Legal History Commons^™

Echoes Of The Impact Of Webb V. Mcgowin On The Doctrine Of Consideration Under Contract Law: Some Reflections On The Decision On The Approach Of Its 75th Anniversary, Stephen J. Leacock

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Independence In Excess: Reviving The Judicial Duty Of The Supreme Court, Paul D. Carrington, Roger C. Cramton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Independence from extrinsic influence is, we know, indispensable to public trust in the integrity of professional judges who share the duty to decide cases according to preexisting law. But such independence is less appropriate for those expected to make new law to govern future events. Indeed, in a democratic government those who make new law are expected to be accountable to their constituents, not independent of their interests and unresponsive to their desires. The Supreme Court of the United States has in the last century largely forsaken responsibility for the homely task of deciding cases in accord with preexisting law …

Vico And Imagination: An Ingenious Approach To Educating Lawyers With Semiotic Sensibility, Francis J. Mootz Iii

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

Law is a specialized semiotic realm, but lawyers generally are ignorant of this fact. Lawyers may manage meaning, but they also are managed by meaning. Seemingly trapped by the weight of pre-existing signs, their attempts to manage these meanings generally are limited to technical interventions and instrumentalist strategies. Signs have power over lawyers because they are embedded in narratives, a semiotic economy that confronts the lawyer as ‘‘given’’ even though it is dynamic and constantly under construction. Most lawyers do not make meaning through legal narratives; rather, they parrot bits of the controlling narratives in response to certain problems. Because …

Robert George’S The Clash Of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, And Morality In Crisis, Jeffrey C. Tuomala

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Legal Taxonomy, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This essay examines the ambition to taxonomize law and the different methods a legal taxonomer might employ. Three possibilities emerge. The first is a formal taxonomy that classifies legal materials according to rules of order and clarity. Formal taxonomy is primarily conventional and has no normative implications for judicial decision-making. The second possibility is a function-based taxonomy that classifies laws according to their social functions. Function-based taxonomy can influence legal decision-making indirectly, as a gatekeeping mechanism, but it does not provide decisional standards for courts. Its objective is to assist in analysis and criticism of law by providing an overview …

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 …

Jurisprudence: A Beginner's Simple And Practical Guide To Advanced And Complex Legal Theory, 2 The Crit: Critical Stud. J. 62 (2009), Allen R. Kamp

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns

Faculty Working Papers

This short essay is a summary of my assessment of the meaning of the "vanishing trial" phenomenon. It addresses the obvious question: "So what?" It first briefly reviews the evidence of the trial's decline. It then sets out the steps necessary to understand the political and social signficance of our vastly reducing the trial's importance among our modes of social ordering. The essay serves as the Introduction to a book, The Death of the American Trial, soon to be published by the University of Chicago Press.

Vico And Imagination: An Ingenious Approach To Educating Lawyers With Semiotic Sensibility, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Law is a specialized semiotic realm, but lawyers generally are ignorant of this fact. Lawyers may manage meaning, but they also are managed by meaning. Seemingly trapped by the weight of pre-existing signs, their attempts to manage these meanings generally are limited to technical interventions and instrumentalist strategies. Signs have power over lawyers because they are embedded in narratives, a semiotic economy that confronts the lawyer as ‘‘given’’ even though it is dynamic and constantly under construction. Most lawyers do not make meaning through legal narratives; rather, they parrot bits of the controlling narratives in response to certain problems. Because …

Voices Saved From Vanishing, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

Jurists Uprooted: German-speaking Émigré Lawyers in Twentieth-century Britain examines the lives of eighteen émigré lawyers and legal scholars who made their way to the United Kingdom, almost all to escape Nazism, and analyzes their impact on the development of English law.

Guns As Smut: Defending The Home-Bound Second Amendment, Darrell A. H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment guarantees a personal, individual right to keep and bear arms. But the Court left lower courts and legislatures adrift on the fundamental question of scope. While the Court stated in dicta that some regulation may survive constitutional scrutiny, it left the precise contours of the right, and even the method by which to determine those contours, for 'future evaluation."

This Article offers a provocative proposal for tackling the issue of Second Amendment scope, one tucked in many dresser drawers across the nation: Treat the Second Amendment …

Originalism Is Bunk, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Comments On Roger Cotterrell's Essay, 'The Struggle For Law: Some Dilemmas Of Cultural Legality', Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

First, many thanks to Carrie Menkel-Meadow, the editors of The International Journal of Law In Context and the sponsors of this series for facilitating this lecture, and for inviting my participation. And a special thank you to Professor Roger Cotterrell for sharing with us such a generous, humanistic and hopeful account of law’s moral possibilities, when faced with multicultural conflict within a society governed by a liberal rule of law. I very much appreciate the opportunity to reflect on this set of claims, although I feel somewhat an outsider to the task, as I’ll explain below. I understand Professor Cotterrell …