Jurisprudence Commons^™

The Effect Of Legal Theories On Judicial Decisions, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

I draw a distinction in the beginning of this essay between judicial decision-making and a judge's decision-making. To persuade a judge, we should try to discover what her theories are. Across a range of theories, I offered well-known case examples typically cited as examples of each theory. Then I showed that the exact same theory used to justify or explain those case results could be used to justify or explain the opposite result in each of those cases.

Pragmatic Indeterminacy, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

If, as a result of taking Indeterminacy seriously, we revolutionize the way we teach law and the way we select judges, then we will also revolutionize the way cases are litigated (because the new judges will expect to hear a different kind of argumentation) and the way people order their lives in anticipation of the way their disputes will be decided by these new judges.

Elmer's Rule: A Jurisprudential Dialogue, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

Cardozo wrote of Riggs v. Palmer that this case that two analytical paths pointed in different directions and the judges selected the path that seemed better to lead to "justice". Dworkin has claimed that the case demonstrates the triumph of certain "principles" over what are called "rules of law". Taylor has argued that there was no "law" at all about murderers inheriting from testators before the actual decision in Riggs, and that consequently the decision itself was the only "law" that affected Elmer. All of these suggest that the decision in Riggs was largely unpredictable and therefore must have come …

Judicial Legislation, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

My argument will be that it is unjust in the broadest view of our legal system for judges to legislate, even if they confine their legislation to the narrowest limits in the closest of cases. To the extent that my argument is successful in diminishing the judicial legislation position, it would tend to serve to corroborate Dworkin's rights thesis.

The Law As Bard: Extolling A Culture's Virtues, Exposing Its Vices, And Telling Its Story, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

Before literacy rates in the English speaking world reached their apex (and long before they dropped into the trough they are now thought to occupy), before we commoners read newspapers (and long before we wrote blogs), before autobiographies crowded book shelves (and long before reality television created celebrities out of rather mean raw material), our cultural forebears appointed a rather singular individual to preserve for their children a record of their values, rituals, institutions, and assumptions: the bard.

The bard told stories. But the bard didn't tell just any stories. The bard told stories drawn from the fabric of which …

The Governmental Context For Development In Indian Country: Modern Tribal Institutions And The Bureau Of Indian Affairs, Susan M. Williams

Natural Resource Development in Indian Country (Summer Conference, June 8-10)

26 pages.