context to principles of the law of equity and trusts. We criticise recent UK Supreme Court decisions in the area (chiefly Williams v Central Bank of Nigeria, FHR European Ventures v Cedar Capital Partners and AIB Group v Mark Redler & Co) and identify a trend of the 'commercialisation' of the issues. The cases are placed in comparative context and it is argued that there is an unsatisfactory pattern of judicial reasoning, exhibiting a preference for some degree of unarticulated flexibility in commercial adjudication. But the price of that …

The Possibility Of Naturalistic Jurisprudence: Legal Positivism And Natural Law Theory Revisited, Dan Priel

Articles & Book Chapters

Contemporary legal philosophy is predominantly anti-naturalistic. This is true of natural law theory, but also, more surprisingly, of legal positivism. Several prominent legal philosophers have in fact argued that the kind of questions that legal philosophers are interested in cannot be naturalized, such that a naturalistic legal philosophy is something of a contradiction in terms. Against the dominant view I argue that there are arguable naturalistic versions of both legal positivism and natural law. Much of the essay is dedicated to showing that such views are possible: I identify naturalistic versions of a “natural law” view, a “positivist” view, as …

Introduction: Perceived Legitimacy And The State Judiciary, G. Alexander Nunn

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Nunn provides an introduction for the Symposium: The Least Understood Branch: The Demands and Challenges of the State Judiciary.

International Investment Law Through The Lens Of Global Justice, Steven Ratner

Law & Economics Working Papers

The last decade has witnessed a series of criticisms from states, NGOs, and scholars of international investment law’s rules and procedures. Running in parallel, and for a longer period, political philosophers have developed theories about what would constitute a just international economic order. Yet international law and philosophy have not directly engaged with one another regarding the justice of international investment law. This article attempts to breach that gap by analyzing the key critiques of investment law from the perspective of theories of global justice. Philosophical approaches are useful for appraising investment law because they offer a rigorous framework for …

The Substitute And Complement Theories Of Judicial Review, David Landau

Scholarly Publications

Constitutional theory has hypothesized two distinct and contradictory ways in which judicial review may interact with external political and social support. One line of scholarship has argued that judicial review and external support are substitutes. Thus, "political safeguard" theorists of American federalism and the separation of powers argue that these constitutional values are enforced through the political branches, making judicial review unnecessary. However, a separate line of work, mostly composed of social scientists examining rights issues, argues that the relationship between courts and outside support is complementary-judges are unlikely to succeed in their projects unless they have sufficient assistance from …

The Case Against Oral Argument: The Effects Of Confirmation Bias On The Outcome Of Selected Cases In The Seventh Circuit Court Of Appeals, Christine M. Venter

Journal Articles

Scholars have long been divided over the role, function, and significance, if any, of oral argument in judicial decision-making.' Federal courts seem similarly divided, as some circuits routinely grant oral argument in almost every case, while others grant oral argument in only a small fraction of appeals. This divide should not be dismissed as merely an idiosyncratic debate or as a response to excessive workload, particularly when one considers that approximately 53,000 appeals were filed in federal courts of appeals in the year ending September 30, 2016.2 Since the Supreme Court grants certiorari in only approximately eighty cases each year, …

The Case Against Physician-Assisted Suicide And Voluntary Active Euthanasia: A Jurisprudential Consideration, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Twenty years after the Advance Medical DirectiveAct came into force in Singapore, the issue of the legalisation ofphysician-assisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia remains live. Thisarticle examines the case for legalisation, replying to the points raised inthe article by Toh Puay San and Stanley Yeo, “Decriminalisingphysician-assisted suicide in Singapore” (2010) 22 SAcLJ 379–412, which hadincluded draft legislation in its proposal. It critically discusses thetheoretical underpinnings of such legalisation and argues that the contentionof the authors that the benefits of allowing terminally-ill patients the optionof physician-assisted suicide far outweigh the harms is not supported. Afortiori, voluntary active euthanasia should not be …

Rehabilitation And Reintegration Of Genocide Ex-Prisoners: Understanding The Correctional Role Of Prisons In Rwanda, Lulu Abdun

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

After the Genocide Against the Tutsi in 1994, over 120,000 people were imprisoned in Rwanda for the perpetration of genocide. Twenty-three years after the Genocide, numerous genocide ex-prisoners have been released. Throughout their prison time and after their release, rehabilitation and reintegration programming has been available. This paper looks at the rehabilitation and reintegration programming available to genocide ex-prisoners, the success and challenges they currently face or have previously faced, and recommendations for reforms for the future prison/rehabilitation/reintegration process. This paper also examines the correctional role of prisons in Rwanda and how that contributes to successful reintegration. From interviewing genocide …

Philosophical Legal Ethics: An Affectionate History, David Luban, W. Bradley Wendel

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The modern subject of theoretical legal ethics began in the 1970s. This brief history distinguishes two waves of theoretical writing on legal ethics. The “First Wave” connects the subject to moral philosophy and focuses on conflicts between ordinary morality and lawyers’ role morality, while the “Second Wave” focuses instead on the role legal representation plays in maintaining and fostering a pluralist democracy. We trace the emergence of the First Wave to the larger social movements of the 1960s and 1970s; in the conclusion, we speculate about possible directions for a Third Wave of theoretical legal ethics, based in behavioral ethics, …

For Legal Principles, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

Most legal thinkers believe that legal rules and legal principles are meaningfully distinguished. Many jurists may have no very precise distinction in mind, and those who do might not all agree. But it is widely believed that legal norms come in different logical types, and that one difference is reasonably well captured by a nomenclature that distinguishes “rules” from “principles.” Larry Alexander is the foremost challenger to this bit of legal-theoretic orthodoxy. In several articles, but especially in “Against Legal Principles,” an influential article co-authored with Ken Kress two decades ago, Alexander has argued that legal principles cannot exist.

In …

The Contribution Of The Special Court For Sierra Leone To The Law On Criminal Responsibility Of Children In International Criminal Law, Ana Paula Podcameni

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The revision of laws and the application of culpability to those most responsible for serious humanitarian law violations has functioned as a necessary condition for achieving peace in most post-war societies. However, there is an embarrassing silence when it comes to addressing the question of whether children are to be subjected to the principle of individual criminal responsibility. As morally controversial as it is, the question remains fundamental. Unfortunately, children have been involved in armed conflicts, as victims primarily, but not exclusively. Children are among those accused of having committed brutal and terrible international crimes in times of armed conflict …

Rethinking Criminal Contempt, John A.E. Pottow, Jason S. Levin

Articles

It is of course too early to tell whether we are in a new era of bankruptcy judge (dis)respectability. Only time will tell. But this Article performs a specific case study, on one discrete area of bankruptcy court authority, based upon a particular assumption in that regard. The assumption is this: certain high-salience judicial events-here, the recent Supreme Court bankruptcy judge decisions, coupled with earlier constitutional precedents involving the limits of Article III-can trigger overreaction and hysteria. Lower courts may read these Supreme Court decisions as calling into question the permissibility of certain bankruptcy court practices under the Constitution, and …

Semantic Vagueness And Extrajudicial Constitutional Decisionmaking, Anthony O'Rourke

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Grasping Fatherhood In Abortion And Adoption, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Biology makes a mother, but it does not make a father. While a mother is a legal parent by reason of her biological relationship with her child, a father is not a legal parent unless he takes affirmative steps to grasp fatherhood. Being married to the mother at the time of conception or at the time of birth is one of those affirmative steps. But if he is not married to the mother, he must do far more before he will be legally recognized as a father. Biology is often presented as a sufficient reason for this dichotomy--it is easy …

Disentangling Miranda And Massiah: How To Revive The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel As A Tool For Regulating Confession Law, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Fifty years after Miranda v. Arizona, many have lamented the ways in which the Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts Courts have cut back on Miranda's protections. One underappreciated a spect of Miranda's demise is the way it has affected the development of the pretrial Sixth Amendment right to counsel guaranteed by Massiah v. United States. Much of the case law diluting suspects' Fifth Amendment Miranda rights has bled over into the Sixth Amendment right to counsel cases without consideration of whether the animating purposes of the Massiah pretrial right to counsel would support such an importation. This development is unfortunate …

Erisa Preemption After Gobeille V. Liberty Mutual: Completing The Retrenchment Of Shaw, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. is the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent preemption decision under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). In Gobeille, the Court completed the process of reconciling the restrained approach to ERISA preemption announced in New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Insurance Co. with the Court’s literal and expansive approach adopted earlier in Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc. Gobeille consummated this reconciliation by confirming the sub silentio retrenchment of Shaw and its “plain language” approach in favor of Traveler’s broader construction of ERISA preemption. …

Erie Step Zero, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

Courts and commentators have assumed that the Erie doctrine, while originating in diversity cases, applies in all cases whatever the basis for federal jurisdiction. Thus, when a federal court asserts jurisdiction over pendent state law claims through the exercise of supplemental jurisdiction in a federal question case, courts regularly apply the Erie doctrine to resolve conflict between federal and state law. This Article shows why this common wisdom is wrong.

To understand why, it is necessary to return to Erie’s goals, elaborated over time by the U.S. Supreme Court. Erie and its progeny are steeped in diversity-driven policy concerns: concerns …

Obligations Versus Rights: Substantive Difference Between Wto And International Investment Law, Chios Carmody

Law Publications

WTO law remains relatively uncontentious whereas international investment law elicits much more debate. This article posits that the differences in reception are attributable to deeper substantive differences about what is protected under each regime. In WTO law what is protected is the sum total of all commitments and concessions under the WTO Agreement, something that can be thought of as a “public” good. When a country injures that good, the remedy is for the country to cease the injury, a requirement that naturally places emphasis on obligation. In international investment law, by contrast, what is protected is individualized to a …

High-Stakes Interpretation, Ryan D. Doerfler

All Faculty Scholarship

Courts look at text differently in high-stakes cases. Statutory language that would otherwise be ‘unambiguous’ suddenly becomes ‘less than clear.’ This, in turn, frees up courts to sidestep constitutional conflicts, avoid dramatic policy changes, and, more generally, get around undesirable outcomes. The standard account of this behavior is that courts’ failure to recognize ‘clear’ or ‘unambiguous’ meanings in such cases is motivated or disingenuous, and, at best, justified on instrumentalist grounds.

This Article challenges that account. It argues instead that, as a purely epistemic matter, it is more difficult to ‘know’ what a text means—and, hence, more difficult to regard …

Nationwide Injunctions, Rule 23(B)(2), And The Remedial Powers Of The Lower Courts, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Gibbons Fallacy, Richard A. Primus

Articles

In Gibbons v. Ogden, Chief Justice John Marshall famously wrote that "the enumeration presupposes something not enumerated." Modern courts use that phrase to mean that the Constitutions enumeration of congressional powers indicates that those powers are, as a whole, less than a grant of general legislative authority. But Marshall wasn't saying that. He wasn't talking about the Constitution's overall enumeration of congressional powers at all. He was writing about a different enumeration - the enumeration of three classes of commerce within the Commerce Clause. And Marshall's analysis of the Commerce Clause in Gibbons does not imply that the enumerated …

Speaking Law: Towards A Nuanced Analysis Of 'Cases', Susanne Baer

Articles

“The headscarf case” is more than just a case. Talking law is often talking cases, but we need to understand law more specifically as a powerful practice of regulation. Law is also not only another discourse, or just text, or politics, with fundamental rights as “an issue,” or a promise, or just an idea. Instead, to protect fundamental rights, it is necessary to understand how in reacting to a conflict, we in fact speak rights today—Rechtsprechung—as a form of practice. The German Federal Constitutional Court’s decision in the conflict about female teachers wearing headscarves in German public schools may be …

Contract Exposition And Formalism, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Formalism in contract law has had many defenders and many critics. What courts need, however, is an account of when formalist approaches work and when they do not. This article addresses that need by developing a general theory of the rules of contract interpretation and construction—contract “exposition.” The theory distinguishes inter alia two forms of formalism. Formalities effect legal change by virtue of their form alone, and thereby obviate interpretation. Examples from contract law include “as is”, the seal and boilerplate terms. Formalities work when parties intend their legal effects, that is, when they perform juristic acts. Plain meaning rules, …

Tolling For The Aching Ones Whose Wounds Cannot Be Nursed’: The Marginalization Of Racial Minorities And Women In Institutional Mental Disability Law, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo

Articles & Chapters

Individuals with mental disabilities have traditionally been and continue to be subjected to rights violations and pervasive discrimination because of their mental disabilities. Seen as “the other,” individuals who are racial minorities and/or are women are marginalized to an even greater extent than other persons with mental disabilities in matters related to civil commitment and institutional treatment (especially involving theright to refuse medication).

It is impossible to examine these questions critically without coming to grips with the ways that expert testimony — testimony that is essential and necessary in all these cases — is infected with bias that leads to …

Sovereignty And Social Change In The Wake Of India's Recent Sodomy Cases, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

American constitutional law scholars have long questioned whether courts can truly drive social reform, and this uncertainty remains even in the wake of recent landmark decisions affecting the LGBT community. In contrast, court watchers in India—spurred by developments in a special type of legal action developed in the late 1970s known as public interest litigation (PIL)—have only recently begun to question the judiciary’s ability to promote progressive social change. Indian scholarship on this point has veered between despair that PIL cases no longer reliably produce good outcomes for India’s most disadvantaged and optimism that public interest litigation can be returned …

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

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford

Book Chapters

Could a feminist perspective change the shape of the tax law? Most people understand that feminist reasoning has tremendous potential to affect, for example, the law of employment discrimination, sexual harassment, and reproductive rights. Few people may be aware, however, that feminist analysis can likewise transform tax law (as well as other statutory or code-based areas of the law). By highlighting the importance of perspective, background, and preconceptions on the reading and interpretation of statutes, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions shows what a difference feminist analysis can make to statutory interpretation. This volume, part of the Feminist Judgments Series, brings …

In The Shadow Of A Myth: Bargaining For Same-Sex Divorce, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

This Article explores a relatively new phenomenon in family law: same-sex divorce. The Article’s central claim is that parties to the first wave of same-sex divorces are not effectively bargaining against the backdrop of legal dissolution rules that would govern in the absence of an agreement. In other words, to use Robert Mnookin and Lewis Kornhauser’s terminology, they are not “bargaining in the shadow of the law.” Instead, the Article argues, many same-sex couples today bargain in the shadow of a myth that same-sex couples are egalitarian—that there are no vulnerable parties or power differentials in same-sex divorce.

The Article …

Justice Scalia's Labor Jurisprudence- Justice Denied, Anne M. Lofaso

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.