Legal History Commons^™

Deodand, Brian L. Frye

Seattle University Law Review SUpra

Deodands are a delightful example of a common law doctrine that caused something to happen: the Crown was enabled to tax tortfeasors. But not in a way anyone expected at the time or anyone understands today. Look on their logic and despair. You’ll never figure it out, no matter how hard you try. And that’s what makes them so lyrical. The concept of the deodand is beautiful even though we can’t understand it. Or rather, it’s beautiful because we can’t understand it. If we understood deodands, surely they would be as prosaic as life insurance and conceptual art.

In 1964, …

Imperatives, Normativity, And The Law, Gregory Silverman

Faculty Articles

In this article Professor Silverman sets out to resolve the problem of legal normativity. Professor Silverman argues that legal scholars have been prevented from transcending the limited conception of law engendered by a key dogma of nineteenth century jurisprudence: the dogma that laws are a species of commands, orders, or imperatives. As a result, even as we enter the twenty-first century, legal scholars have yet to articulate a legal architectonic that properly situates the normative commitments of a society within a post-modern legal system. An adequate theory of law must offer an account of the normativity of law: an account …

Dualistic Legal Phenomena And The Limitations Of Positivism, Gregory Silverman

Faculty Articles

Often, in a case of first instance, a judge will reach a decision by an appeal to legal principles. For example, in the 1889 case of Riggs v. Palmer a New York court had to decide whether a grandson who had murdered his grandfather could inherit under the will in which his grandfather had named him an heir. The statutes and rules of testamentary law did not prohibit the inheritance. The court, however, invoked the legal principle that no one should be permitted to profit by his own wrong and denied the claim to inheritance. The use of such principles …