Rule of Law Commons^™

The Foundations Of Liberty, Lawrence B. Solum

Michigan Law Review

Randy Barnett's The Structure of Liberty is an ambitious book. The task that Barnett sets himself is to offer an original and persuasive argument for a libertarian political theory, a theory that challenges the legitimacy of the central institutions of the modern regulatory-welfare state. The Structure of Liberty is that rare creature, a book that delivers on most of the promises it makes. Already the book is on its way to becoming a contemporary classic, the successor in interest to Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia as a source of ideas and arguments for the revitalization of an important intellectual …

Justifiably Punishing The Justified, Heidi M. Hurd

Michigan Law Review

Contemporary moral philosophy, political theory, and jurisprudence have converged to create a quite baffling dilemma. This dilemma is generated by the apparent incompatibility of three principles, each of which grounds features of our system of law and government, and each of which carries substantial normative weight. The first I shall call the punishment principle - a moral principle, doctrinally entrenched in American criminal and civil law, which holds that individuals who are morally justified in their actions ought not to be blamed or punished for those actions. The second is the principle of the rule of law - a complex …

Moral Responsibility In The Age Of Bureaucracy, David Luban, Alan Strudler, David Wasserman

Michigan Law Review

No twentieth-century writer has thought so deeply, or so yearningly, about natural law as Franz Kafka. Kafka's is a world in which we seek desperately to know the natural law that is sovereign in human affairs but find that knowledge of the law is withheld from us. For this reason, we lead our lives in a state of, if not original sin, then original guilt - guilt for violating the law, or perhaps guilt for not knowing the law, despite the fact that we wish to know it.

The Trial is Kafka's greatest elaboration of this theme. Joseph K. is …

Are Charges Against The Moral Character Of A Candidate For An Elective Office Conditionally Privileged, Jeremiah Smith

Michigan Law Review

Is candidacy for an elective office such a special occasion as to confer conditional privilege (prima facie protection) upon charges affecting the moral character of the candidate?