Jurisprudence Commons^™

Law's Legitimacy: Lon Fuller In A Consequentialist Frame, Daniel L. Feldman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues that Lon Fuller’s approach to jurisprudence offers more important support to the rule of law than has been generally recognized. It argues further that a consequentialist lens allows clearer views of Fuller’s strengths in this regard, despite Fuller’s own resistance to consequentialism and despite consequentialism’s blindness to some of Fuller’s depth and texture. This thesis supplies a formula, although one intended only as a guide to thinking, not for actual computation, to drive judicial decision-making. The inputs into this formula are six values widely shared in the United States, modified by case-by-case salience. Kantian deontology strongly influences …

Shakespeare And The Supreme Court: How The Justices Reveal Their Ideologies By Referencing His Works, Rachel Anderson

Honors Projects

The works of William Shakespeare have been referenced many times throughout history, even by Supreme Court justices. Building off of an observation of a mock trial by James Shapiro, this project puts the utilization of Shakespeare from three Court opinions in relation to its context within the play and the opinion to examine what the reference reveals about the authoring justices' ideology. In doing so, this project concludes that the justices utilize Shakespeare's works in their opinions for various reasons, including to infuse their beliefs into their argument. This implies that Supreme Court justices do not base their opinions on …

Finding Neverland? Artificial Intelligence And The Jurisprudence Of Legal Certainty, Omar Zaky

Theses and Dissertations

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) models that are capable of predicting the decisions of prominent courts – most notably the European Court of Human Rights and United States Supreme Court – provides us with an opportunity to revisit important jurisprudential debates regarding the quest for legal certainty. Through providing clear distinctions within formalistic jurisprudence, and its, subsequent, realist critique; this thesis seeks to analyze legal decision-making and its relationship with artificial intelligence. I argue that, AI’s deterministic nature and its support for the law being an “entirely self-contained process” does lend some credence to certain jurisprudential arguments. However, this …

Without Personhood: The Missing Point Of Slaves In Missouri's Emancipation-By-Residency Freedom Suit Jurisprudence, 1824-1837, Jacob Alfred Brandler

MSU Graduate Theses

From 1824 to 1837, the Supreme Court of Missouri developed a sophisticated caselaw establishing emancipation-by-residency—where a Missouri court could liberate an enslaved petitioner because of their residence in a free jurisdiction—as a basis of freedom suits. In 1852, however, the Court undermined the precedential value of those decisions and dismantled this basis when deciding Dred Scott’s case, Scott v. Emerson. Scholarship on Missouri’s freedom suits has highlighted how partisanship and the political atmosphere in Missouri as well as across the nation contributed to this outcome. This study adds to the historiography how the previous caselaw itself predisposed the result; …

Conceptions Of Sovereignty, Paul Hansen

Master of Studies in Law Research Papers Repository

This paper explores conceptions of sovereignty held by Canada’s Indigenous and Western cultures. It seeks to determine what sovereignty entails and how the Crown- Indigenous relationship is affected by the judgments of Canada’s courts. The study makes no attempt to compare the relative merits of Indigenous and Western sovereignty conceptions. Similarly, it does not examine nor attempt to reconcile sovereignty-related tensions that may exist between the Crown and Indigenous peoples.

The research is framed by a two-part question: (1) What are the defining characteristics of Indigenous and Western conceptions of sovereignty; and (2) what impact do the sovereignty-related judgments of …

Language's Empire: A Counter-Telling Of Administrative Law In Canada, Nicholas Hooper

LLM Theses

This thesis renders the unstated assumptions that animate statutory interpretation in the administrative state. It argues that the current approach is a disingenuous rhetorical overlay that masks the politics of definitional meaning. After rejecting the possibility of structuring principles in our (post)modern oversaturation of signs, the thesis concludes with an aspirational account of interpretive pragmatism in the face of uncertainty.

A Philosophical Defense Of Judicial Minimalism, Cory A. Evans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes, criticizes and ultimately defends judicial minimalism, a contemporary theory of judging that has come to the forefront of American jurisprudence in the early part of the 21st Century. In this dissertation I offer the first formal definition of judicial minimalism, apply that definition to case law and the literature, refute many objections to judicial minimalism including objections based on tough case counterexamples, offer a new version of the argument of epistemic humility and offer a new argument in support of judicial minimalism from the perspective of law and economics.

The Free Exercise Clause, Minority Faiths, And The Possibility Of Religious Independence After Rawlsian Liberalism, David Charles Scott

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

The conversation to which my dissertation belongs is that which preoccupied John Rawls in Political Liberalism, namely: (1) how it is possible that a religiously and morally pluralistic culture like ours lives cooperatively from one generation to the next, and (2) The extent to which religious or moral convictions are appropriate bases for political action. My three-essay dissertation is about aspects of this investigation that affect minority or non-mainstream religious and cultural groups, since legal institutions, and theoretical models of them (such as Rawls’s and Ronald Dworkin’s) are in many ways ill-suited to accommodate their ways of life. In the …

Aspirations Of Objectivity: Systemic Illusions Of Justice In The Biased Courtroom, Meagan B. Roderique

Scripps Senior Theses

Given the ever-growing body of evidence surrounding implicit bias in and beyond the institution of the law, there is an equally growing need for the law to respond to the accurate science of prejudice in its aspiration to objective practice and just decision-making. Examined herein are the existing legal conceptualizations of implicit bias as utilized in the courtroom; implicit bias as peripheral to law and implicit bias as effectual in law, but not without active resolution. These views and the interventional methods, materials, and procedures they inspire are widely employed to appreciably “un-bias” legal actors and civic participants; however, without …

On The "Poverty Of Responsibility": A Study Of The History Of Child Protection Law And Jurisprudence In Nova Scotia, Ilana Luther

PhD Dissertations

This thesis presents a history of child protection law and jurisprudence in Nova Scotia. The thesis begins by examining the development of the first child protection statute in Canada, the Nova Scotia Prevention and Punishment of Wrongs to Children Act in 1882. The Act was developed amidst a climate of reform in late-19th century Halifax, at the urging of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The Act, along with a number of other pieces of “domestic relations” legislation at the time, was focused on protecting children in poverty. With the passing of the Act, the legislature not …