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Jurisprudence Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Under-The-Table Overruling, Christopher J. Peters Oct 2008

Under-The-Table Overruling, Christopher J. Peters

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In this contribution to a Wayne Law Review symposium on the first three years of the Roberts Court, the author normatively assesses the Court's practice of "under-the-table overruling," or "underruling," in high-profile constitutional cases involving abortion, campaign-finance reform, and affirmative action. The Court "underrules" when it renders a decision that undercuts a recent precedent without admitting that it is doing so. The author contends that underruling either is not supported by, or is directly incompatible with, three common rationales for constitutional stare decisis: the noninstrumental rationale, the predictability rationale, and the legitimacy rationale. In particular, while the latter rationale - …


Health Law’S Coherence Anxiety, Theodore Ruger Jan 2008

Health Law’S Coherence Anxiety, Theodore Ruger

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Academic health law is often said to suffer from a "law of the horse" problem, or, more particularly, to lack various dimensions of theoretical coherence. In conventional legal academic discourse, the "coherence" ideal prioritizes a cluster of attributes, all of which health law lacks: sparse conceptual singularity, a reductionist focus on particular legal forms, institutional centralization, and historical determinism and orderly development of a legal field. Health law is a singularly poor fit with this traditional model of field coherence. It is a mishmash of various legal forms, applied by divergent and often colliding institutions, and has developed much more …


In The Spirit Of Ubuntu: Enforcing The Rights Of Orphans And Vulnerable Children Affected By Hiv/Aids In South Africa, John Bessler Jan 2008

In The Spirit Of Ubuntu: Enforcing The Rights Of Orphans And Vulnerable Children Affected By Hiv/Aids In South Africa, John Bessler

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This Article discusses the traditional African concept of ubuntu, which is frequently cited in South African jurisprudence, and analyzes South Africa's lack of compliance with the human rights of orphans and vulnerable children whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa explicitly protects children's rights and various socio-economic rights of concern to children, and the Constitutional Court of South Africa has held such rights to be justiciable. The constitutional rights of South African children affected by HIV/AIDS, however, have been continually violated. This Article discusses how the existence of these constitutional rights may …