Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Public Law and Legal Theory Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 20 of 20

Full-Text Articles in Public Law and Legal Theory

Book Review: Studies In Roman Law In Memory Of A. Arthur Schiller, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1986. By Roger S. Bagnall And William V. Harris. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill Co., 1986., Richard J. Cummins Dec 2014

Book Review: Studies In Roman Law In Memory Of A. Arthur Schiller, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1986. By Roger S. Bagnall And William V. Harris. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill Co., 1986., Richard J. Cummins

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.


Hope In The Law, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Hope In The Law, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

No abstract provided.


Ser Y Tiempo Jurídicos (Juridical Being And Time), Juan Carlos Riofrío Martínez-Villalba Oct 2014

Ser Y Tiempo Jurídicos (Juridical Being And Time), Juan Carlos Riofrío Martínez-Villalba

Juan Carlos Riofrío Martínez-Villalba

El estudio contiene una profundización metafísica del análisis de la dinámica jurídica. Para explicarla se aplican los poderosos conceptos griegos de ser y potencia, con los que los antiguos pudieron resolver el problema del tiempo y del cambio cósmico. Por eso el artículo comienza modulando para el derecho estas nociones griegas, de los cuales resultan los conceptos metafísicos de “ser jurídico” y “potencia jurídica”, para luego arribar al concepto de “espacio jurídico”. Con esta triada de nociones se puede, entonces, resolver el tema del cambio y el tiempo jurídico, como se hace al final del trabajo.

This article contains a …


Punitive Injunctions, Nirej S. Sekhon Oct 2014

Punitive Injunctions, Nirej S. Sekhon

Nirej Sekhon

No abstract provided.


Truth, Deterrence, And The Impeachment Exception , James L. Kainen Aug 2014

Truth, Deterrence, And The Impeachment Exception , James L. Kainen

James L. Kainen

James v. Illinois permits illegally-obtained evidence to impeach defendants, but not defense witnesses. Thus far, all courts have construed James to allow impeachment of defendants' hearsay declarations. This article argues against allowing illegally-obtained evidence to impeach defendants' hearsay declarations because doing so unduly diminishes the exclusionary rule's deterrent effect. The distinction between impeaching defendants and defense witnesses disappears when courts allow prosecutors to impeach defendants' hearsay declarations. Because defense witnesses report exculpatory conduct of a defendant who always has a substantial interest in disguising his criminality, their testimony routinely incorporates defendant hearsay. Defense witness testimony thus routinely paves the way …


A Revolution At War With Itself? Preserving Employment Preferences From Weber To Ricci, Sophia Z. Lee Jun 2014

A Revolution At War With Itself? Preserving Employment Preferences From Weber To Ricci, Sophia Z. Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

Two aspects of the constitutional transformation Bruce Ackerman describes in The Civil Rights Revolution were on a collision course, one whose trajectory has implications for Ackerman’s account and for his broader theory of constitutional change. Ackerman makes a compelling case that what he terms “reverse state action” (the targeting of private actors) and “government by numbers” (the use of statistics to identify and remedy violations of civil rights laws) defined the civil rights revolution. Together they “requir[ed] private actors, as well as state officials, to . . . realize the principles of constitutional equality” and allowed the federal government to …


Tell Us A Story, But Don't Make It A Good One: Resolving The Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories And Federal Rule Of Evidence 403, Cathren Page Feb 2014

Tell Us A Story, But Don't Make It A Good One: Resolving The Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories And Federal Rule Of Evidence 403, Cathren Page

Cathren Page

Abstract: Tell Us a Story, But Don’t Make It A Good One: Resolving the Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories and Federal Rule of Evidence 403 by Cathren Koehlert-Page Courts need to reword their opinions regarding Rule 403 to address the tension between the advice to tell an emotionally evocative story at trial and the notion that evidence can be excluded if it is too emotional. In the murder mystery Mystic River, Dave Boyle is kidnapped in the beginning. The audience feels empathy for Dave who as an adult becomes one of the main suspects in the murder of his friend Jimmy’s …


The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson Jan 2014

The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson

Hillary A Henderson

Copyright law rewards an artificial monopoly to individual authors for their creations. This reward is based on the belief that, by granting authors the exclusive right to reproduce their works, they receive an incentive and means to create, which in turn advances the welfare of the general public by “promoting the progress of science and useful arts.” Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or …


Radbruch On The Origins Of The Criminal Law: Punitive Interventions Before Sovereignty, Mireille Hildebrandt Jan 2014

Radbruch On The Origins Of The Criminal Law: Punitive Interventions Before Sovereignty, Mireille Hildebrandt

Mireille Hildebrandt

This chapter is dedicated to Radbruch’s seminal text on ‘The origin of criminal law in the class of serfs’. It contains a number of counter intuitive insights on the relationship between public punishment and private revenge, derived from the domains of legal history and anthropological research in non-state societies. Radbruch’s aim was not to provide a historiography of punitive interventions in tribal Germanic society, but to remind his readers of the constitutive importance of sovereignty for the emergence of criminal law. This relates to Radbruch’s concern for legal certainty, and explains his inquiries into the continuity and discontinuities between the …


The Aboriginal Constitution, Brian Slattery Jan 2014

The Aboriginal Constitution, Brian Slattery

Brian Slattery

In a remarkable series of cases over the past decade, from Haida Nation to Manitoba Métis Federation, the Supreme Court of Canada has thrown a strong light on three basic elements of Aboriginal law: the honour of the Crown, the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and Aboriginal Treaties. This paper argues that these form the framework of the Aboriginal Constitution, which parallels the Federal Pact between the Provinces in the Constitution Act, 1867. Indeed, the Aboriginal Constitution provides the Constitution of Canada with its most ancient and enduring roots.


Constitutional Skepticism: A Recovery And Preliminary Evaluation, Louis Michael Seidman Jan 2014

Constitutional Skepticism: A Recovery And Preliminary Evaluation, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The aim of this article is to recover and reevaluate the American tradition of constitutional skepticism. Part I consists of a brief history of skepticism running from before the founding to the modern period. My aim here is not to provide anything like a complete description of the historical actors, texts, and events that I discuss. Instead, I link together familiar episodes and arguments that stretch across our history so as to demonstrate that they are part of a common narrative that has been crucial to our self-identity. Part II disentangles the various strands of skeptical argument. I argue that …


Discretion In Class Certification, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jan 2014

Discretion In Class Certification, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

A district court has broad discretion in deciding whether a suit may be maintained as a class action. Variations on this phrase populate the class action jurisprudence of the federal courts. The power of the federal courts to exercise discretion when deciding whether to permit a suit to proceed as a class action has long been treated as an elemental component of a representative proceeding. It is therefore cause for surprise that there is no broad consensus regarding the nature and definition of this judicial discretion in the certification process. The federal courts have not coalesced around a clear or …


No Alternative: Resolving Disputes Japanese Style, Eric Feldman Jan 2014

No Alternative: Resolving Disputes Japanese Style, Eric Feldman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article critiques the simple black/white categorisation of mainstream versus alternative dispute resolution, and argues that what is needed is a cartography of dispute resolution institutions that maps the full range of approaches and traces their interaction. It sketches the first lines of such a map by describing two examples of conflict resolution in Japan. Neither can justly be called “alternative”, yet neither fits the mould of what might be called mainstream or classical dispute resolution. One, judicial settlement, focuses on process; the other, compensating victims of the Fukushima disaster, engages a specific event. Together, they help to illustrate why …


The Limits Of Textualism In Interpreting The Confrontation Clause, Stephanos Bibas Jan 2014

The Limits Of Textualism In Interpreting The Confrontation Clause, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Brainerd Currie’S Contribution To Choice Of Law: Looking Back, Looking Forward, Kermit Roosevelt Iii Jan 2014

Brainerd Currie’S Contribution To Choice Of Law: Looking Back, Looking Forward, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Introduction To The Workplace Constitution From The New Deal To The New Right, Sophia Z. Lee Jan 2014

Introduction To The Workplace Constitution From The New Deal To The New Right, Sophia Z. Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

Today, most American workers do not have constitutional rights on the job. As The Workplace Constitution shows, this outcome was far from inevitable. Instead, American workers have a long history of fighting for such rights. Beginning in the 1930s, civil rights advocates sought constitutional protections against racial discrimination by employers and unions. At the same time, a conservative right-to-work movement argued that the Constitution protected workers from having to join or support unions. Those two movements, with their shared aim of extending constitutional protections to American workers, were a potentially powerful combination. But they sought to use those protections to …


The Scalpel And The Salve: Rekindling Romantic Realism, Daniel Farbman Dec 2013

The Scalpel And The Salve: Rekindling Romantic Realism, Daniel Farbman

Dan Farbman

This essay argues that the legal realists were romantics in the tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It traces this intellectual genealogy through perspective, vocabulary, and rhetorical strategy. In doing this work, it concludes that Hanoch Dagan’s proposal to reconstruct legal realism does not go far enough. He paints a picture of a therapeutic contemporary use of realist thought (the salve), but gives short shrift to the destructive energy at the core of the movement (the scalpel). Recasting the realists as romantics suggests that the lessons that we might take from them for contemporary legal theory are better framed as “rekindling” …


The First Thing We Do, Jorge R. Roig Dec 2013

The First Thing We Do, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

There is currently a concerted effort to dumb down America. In the midst of this, the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar recently agreed to propose that tenure for law professors be eliminated as a requirement for accreditation of law schools. This article analyzes the arguments for and against tenure in legal academia, and concludes that the main proposed justifications for eliminating tenure are highly questionable, at best. A lawyer is more than a legal technocrat. Lawyers are policy makers and public defenders. They are prosecutors and activists. And the development …


The Mask Of Virtue: Theories Of Aretaic Legislation In A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2013

The Mask Of Virtue: Theories Of Aretaic Legislation In A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Article is a first-of-its-kind application of public choice theory to recently developing theories of virtue jurisprudence. Particularly, this Article focuses on not-yet-developed theories of aretaic (or virtue-centered) legislation. This Article speculates what the contours of such theories might be and analyzes the production of such legislation through a public choice lens. Any virtue jurisprudence theory as applied to legislation would likely demand that the proper ends of legislation be deemed as “the promotion of human flourishing” and the same would constitute the test by which we would determine the legitimacy of any legislation. As noble as virtuous behavior, virtuous …


Public Lands And The Federal Government’S Compact-Based “Duty To Dispose”: A Case Study Of Utah’S H.B. 148 – The Transfer Of Public Lands Act, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2013

Public Lands And The Federal Government’S Compact-Based “Duty To Dispose”: A Case Study Of Utah’S H.B. 148 – The Transfer Of Public Lands Act, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Recent legislation passed in March 2012 in the State of Utah — the “Transfer of Public Lands Act and Related Study,” (“TPLA”) also commonly referred to as House Bill 148 (“H.B. 148”) — has demanded that the federal government, by December 31, 2014, “extinguish title” to certain public lands that the federal government currently holds (totaling an estimated more than 20 million acres). It also calls for the transfer of such acreage to the State and establishes procedures for the development of a management regime for this increased state portfolio of land holdings resulting from the transfer. The State of …