Jurisprudence Commons^™

Interconstituted Legal Agents, Christian Turner

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Legal theory and doctrine depend on underlying assumptions about human nature and sociality. Perhaps the most common and basic assumption is that we are separate persons who communicate imperfectly with one another. While this separation thesis has been questioned, it still dominates legal theory. However, I show that understanding separation and connection as alternative perspectives, rather than as ontologically true or false, reveals that legal conflict often arises when these perspectives give rise to clashing intuitions concerning the meaning of community and what constitutes goals and harms. This Article organizes perspectives on social relationships in increasing order of intersubjectivity: isolation, …

A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach To Assessing Judicial Ideology, Joseph S. Miller

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What do judges really care about? Scholars have used various methods to identify a judge’s policy preferences. The standard method in political science, called the Martin-Quinn score, counts a judge’s votes for conservative or liberal outcomes. But judges don’t just vote, they give reasons in written opinions. Reason-giving is not only part of the tradition of common-law decision making but is also central to rule-of-law ideals, concerns that are not the focus most empirical methodologies. What’s more, the reasons a judge gives for reaching a conclusion provide powerful evidence for what the judge herself cares about. That is especially the …

The Segregation Of Markets, Christian Turner

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Campaign-finance reformers fear that rich donors’ money can be used disproportionately to influence the content of campaign advertising and thus, perhaps, the results of elections. In European football, UEFA has attempted to ban “financial doping,” rich owners’ use of money earned in sectors other than football to pay large sums for the best football players. Campaign-finance reform efforts and “financial fair play” rules in sport may seem like bespoke solutions to different problems. In fact, they are the same solution to the same problem. Both are attempts to ensure that power accumulated in one market is not brought into another …

Justice Stevens, The Writer, Sonja R. West

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In any discussion about United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, you're likely to hear him labeled in a variety of ways--as a brilliant “judge's judge,” the highly successful leader of the Court's more liberal wing, the prolific “maverick,” and a shrewd questioner from the bench. You might also hear him described simply as a polite and humble Midwesterner, bow-tie aficionado and diehard Cubs fan. Yet while Justice Stevens is and was all of these things, there is another important title he richly deserves yet often does not receive--Justice Stevens, the excellent writer.

This essay strives to close that …

Toward A Political Theory For Private International Law, John Linarelli

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Private international law presents a dilemma for legal and political philosophy. Legal and political philosophers have ignored private international law, with only a few scattered attempts to evaluate its claims. Private international law offers a powerful set of counterexamples that put into serious doubt attempts to link law’s authority only or primarily to relationships between states and citizens. No society, state, or other practice-mediated relationship can serve as grounds for the authority of private international law to persons to whom it applies but who are outside of such relationships. Private international law affects the normative situations of persons entirely outside …

Introduction To The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Bridget J. Crawford

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The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project turns attention to the U.S. Supreme Court. Contributors to this volume challenge the formalistic concepts that U.S. Supreme Court opinions are, or should be, written from a neutral vantage point and that they are, or should be, based on deductive logic or “pure” rationality. When the project’s authors brought their own feminist consciousness or philosophy to some of the most important (and supposedly “neutral”) decisions and assertions about gender-related issues, the judicial decisions took on a very different character. Feminist consciousness broadens and widens the lens through which we view law and helps the decision …

All Together Now: Using Principles Of Group Dynamics To Train Better Jurors, Sara Gordon

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We ask juries to make important decisions that have a profound impact on people’s lives. We leave these decisions in the hands of groups of laypeople because we hope that the diverse range of experiences and knowledge in the group will lead to more thoughtful and informed decisionmaking. Studies suggest that diverse groups of jurors have different perspectives on evidence, engage in more thorough debate, and more closely evaluate facts. At the same time, there are a variety of problems associated with group decisionmaking, from the loss of individual motivation in group settings, to the vulnerability of groups to various …

A Rhetorician’S Practical Wisdom, Linda L. Berger

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For three years, I had the great good fortune to work in the office next to Jack Sammons. My good fortune extended to a coincidence of timing that allowed me to work with Jack on a co-authored article, The Law's Mystery. During the time I worked next door, I felt cursed by an inability to grasp concepts that to Jack appeared inevitable and essential, whether those inevitabilities and essences were to be found within the law, good lawyering, or good legal education. The curse persisted throughout the writing of The Law's Mystery.

For Jack, the essence of a …

What Jurors Want To Know: Motivating Juror Cognition To Increase Legal Knowledge & Improve Decisionmaking, Sara Gordon

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What do jurors want to know? Jury research tells us that jurors want to understand the information they hear in a trial so they can reach the correct decision. But like all people, jurors who are asked to analyze information in a trial—even jurors who consciously want to reach a fair and accurate verdict—are unconsciously influenced by their internal goals and motivations. Some of these motives are specific to individual jurors; for instance, a potential juror with a financial interest in a case would be excluded from the jury pool. But other motivations, like the motive to understand the law …

Developmental Detour: How The Minimalism Of Miller V. Alabama Led The Court's "Kids Are Different" Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence Down A Blind Alley, Mary E. Berkheiser

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No abstract provided.

Justice John Paul Stevens, Originalist, Diane Marie Amann

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Commentators, including the author of a recent book on the Supreme Court, often attempt to give each Justice a methodological label, such as “practitioner of judicial restraint,” “legal realist,” “pragmatist,” or “originalist.” This Essay first demonstrates that none of the first three labels applies without fail to Justice John Paul Stevens; consequently, it explores the extent to which Justice Stevens’s jurisprudence paid heed to the fourth method, “originalism.” It looks in particular at Justice Stevens’s opinions in recent cases involving firearms, national security, and capital punishment. Somewhat at odds with conventional wisdom, the Essay reveals Justice Stevens as a kind …

The Last Common Law Justice: The Personal Jurisdiction Jurisprudence Of Justice John Paul Stevens, Rodger D. Citron

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No abstract provided.

Philosophical Legal Ethics: Ethics, Morals, And Jurisprudence, Katherine R. Kruse

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The authors and moderator David Luban participated in a plenary session of the International Legal Ethics Conference IV, held at Stanford. Each author answered and discussed questions arising from short papers they had written about the principal concern of legal ethics was the morality of lawyers, the morality of clients, or the morality of laws.

The Jurisprudential Turn In Legal Ethics, Katherine R. Kruse

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When legal ethics developed as an academic discipline in the mid-1970s, its theoretical roots were in moral philosophy. The early theorists in legal ethics were moral philosophers by training, and they explored legal ethics as a branch of moral philosophy. From the vantage point of moral philosophy, lawyers’ professional duties comprised a system of moral duties that governed lawyers in their professional lives, a “role-morality” for lawyers that competed with ordinary moral duties. In defining this “role-morality,” the moral philosophers accepted the premise that “good lawyers” are professionally obligated to pursue the interests of their clients all the way to …

Bob Dylan On Lenny Bruce: More Of An Outlaw Than You Ever Were, Louise Harmon

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No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Criminal Law Jurisprudence: Fair Trials, Cruel Punishment, And Ethical Lawyering—October 2009 Term, Richard Klein

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No abstract provided.

Symposium: Bob Dylan And The Law, Foreword, Samuel J. Levine

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No abstract provided.

The Pros And Cons Of Politically Reversible 'Semisubstantive' Constitutional Rules, Dan T. Coenen

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Most observers of constitutional adjudication believe that it works in an all-or-nothing way. On this view, the substance of challenged rules is of decisive importance, so that political decision makers may resuscitate invalidated laws only by way of constitutional amendment. This conception of constitutional law is incomplete. In fact, courts often use so-called “semisubstantive” doctrines that focus on the processes that nonjudicial officials have used in adopting constitutionally problematic rules. When a court strikes down a rule by using a motive-centered or legislative-findings doctrine, for example, political decision makers may revive that very rule without need for a constitutional amendment. …

The Human Dignity Of Clients, Katherine R. Kruse

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This essay reviews David Luban's forthcoming book, Legal Ethics and Human Dignity. At the heart of this new book is an argument that interactions between lawyers and clients ought to be at the center of jurisprudential inquiry. Pointing out that most cases do not go to trial and that much transactional work occurs outside the litigation context, he argues that law's defining moments occur when a "client sketches out a problem and a lawyer tenders advice," rather than when a judge decides a litigant's case. This review essay examines how Luban might elaborate a new "jurisprudence of lawyering" by examining …

Emerging Latina/O Nation And Anti- Immigrant Backlash, Sylvia R. Lazos

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This foreword is an introduction to the LatCrit XI, Working and Living in the Global Playground: Frontstage and Backstage symposium, convened at William S. Boyd School of Law, in Las Vegas Nevada, during October 2006 and called upon over 150 academics to focus on the impacts of globalization and immigration. At no time has LatCrit's critical approach of interconnecting the structures of inequality, the market forces of globalization, and the cultural hostility towards outsider groups been more relevant.

Backlash against immigrants, particularly Latina/o “illegals,” is on the rise. This Introduction seeks to outline the challenges that the current immigration quandary …

Repraesentatio In Classical Latin, Alan Watson

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The Romans knew well the twin concepts of representation and representatives in law suits and in the relationships between father and son, and owner and slave. But for these concepts they did not use the terms repraesentare or any cognate.

To Tertullian, it seems, goes the credit of first using repraesentare and repraesentator in their modern senses of <> and <>. That his context is theological probably should not surprise since he is, above all, a theologian.

Thus he uses repraesentare to mean that the one larger and more important may represent the many and less important. This usage had a …

The Dictionary And The Man: Garner’S Black’S Law Dictionary, Jeanne Price, Roy M. Mersky

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The 7th and 8th editions of Black's Law Dictionary were the first edited by Bryan Garner. This review of the 8th edition of Black's Law Dictionary focuses on the approach taken by Garner in thoroughly revising the dictionary and places his work in the context of the recent history of legal dictionaries and lexicography.

The Jurisprudence Of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, S. Crincoli (Sigman)

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No abstract provided.

Emotional Competence, Multicultural Lawyering And Race, Marjorie A. Silver

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No abstract provided.

Desperately Seeking Science, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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In this commentary I offer a lawyer’s view of what law and linguistics interdisciplinary studies might mean for legal practice, as well as a legal theorist’s view of what importance they may hold for jurisprudence. I do not pretend to have more than cursory knowledge about linguistics, and so my remarks about what linguistics scholars might gain from an interdisciplinary exchange necessarily will be brief general.

Reconsidering The Employment Contract Exclusion In Section 1 Of The Federal Arbitration Act: Correcting The Judiciary's Failure Of Statutory Vision, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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The Federal Arbitration Act (the Act), seeks to eliminate centuries of perceived judicial hostility toward arbitration agreements. The Act made written arbitration agreements involving interstate commerce specifically enforceable. It also provided a procedural structure for enforcing awards, which were protected through deferential judicial review. The Act intended to have a wide reach, employing a broad definition of commerce that has presumably grown in breadth along with the expansion of judicial notions of commerce. Although courts applied the Act in tentative and cautious fashion until the 1960's, arbitration gained momentum during the 1970's and the 1980's. Despite growing judicial enthusiasm for …

Whose Nature? Practical Reason And Patriarchy, Lynne Henderson

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No abstract provided.

The Future Of The Common Law Tradition, Alan Watson

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What, then, can one say about the common law tradition as it will develop in the relatively near future? In terms of the future development of the common law systems, three facts seem certain and decisive. In the first place, there has been, as a matter of observable fact, a great shift in the balance of lawmaking in the common law world from judicial precedent to legislation, which together comprise the two main sources of law. In the second place, there is a deep awareness in the common law countries of a crisis in lawmaking, an awareness that is probably …