Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Blackstone, Expositor And Censor Of Law Both Made And Found, Jessie Allen
Blackstone, Expositor And Censor Of Law Both Made And Found, Jessie Allen
Book Chapters
Jeremy Bentham famously insisted on the separation of law as it is and law as it should be, and criticized his contemporary William Blackstone for mixing up the two. According to Bentham, Blackstone costumes judicial invention as discovery, obscuring the way judges make new law while pretending to uncover preexisting legal meaning. Bentham’s critique of judicial phoniness persists to this day in claims that judges are “politicians in robes” who pick the outcome they desire and rationalize it with doctrinal sophistry. Such skeptical attacks are usually met with attempts to defend doctrinal interpretation as a partial or occasional limit on …
Jefferson's "Laws Of Nature": Newtonian Influence And The Dual Valence Of Jurisprudence And Science, Allen P. Mendenhall
Jefferson's "Laws Of Nature": Newtonian Influence And The Dual Valence Of Jurisprudence And Science, Allen P. Mendenhall
Allen Mendenhall
Jefferson appears to have conceived of natural law rather differently from his predecessors - namely, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Richard Hooker, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, John Locke, and, among others, William Blackstone. This particular pedigree looked to divine decree or moral order to anchor natural law philosophy. But Jefferson’s various writings, most notably the Declaration and Notes on the State of Virginia, champion the thinking of a natural historian, a man who celebrated reason and scientific method, who extolled fact over fancy, material over the immaterial, observation over superstition, and experiment over divine revelation. They reveal, in other words, an …
Lon Fuller And Substantive Natural Law, Anthony D'Amato
Lon Fuller And Substantive Natural Law, Anthony D'Amato
Faculty Working Papers
I will contend that Fuller's secular or "procedural" natural law, as described by Moffat, does not cover the theoretical position that could be occupied by a substantive natural lawyer, that such a theoretical position is viable today, and that there are some key elements in Fuller's theory that actually conflict with substantive natural law and might therefore be criticized from that perspective.
English Judicature Act Of 1873, Willis B. Perkins
English Judicature Act Of 1873, Willis B. Perkins
Michigan Law Review
It seems to be the general impression that reform in judicial procedure is a new and radical thing in the history of jurisprudence. This is far from the fact. It is as old as jurisprudence itself. From Solon to Justinian, from Justinian to the Magna Charta, from the Magna Charta to Bentham, from Bentham to Field, and in every civilized country, radical changes have taken place from time to time, touching both procedure and substantive law. Court systems have been codified, systematized and rearranged to meet advancing and changing social and industrial conditions. From the religious ceremonies, constituting the methods …