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Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Margaret F. Brinig, Linda C. Mcclain Jan 2013

Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Margaret F. Brinig, Linda C. Mcclain

Journal Articles

This essay revisits Mary Ann Glendon’s comparative law study, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law and her subsequent book, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. Glendon’s comparative study actually included a third topic: “forms of dependency which are connected with pregnancy, marriage, and child raising.” The topic of dependency has obvious relevance to consideration of intergenerational obligations and the interplay between family responsibility and societal responsibility for addressing dependency needs. A central claim Glendon made in both books is that the U.S. legal tradition is “libertarian,” views individuals as “lone rights bearers,” and exalts the “right to be …


Liberty And Community In Constitutional Law: The Abortion Cases In Comparative Perspective, Donald P. Kommers Jan 1985

Liberty And Community In Constitutional Law: The Abortion Cases In Comparative Perspective, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

In the mid-1970s the high courts of several western democracies handed down constitutional decisions concerning the legal regulation of abortion. All of the courts sustained their abortion statutes except the United States and West Germany, which moved in opposite directions. The US Supreme Court voided the conservative abortion statutes of various states while West Germany's highest court nullified an abortion statute that took a liberal stance on abortion. The extended opinions of the American and German courts and their contrasting grounds for decision make them fitting candidates for a comparative analysis of abortion jurisprudence. The abortion issue illustrates the tension …


Abortion And Legal Rationality, John M. Finnis Jan 1970

Abortion And Legal Rationality, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This article concerns the legitimacy of various legal schemes for dealing with abortion. Legitimacy in one sense is secured simply by complying with the formal criteria for valid law-making: enactment within power and in due form. But jurists have learned (or re-learned) that more can be said about legitimacy, without betraying the purity of their discipline by moralizing and advocacy. From this development in jurisprudential thought emerges the range of questions and criteria deployed in the present study.