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Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Natural Law
The Temptation Of Cosmic Private Law Theory, Nathan B. Oman
The Temptation Of Cosmic Private Law Theory, Nathan B. Oman
Faculty Publications
It’s a heady time to be a theorist of private law. After decades of vague post-Realist functionalism or reductive economic theories, the latest generation of private law theorists have provided a proliferation of new philosophies of tort, contract, and property. The result has been a tremendous burst of intellectual creativity. While Kant and Hegel have been dragooned into debates over torts and contracts and even such supposedly wooly headed thinkers as Coke and Blackstone have been rehabilitated, there have been fewer efforts to generate natural law accounts of private law than one might expect, particularly in light of the revival …
The Path Less Traveled: A Natural Law Critique Of Justice Holmes’ Path Of The Law, Alexander Hamilton
The Path Less Traveled: A Natural Law Critique Of Justice Holmes’ Path Of The Law, Alexander Hamilton
Catholic University Law Review
American law and jurisprudence fail to solve fundamental problems in our country. Every lawyer and judge practices, knowingly or unknowingly, from a particular philosophy of law. Much of the practice of law in the United States is rooted in the thought of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Holmes taught that law was not grounded in morality and logic, but rather the pragmatic rulings of judges. Our law schools and courts today follow Holmes in defining law as merely what a judge says it is. This Comment argues that Justice Holmes’ definition of law was fundamentally flawed and his jurisprudence should …
The Conceptions Of Self-Evidence In The Finnis Reconstruction Of Natural Law, Kevin P. Lee
The Conceptions Of Self-Evidence In The Finnis Reconstruction Of Natural Law, Kevin P. Lee
St. Mary's Law Journal
Finnis claims that his theory proceeds from seven basic principles of practical reason that are self-evidently true. While much has been written about the claim of self-evidence, this article considers it in relation to the rigorous claims of logic and mathematics. It argues that when considered in this light, Finnis equivocates in his use of the concept of self-evidence between the realist Thomistic conception and a purely formal, modern symbolic conception. Given his respect for the modern positivist separation of fact and value, the realism of the Thomistic conception cannot be the foundation for the natural law as Finnis would …
Law As A Means To Human Flourishing: Law, Morality, And Natural Law In Policy-Oriented Perspective, Christian L. Gonzalez-Rivera
Law As A Means To Human Flourishing: Law, Morality, And Natural Law In Policy-Oriented Perspective, Christian L. Gonzalez-Rivera
Faculty Articles
Friendships can be uneasy without ceasing to be friendships. Because the "pie" of law and morality's relationship can be sliced in many ways and to different yields, in what follows, I consider the simultaneously unexplored, uneasy, and yet promising relationship between the Natural Law tradition and Policy-Oriented Jurisprudence (or "New Haven"), hoping that doing so will partially illuminate aspects of the relationship between morality and the law more generally. My aim is to describe what and how New Haven School founders Myres McDougal and Harold Lasswell thought about Natural Law. As it will become clearer below, despite their critical appraisal …
A Trilogy Of Essays On Scholarship, David Barnhizer
A Trilogy Of Essays On Scholarship, David Barnhizer
David Barnhizer
At the beginning it is helpful to realize that the five versions of the scholarly ideal produce different forms of intellectual work with distinct goals and motivations. The scholar engaging in such activity can vary dramatically in terms of what the individual is seeking to achieve through his or her research output and actions that might be taken related to the findings reflected in that product. Similarly, there is a diverse set of targets at which the work is directed. These targets include communicating ideas and knowledge to other scholars who are invested in a specific sub-discipline. They also include …
Surveillance, Speech Suppression And Degradation Of The Rule Of Law In The “Post-Democracy Electronic State”, David Barnhizer
Surveillance, Speech Suppression And Degradation Of The Rule Of Law In The “Post-Democracy Electronic State”, David Barnhizer
David Barnhizer
None of us can claim the quality of original insight achieved by Alexis de Tocqueville in his early 19th Century classic Democracy in America in his observation that the “soft” repression of democracy was unlike that in any other political form. It is impossible to deny that we in the US, the United Kingdom and Western Europe are experiencing just such a “gentle” drift of the kind that Tocqueville describes, losing our democratic integrity amid an increasingly “pretend” democracy. He explained: “[T]he supreme power [of government] then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society …
Law And Artifice In Blackstone's Commentaries, Jessie Allen
Law And Artifice In Blackstone's Commentaries, Jessie Allen
Articles
William Blackstone is often identified as a natural law thinker for whom property rights were preeminent, but reading the Commentaries complicates that description. I propose that Blackstone’s concept of law is more concerned with human invention and artifice than with human nature. At the start of his treatise, Blackstone identifies security, liberty and property as “absolute” rights that form the foundation of English law. But while security and liberty are “inherent by nature in every individual” and “strictly natural,” Blackstone is only willing to say that “private property is probably founded in nature.” Moreover, Blackstone is clear that there is …
Entender Los Males Económicos Modernos A La Luz De La Doctrina Social Católica, Brian M. Mccall
Entender Los Males Económicos Modernos A La Luz De La Doctrina Social Católica, Brian M. Mccall
Brian M McCall
In a general sense, St. Thomas Aquinas predicted the paralysis and chaos of the financial and economic systems in America and Europe which occurred in 2008, when he predicted that in a society where unjust exchanges dominate, eventually all exchanges will cease. St. Thomas also points out that although human law cannot prohibit all injustice, society cannot escape the consequences of transgressing the divine law which leaves “nothing unpunished.” Thus, at least part of the explanation for that crisis whose effects remain with us today lies in continuous violations of natural justice by our economic system. Neither one product nor …
The Natural Relationship Of Church And State Within The Kingdom Of Christ Based On The Encyclical Immortale Dei Of Pope Leo Xiii, Brian M. Mccall
The Natural Relationship Of Church And State Within The Kingdom Of Christ Based On The Encyclical Immortale Dei Of Pope Leo Xiii, Brian M. Mccall
Brian M McCall
This lecture addresses the natural relationship between Church and State and explains Catholic Social Teaching regarding the organization of civil society.
Rights, Communities, And Tradition, Brian Slattery
Rights, Communities, And Tradition, Brian Slattery
Articles & Book Chapters
This paper argues that there is a close connection between basic human rights and communal bonds. It criticizes the philosophical views of Alan Gewirth and Alasdair MacIntyre, which in differing ways deny this connection.
Allocating Risks And Suffering: Some Hidden Traps, John M. Finnis
Allocating Risks And Suffering: Some Hidden Traps, John M. Finnis
Journal Articles
The economic analysis of which Adam Smith is a principal founder is helpful in practical reasoning about problems of justice precisely insofar as it systematically calls attention to the side-effects of individual choices and actions and behavior. Still, it would be a mistake to conclude that we need only a more adequate account of the benefits and burdens up for distribution or allocation by those responsible for the common good or general fate. We need also to bear in mind what Smith did not forget and what economics does not comprehend, the requirements of commutative justice. To see this, we …
On Reason And Authority In Law's Empire, John M. Finnis
On Reason And Authority In Law's Empire, John M. Finnis
Journal Articles
Law's Empire will shape jurisprudence by its admirably resourceful attention to understanding a community's law "internally". It promotes reflective understanding of the practical argumentation constitutive of the attitude(s) in which that law subsists. But the book neglects some of practical understanding's resources of political and moral theory, and overestimates practical reasoning's power to identify options as the best and the right)
Developments In Judicial Jurisprudence, John M. Finnis
Developments In Judicial Jurisprudence, John M. Finnis
Journal Articles
The purpose of this Comment is to explore briefly the fundamentals of what Prof. H. L. A. Hart has called "the contribution offered by the judges to the jurisprudence of our day", and to indicate in outline the disparity between this contribution and those of the most recent academic writings.
Legal Sanctions, Jerome Hall
Nietzsche, Thomas A. Cowan
Nietzsche, Thomas A. Cowan
Vanderbilt Law Review
I find that the attempt to assess Nietzsche's value to contemporary jurisprudence is fraught with extreme difficulty. Not only was Nietzsche perhaps the most controversial figure in the history of ideas:' this might have happened to one whose message was simple.But in Nietzsche's case the ideas themselves are highly controversial, paradoxical and even "immoral." Like every great thinker Nietzsche was more provocative to his enemies than to his friends. His enemies took their revenge by burying him under a deluge of refutation and abuse. Apparently Nietzsche was guilty of what might be called the crime of "universal treason." He gave …
Book Reviews, Edgar Bodenheimer, Robert S. Lancaster, Stanley D. Rose, Lloyd B. Urdahl
Book Reviews, Edgar Bodenheimer, Robert S. Lancaster, Stanley D. Rose, Lloyd B. Urdahl
Vanderbilt Law Review
The Great Legal Philosophers: Selected Readings in Jurisprudence Edited by Clarence Morris. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1959. Pp. 571. $10.00.
reviewer: Edgar Bodenheimer
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Law as Large as Life: A Natural Law for Today and the Supreme Court as its Prophet By Charles P. Curtis. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1959. $3.50.
reviewer: Robert S. Lancaster
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Cases and Materials on Juriprudence By John C. H. Wu. St.Paul: West Publishing Co. 1960. Pp. xliii, 719. $12.00.
reviewer: Stanley D. Rose
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The Law and Legal Theory of the Greeks: An Introduction By J.Walter Jones. New York: Oxford University Press, …
The Present Position Of Jurisprudence In The United States, Jerome Hall
The Present Position Of Jurisprudence In The United States, Jerome Hall
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.