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Legal theory

San Diego Law Review

Legal Theory

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Socioeconomic Rights And Theories Of Justice, Jeremy Waldron Aug 2011

Socioeconomic Rights And Theories Of Justice, Jeremy Waldron

San Diego Law Review

This Article considers the relation between theories of justice - such as John Rawls's theory - and theories of socioeconomic rights. In different ways, these two kinds of theories address much of the same subject matter. But they are quite strikingly different in format and texture. Theories of socioeconomic rights defend particular line-item requirements: a right to this or that good or opportunity, such as housing, health care, education, and social security. Theories of justice tend to involve a more integrated normative account of a society's basic structure, though they differ considerably among themselves in their structure. So how exactly …


Theory Minimalism, Stanley Fish Jan 2000

Theory Minimalism, Stanley Fish

San Diego Law Review

We must begin with a sense of what theory is, and I shall derive mine from a question Herbert Wechsler often put to his students. "Ask yourself," he would say, "'Would I reach the same result if the substantive interests were otherwise?"" The challenge of the question is to the student who has determined where the right lies in a disputed matter, and who now must demonstrate that, even if every circumstantial particular of the case were varied-if the plaintiff were a woman instead of a man, if the object of hate speech was a descendant of someone who came …


Theory's A What Comes Natcherly, Larry Alexander Jan 2000

Theory's A What Comes Natcherly, Larry Alexander

San Diego Law Review

So what kind of theorizing do we do in law? First, we do empirical, predictive theorizing. We form hypotheses about how the world will be affected by various rules of law, because of their content and form, and by the design of our legal institutions. These hypotheses can be confirmed or falsified. We also form hypotheses about how particular judges will decide future cases, or how legislatures and agencies will react to various proposals. When we do legal history, we reason backwards from effects and form hypotheses about their causes. The second type of theorizing we do is normative. In …