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Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Samantar, Official Immunity And Federal Common Law, Peter B. Rutledge Oct 2011

Samantar, Official Immunity And Federal Common Law, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

This essay examines the theoretical underpinnings of the immunity of foreign government officials following the Supreme Court's recent decision in Samantar. Part of a forthcoming symposium with the Lewis and Clark Law Review, the paper tackles the federal common law in the Court's decision and, more broadly, international civil litigation. It criticizes the Court's unexamined assumption that its federal common law power extended to create an immunity that, at best, coexists only uncomfortably alongside the legislative framework of the FSIA. It explains the problematic implications of this assertion of federal common law, both for suits against foreign officials and for …


The Hermeneutical And Rhetorical Nature Of Law, Francis J. Mootz Iii Jan 2011

The Hermeneutical And Rhetorical Nature Of Law, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

In its most venal manifestation, scholarly writing betrays the anxiety of influence by claiming to offer a radically new solution to age-old conundrums. The goal is to make a clean break from a traditional path of thought that has become trapped in a cul-de-sac, to make progress by finding a new way forward. Not so with Jean Porter’s work, and particularly her most recent book. Professor Porter demonstrates that thinking through an established tradition – one that has responded to numerous challenges within very different contexts over several millennia – can sometimes offer the most productive response to contemporary dilemmas. …


The Jurisprudential Turn In Legal Ethics, Katherine R. Kruse Jan 2011

The Jurisprudential Turn In Legal Ethics, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

When legal ethics developed as an academic discipline in the mid-1970s, its theoretical roots were in moral philosophy. The early theorists in legal ethics were moral philosophers by training, and they explored legal ethics as a branch of moral philosophy. From the vantage point of moral philosophy, lawyers’ professional duties comprised a system of moral duties that governed lawyers in their professional lives, a “role-morality” for lawyers that competed with ordinary moral duties. In defining this “role-morality,” the moral philosophers accepted the premise that “good lawyers” are professionally obligated to pursue the interests of their clients all the way to …


Philosophical Legal Ethics: Ethics, Morals, And Jurisprudence, Katherine R. Kruse Jan 2011

Philosophical Legal Ethics: Ethics, Morals, And Jurisprudence, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

The authors and moderator David Luban participated in a plenary session of the International Legal Ethics Conference IV, held at Stanford. Each author answered and discussed questions arising from short papers they had written about the principal concern of legal ethics was the morality of lawyers, the morality of clients, or the morality of laws.