Legal History Commons^™

Reconsidering Judicial Independence: Forty-Five Years In The Trenches And In The Tower, Stephen B. Burbank

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Trusting in the integrity of our institutions when they are not under stress, we focus attention on them both when they are under stress or when we need them to protect us against other institutions. In the case of the federal judiciary, the two conditions often coincide. In this essay, I use personal experience to provide practical context for some of the important lessons about judicial independence to be learned from the periods of stress for the federal judiciary I have observed as a lawyer and concerned citizen, and to provide theoretical context for lessons I have deemed significant as …

Pluralistic Nonoriginalism And The Combinability Problem, Mitchell N. Berman, Kevin Toh

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No abstract provided.

On What Distinguishes New Originalism From Old: A Jurisprudential Take, Mitchell N. Berman

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No abstract provided.

Natural Law, Slavery, And The Right To Privacy Tort, Anita L. Allen

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In 1905 the Supreme Court of Georgia became the first state high court to recognize a freestanding “right to privacy” tort in the common law. The landmark case was Pavesich v. New England Life Insurance Co. Must it be a cause for deep jurisprudential concern that the common law right to privacy in wide currency today originated in Pavesich’s explicit judicial interpretation of the requirements of natural law? Must it be an additional worry that the court which originated the common law privacy right asserted that a free white man whose photograph is published without his consent in …

"Let 'Em Play" A Study In The Jurisprudence Of Sport, Mitchell N. Berman

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No abstract provided.

On The Incompatibility Of Political Virtue And Judicial Review: A Neo-Aristotelean Perspective, Ralph F. Gaebler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Part I of this essay outlines a neo-Aristotelean theory of political virtue, an instance of virtue generally, that serves as the basis of excellent citizenship in the polis. As such, political virtue contributes its share to the achievement of eudaimonia, or the fulfillment of an individual’s natural, human function. In fact, political virtue is especially important because people are political beings, i.e. they seek the good most comprehensively in the context of association with others. Therefore, Aristotle describes politics as the master science of the supreme good, because politics orders the community of the polis and thereby establishes the norms …

Advocacy Revalued, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., Dana A. Remus

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A central and ongoing debate among legal ethics scholars addresses the moral positioning of adversarial advocacy. Most participants in this debate focus on the structure of our legal system and the constituent role of the lawyer-advocate. Many are highly critical, arguing that the core structure of adversarial advocacy is the root cause of many instances of lawyer misconduct. In this Article, we argue that these scholars’ focuses are misguided. Through reflection on Aristotle’s treatise, Rhetoric, we defend advocacy in our legal system’s litigation process as ethically positive and as pivotal to fair and effective dispute resolution. We recognize that advocacy …

Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford

Book Chapters

Our book Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press 2009) highlights and explains the major themes and methodologies of a group of scholars who challenge the traditional claim that tax law is neutral and unbiased. The contributors to this volume include pioneers in the field of critical tax theory, as well as key thinkers who have sustained and expanded the investigation into why the tax laws are the way they are and what impact tax laws have on historically disempowered groups. This volume will provide an accessible introduction to this new and growing body of scholarship. It will be …

Originalism Is Bunk, Mitchell N. Berman

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No abstract provided.

The Future Of International Law Is Domestic (Or, The European Way Of Law), William W. Burke-White, Anne-Marie Slaughter

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No abstract provided.

Hart On Social Rules And The Foundations Of Law: Liberating The Internal Point Of View, Stephen R. Perry

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No abstract provided.

Preemption In The Rehnquist Court: A Preliminary Empirical Assessment, Michael S. Greve, Jonathan Klick

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The federal preemption of state law has emerged as a prominent field of study for legal scholars and political scientists. This rise to prominence of a technical and often dull field of jurisprudence is due to a number of developments-increasingly frequent federal statutory preemptions; the states' unprecedented aggressiveness in regulating business transactions, the expansion of corporate liability under state common law and the increased resort of corporate defendants to federal preemption defenses; and, not least, the Rehnquist Court's discovery of federalism and states' rights.

Unfortunately, the preemption debate has been marred by misperceptions and a lack of reliable data. Extravagant …

The Protestant Revolutions And Western Law, William Ewald

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No abstract provided.

Human Rights And National Security: The Strategic Correlation, William W. Burke-White

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No abstract provided.

Constitutional Decision Rules, Mitchell N. Berman

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No abstract provided.

Race, Face, And Rawls, Anita L. Allen

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No abstract provided.

Ripstein, Rawls, And Responsibility, Stephen R. Perry

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No abstract provided.

Justification And Excuse, Law And Morality, Mitchell N. Berman

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Anglo-American theorists of the criminal law have concentrated on-one is tempted to say "obsessed over"-the distinction between justification and excuse for a good quarter-century and the scholarly attention has purchased unusually widespread agreement. Justification defenses are said to apply when the actor's conduct was not morally wrongful; excuse defenses lie when the actor did engage in wrongful conduct but is not morally blameworthy. A near consensus thus achieved, theorists have turned to subordinate matters, joining issue most notably on the question of whether justifications are "subjective"-turning upon the actor's reasons for acting-or "objective"-involving only facts independent of the actor's beliefs …

Before And After: Temporal Anomalies In Legal Doctrine, Leo Katz

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Legal doctrine exhibits some striking temporal anomalies, previously not much adverted to. Wrongdoing looked at before it has occurred, and after is has occurred, is apt to look very different. I take up the two key components of wrongdoing seriatim, the harm-portion and the misconduct-portion: the "damage" part and the "liability" part. We tend to look at harm in a harm-agnifying way before it has occurred, and in a harm-inimizing way afterwards. We thus tend to think about negligence and the harm it wreaks in seemingly inconsistent ways. I examine and reject some possible explanations of this. Misconduct too looks …

Regionalization Of International Criminal Law Enforcement: A Preliminary Exploration, William W. Burke-White

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No abstract provided.

Harm, History, And Counterfactuals, Stephen R. Perry

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No abstract provided.

Deception In Morality And Law, Larry Alexander, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An International Constitutional Moment, William W. Burke-White, Anne-Marie Slaughter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law And Justice In The Twenty-First Century, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

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No abstract provided.

Method And Principle In Legal Theory, Stephen R. Perry

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No abstract provided.

Conflicting Rights And The Outbreak Of The First World War, Leo Katz

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No abstract provided.

What's So Special About American Law?, William Ewald

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No abstract provided.

State Accountability For Violations Of Intellectual Property Rights: How To "Fix" Florida Prepaid (And How Not To), Mitchell N. Berman

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No abstract provided.

Positivism And The Notion Of An Offense, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

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While the United States Supreme Court has developed an elaborate constitutional jurisprudence of criminal procedure, it has articulated few constitutional doctrines of the substantive criminal law. The asymmetry between substance and procedure seems natural given the demise of Lochner and the minimalist stance towards due process outside the area of fundamental rights. This Article, however, argues that the "positivistic" approach to defining criminal offenses stands in some tension with other basic principles, both constitutional and moral. In particular, two important constitutional guarantees depend on the notion of an offense: the presumption of innocence and the ban on double jeopardy. Under …

On The Obligation Of The State To Extend A Right Of Self-Defense To Its Citizens, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

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No abstract provided.