Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

God In The Machine: A New Structural Analysis Of Copyright's Fair Use Doctrine, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Recognition of the structural role of fair use has the potential to mitigate some of the uncertainty of current fair use jurisprudence. The statutory framework for fair use both mitigates and causes uncertainty. It mitigates uncertainty by providing a consistent framework of analysis the four statutory factors. However, when judges apply the statutory factors without articulating or justifying their own assumptions, they increase uncertainty. The statutory factors mean nothing without certain a priori assumptions as to the scope of the copyright owner's rights. A more stable and predictable fair use jurisprudence would begin to emerge if those assumptions were made …

The Social Foundations Of Law, Martha Albertson Fineman

Faculty Articles

There are several important questions to ask both our politicians and ourselves as we seek to refine and further define an otherwise abstract commitment to substantive equality with which to replace our current formal version. As with many concepts of historic magnitude, some of the most significant questions to pose about equality have to do with how we should respond to evolutions in understanding and changes in aspiration for the term: ls a mere commitment to formal equality sufficient for a humane and modem state? How should the state respond to the fact that our society is increasingly one in …

The Morality Of Human Rights: A Nonreligious Ground?, Michael J. Perry

Faculty Articles

In the midst of the countless, grotesque inhumanities of the twentieth century, however, there is a heartening story, amply recounted elsewhere: the emergence, in international law, of the morality of human rights. The morality of human rights is not new; in one or another version, the morality is very old. But the emergence of morality in international law, in the period since the end of World War II, is a profoundly important development.

The twentieth century, therefore, was not only the dark and bloody time; the second half of the twentieth century was also the time in which a growing …

Deterrence Versus Brutalization: Capital Punishment's Differing Impacts Among States, Joanna M. Shepherd

Faculty Articles

Recent empirical studies by economists have shown, without exception, that capital punishment deters crime. Using large data sets that combine information from all fifty states over many years, the studies show that, on average, an additional execution deters many murders. The studies have received much publicity, and death penalty advocates often cite them to show that capital punishment is sound policy.

Indeed, deterrence is the central basis that many policymakers and courts cite for capital punishment. For example, President Bush believes that capital punishment deters crime and that deterrence is the only valid reason for capital punishment. Likewise, the Supreme …

The Majoritarian Difficulty: Affirmative Action, Sodomy, And Supreme Court Politics, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

This Article challenges liberal and conservative assessments of Lawrence, Gratz, and Grutter. Although the outcome of these cases might indeed prove helpful to the agendas of social movements for racial and sexual justice, progressive scholars and activists should not receive these cases with elation. Instead, the research of constitutional theorists, critical legal scholars, and political scientists allows for a more contextualized and guarded account of and reaction to these decisions. Instead of representing extraordinary victories for oppressed classes, these cases reflect majoritarian and moderate views concerning civil rights, and the opinions contain many doctrinal elements that reinforce, …

The New Prosecution, Kay L. Levine

Faculty Articles

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I introduces the Statutory Rape Vertical Prosecution Program that took shape in California in the mid-1990s. In addition to explaining how this program emerged and its central features, I highlight the aspects of the SRVPP that distinguish California statutory rape prosecutors from the traditional image of the local prosecutor in the United States. Part II offers some background on the new prosecution and the problem-oriented approach to criminal justice, explaining how this model differs from the traditional crime-based or case-based method of criminal justice work. In Part III, I use empirical data derived from …