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Adjudication Is Not Interpretation: Some Reservations About The Law-As-Literature Movement, Robin West
Adjudication Is Not Interpretation: Some Reservations About The Law-As-Literature Movement, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Among other achievements, the modern law-as-literature movement has prompted increasing numbers of legal scholars to embrace the claim that adjudication is interpretation, and more specifically, that constitutional adjudication is interpretation of the Constitution. That adjudication is interpretation -- that an adjudicative act is an interpretive act -- more than any other central commitment, unifies the otherwise diverse strands of the legal and constitutional theory of the late twentieth century.
In this article, I will argue in this article against both modern forms of interpretivism. The analogue of law to literature, on which much of modern interpretivism is based, although fruitful, …
Causation In Torts, Crimes, And Moral Philosophy: A Reply To Professor Thomson, Paul F. Rothstein
Causation In Torts, Crimes, And Moral Philosophy: A Reply To Professor Thomson, Paul F. Rothstein
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Professor Judith Jarvis Thomson's provocative article, 'The Decline of Cause,' focuses on the diminishing importance of causation in law and moral philosophy. In this reply, I suggest answers to some of the questions Professor Thomson raises.
Professor Thomson's article revolves around various forms of a classic dilemma: two persons take equal care but, through chance, their actions produce different results. Does the outcome of their actions matter in a moral assessment of those actions? Professor Thomson first sets out what the styles as the Kantian and 'moral sophisticates" position that the outcome of an act does not and should not …