Legal History Commons^™

Liberdade, Ética E Direito, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Further than Ethics concieved as mere obedience, Republican Ethics expresses the idea of duty for freedom and Liberty. After Law concieved as only duty and imperative norms from power to the subjects, there is the possibility of a fraternal law, in new patterns. This article explores several ways in a new ethics and a new law paradigms, after the objective Roman Law and the subjective modern Law.

Jogelmélet Jog Nélkül? [Legal Theory Without Law?], Péter Cserne

Péter Cserne

No abstract provided.

John Mccain's Citizenship: A Tentative Defense, Stephen E. Sachs

Stephen E. Sachs

Sen. John McCain was born a U.S. citizen and is eligible to be president. The most serious challenge to his status, recently posed by Prof. Gabriel Chin, contends that the statute granting citizenship to Americans born abroad did not include the Panama Canal Zone, where McCain was born in 1936. When Congress amended the law in 1937, he concludes, it was too late for McCain to be "natural born." Even assuming, however, that McCain's citizenship depended on this statute - and ignoring his claim to citizenship at common law - Chin's argument may be based on a misreading. When the …

How The Separation Of Powers Doctrine Shaped The Executive, Louis J. Sirico Jr.

Working Paper Series

This Article examines the debates of the Founders over the separation of powers doctrine as it relates to the executive branch. After surveying the experience in the colonies and under the post-Revolutionary state constitutions, it analyzes the relevant issues at the Constitutional Convention. Rather than focusing on abstract discussions of political theory, the article examines specific decisions and controversies in which separation of powers was a concern. The Article offers a detailed recounting of those debates. At the Convention, separation of powers arose most prominently in the arguments over nine issues: choosing the Executive, permitting the Executive to stand for …

The Trial Of Queen Caroline And The Impeachment Of President Clinton: Law As A Weapon For Political Reform, Daniel H. Erskine

Daniel H. Erskine

This article explores the calculated use of legal mechanisms to impact national politics and the effect such utilization had on accomplishing deliberate political reform. In answering why political actors use legal procedures as political weapons and whether such use is effective, this paper analyzes two historical examples to illustrate that law as political weapon is extremely successful in accomplishing political change. In the early 1800’s, England’s King sought to defrock his politically radical heroine Queen Caroline through the parliamentary mechanism of a Bill of Pains and Penalties, which caused a flourish of public criticism and call for political revolution. Public …

The Paths Of Christian Legal Scholarship, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

The history of twentieth century Christian legal scholarship– really, the absence of Christian legal scholarship in America’s elite law schools– can be told as a tale of two emblematic clashes: the first an intriguing historical footnote, the second a brief, explosive war of words. In the first, a tort action in Nebraska circa 1890,William Jennings Bryan and Roscoe Pound served as opposing counsel; the second was a war of words in the 1940s between a group of neo-Thomist scholars and defenders of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Using these two incidents to frame as a starting point, this essay briefly chronicles the …

The “Institutional Turn” In Jurisprudence: Critique And Reconstruction., Andres Palacios Lleras

Andrés Palacios Lleras

This paper engages in a inquiry into the roles that courts play within the legal system, given that judges are interdependent interpreters of legal rules that are boundedly rational and, arguably, politically biased. Contemporary authors claim that, although these two conditions play an important role in interpretation, contemporary theories in jurisprudence have not addressed them properly. Their assessments raise legal issues that are very significant; given the fact that judges are boundedly rational and tend to display political biases, how should they interpret legal rules? Is it best for them to interpret these rules in a formalist fashion, without resorting …

The Indeterminate Side Of Constitutions As Precommitment Strategies, Andres Palacios Lleras

Andrés Palacios Lleras

This paper engages in a time-honored inquiry in American jurisprudence, an inquiry which continues to be invigorated by contemporary studies in Constitutional Law. It is an inquiry into the determinacy of the American Constitution as a legal text, taking into account that it was drafted and approved more than two hundred years ago with the purpose, arguably, to organize present and future political decision-making. Some contemporary authors claim that the discussion about the role of the Constitution is muddled, and that to acknowledge its authority does not necessarily entail a theory of constitutional interpretation. Furthermore, other authors have claimed that …

Droits De L'Homme, Droits Du Citoyen: Les Présupposés De La Jurisprudence Américaine Et Européenne, Gregory Lewkowicz

Gregory Lewkowicz

This paper proposes a comparative analysis of some rulings of the US Supreme Court and of the European Court of Human Rights. Reviewing cases related to international legal problems or using comparative legal reasoning, the paper suggests that the difference of attitudes between the two courts in human rights cases is embedded in the classical opposition between men and citizen.

Why John Mccain Was A Citizen At Birth, Stephen E. Sachs

Stephen E. Sachs

Senator John McCain was born a citizen in 1936. Professor Gabriel J. Chin challenges this view in this Symposium, arguing that McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone (while his father was stationed there by the Navy) fell into a loophole in the governing statute. The best historical evidence, however, suggests that this loophole is an illusion and that McCain is a "natural born Citizen" eligible to be president.

The Miracle Of Generative Violence? René Girard And The Use Of Force In International Law, Gregor Noll

Gregor Noll

In this article, I apply Rene´ Girard’s theory of generative violence to the international law relating to the use of force. I argue that texts of international law make gestures of referral towards an immanent normativity on the fettering of divine violence. The means to this end is a form of sacrificial violence that seeks to promote the preservation and cohesion of the ‘international community’. The structuring of this violence through international law and its repeated staging reproduces the relationship of prophecy to miracle. Empirically, I draw mainly on excerpts from the 2006 US National Security Strategy.

Sacrificial Violence And Targeting In International Humanitarian Law, Gregor Noll

Gregor Noll

Drawing on the work of René Girard, his text inquires into incidental and lawful losses of civilians in the regulation of international humanitarian law as part of a symbolic order restraining violent conflict within communities. First, I inquire into central norms on targeting in IHL, explaining their internal inconsistencies. Second, I try to show that these inconsistencies can be explaining by applying Girard's theory on sacrificial violence.

The Asylum System, Migrant Networks And The Informal Labour Market, Gregor Noll

Gregor Noll

Governments attempting to regulate labour markets and control immigration are confronted with difficult questions. In the past, there was general agreement that the asylum system should not be exploited as a side entrance to the labour market. The two systems—asylum and labour market—were to be planned and maintained separately. But if migration is a prerequisite for asylum, does not increasingly stiffer migration control block escape for those under persecution? Prices for smuggling go up, and smugglers seek new routes, yet irregular migration continues, and the informal labour market flourishes. Here we must ask an irreverent question: is there any point …

A Whale Of A Tale: Post-Colonialism, Critical Theory, And Deconstruction: Revisiting The International Convention For The Regulation Of Whaling Through A Socio-Legal Persepctive, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

This article is a critical interpretation of the indigenous whaling debate, which, although often discussed in legal academia, has received only passing critical attention. As a scholar in the critical theory/critical legal studies model, I am primarily concerned with the impact that law and debates about law have on divergent groups (racial, ethnic, gender, etc.). This article develops a criticism of the United States's postcolonial opposition to whaling, arguing, instead, for cultural relativism. The article indicts U.S. imperialism, and treatment of indigenous peoples, arguing for interdisciplinary analysis and a more keen appreciation for the voice of indigenous peoples. As I …

From John F. Kennedy’S 1960 Campaign Speech To Christian Supremacy: Religion In Modern Presidential Politics, Stephen A. Newman

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The History Of The New York City Law Department: Fighting For The City By William E. Nelson, Ross Sandler

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tax As Urban Legend, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

In this essay, I review UC-Berkeley history professor Robin Einhorn's book, American Taxation, American Slavery. In this provocatively-titled book, Einhorn traces the relationship between democracy, taxation, and slavery from colonial times through the antebellum period. By re-telling some of the most familiar set piece stories of American history through the lens of slavery, Einhorn reveals how the stories that we tell ourselves over and over again about taxation and politics in America are little more than the stuff of urban legend.

In the review, I provide a brief summary of Einhorn's discussion of the relationship between slavery and colonial taxation, …

Gender And Nation-Building: Family Law As Legal Architecture Symposium - Nation Building: A Legal Architecture: Articles And Essays, Tracy E. Higgins, Rachel P. Fink

Faculty Scholarship

Although the discipline of family law in the western legal tradition transcends the public/private law boundary in many ways, it is the argument of this Essay that family law, in the private law sense of defining the rights and obligations of members of a family, forms an important part of the legal architecture of nation-building in at least three ways. First, access to the resources of the nation-state devolves through biologically and culturally gendered national boundaries, both reflecting and reinforcing the differential status of men and women in the sphere of the family. Second, the social institution of the family …

The Future Of Social Security: Principles To Guide Reform, 41 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1061 (2008), Kathryn L. Moore

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Human And Fundamental Rights And Duties In Portuguese Constitution. Some Reflections, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

The Portuguese Constitution (1976) came after a period of 48 years of authoritarianism and a closed society, in which some happy few enjoyed great privileges while the great majority of people were charged with heavy duties So, by a very understandable "law of human nature", the constituent law givers could not reasonably impose constitutionally many obligations, in an autonomous way. As rights and duties are the twin sides of the same coin, the juridical formulation under the sign of rights also implies obligations, related to those same rights. This is kinder and more pleasant to do by a liberating Constitution...

El Derecho Natural, Historia E Ideologia, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Intentemos retomar algunos hilos sueltos de discursos dispersos y con una nueva mirada analítica, procuremos ver una realidad sutil y huidiza: ese derecho natural que parece silencioso en nuestros días, y más silencioso aún en los discursos psitacistas: tanto en los pomposos como en los pseudo-rigurosos.

Princípio Republicano E Virtudes Republicanas, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

O presente artigo procura unir traços de aparente heterodoxia, recuperando, porém, paradigmas e tópicos que não são novos. Com efeito, nem as virtudes, nem a república, nem sequer a felicidade são novidades. O que talvez seja novo (new again) é o espírito de buscar outra vez as raízes, as fontes, para um intento de renovação do ambiente juspolítico. Somos naturalmente favorável a uma Constituição principial e valorativa, como a nossa. Mas parece-nos que há nela lugar a Virtudes (que já existem nela), e que a descoberta das Virtudes nas Constituições, e, logo, no Direito, é, afinal, um ovo de Colombo. …

Da Constituição Antiga À Constituição Moderna. República E Virtude, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Virtude e República necessariamente têm de levar-nos à Antiguidade: desde logo porque a primeira “começa” com a helénica "areté". Logo, é preciso ir, antes de mais, à Grécia Antiga, e especialmente ao legado ateniense. “Directly or indirectly, Athenian democracy as an extraordinary experiment in social history thus stimulates our own thinking about crucial issues of our own democracy and society, incomparably more complex though they are. The point is precisely that the ancients help us focus on the essentials" - como afirma Kurt A. Raaflaub.

Uma Filosofia Constitucional Comum (Luso-Brasileira), Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Onde melhor se pode aquilatar de uma filosofia constitucional? Além do cunho da constitução, que já vimos ser liberal na fórmula política (porque moderna ecodificada) e social na social, cultural e económica, o que mais exprime uma filosofia constitucional é a ética constitucional, e, antes de mais, são os valores. A Constituição cidadão brasileira e a Constituição portuguesa de 1976 comungam, em grande medida, dos meus valores de liberdade, igualdade, justiça, e outros, progressivos e de cidadania.

Much Ado About Pluralities: Pride And Precedent Amidst The Cacophy Of Concurrences, And Re-Percolation After Rapanos, Donald J. Kochan, Melissa M. Berry, Matthew J. Parlow

Donald J. Kochan

Conflicts created by concurrences and pluralities in court decisions create confusion in law and lower court interpretation. Rule of law values require that individuals be able to identify controlling legal principles. That task is complicated when pluralities and concurrences contribute to the vagueness or uncertainty that leaves us wondering what the controlling rule is or attempting to predict what it will evolve to become. The rule of law is at least handicapped when continuity or confidence or confusion infuse our understanding of the applicable rules. This Article uses the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rapanos v. United States to …

The Soft Power And Persuasion Of Translations In The War On Terror: Words And Wisdom In The Transformation Of Legal Systems, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

The power of words is the power of persuasion. The exportation of the foundational legal principles that helped form the American republic can serve as instrumental "soft power" tools in the war on terror. Efforts promoting projects like the Arabic Book Program are important vehicles to cross-cultural and cross-lingual international relations. This Article argues that an arsenal of words can be as, or more, powerful than an arsenal of artillery. The West has much to offer, but the rest of the world needs to be able to read it without getting lost in translation. Providing linguistic access to the documents …