Political Theory Commons^™

The Rule Of Law: A Reassessment For The Twenty-First Century, Noel B. Reynolds

Noel B Reynolds

This brief radio address attempts to explain the origins of American liberty and to assess its health at the beginning of the 21st century. The notion of rule of law and the emerging science of constitutionalism enabled America’s founding generation to establish a system of political liberty that continues to stand as a model for all human societies to pursue.

The Mote In Thy Brother’S Eye: A Review Of Human Rights As Politics And Idolatry, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Michael Ignatieffs provocatively titled collection of essays, Human Rights As Politics and Idolatry [hereinafter Human Rights], is a careful examination of the theoretical underpinnings and contradictions in the area of human rights. At bottom, both of his primary essays, Human Rights As Politics and Human Rights As Idolatry, make a claim that is perhaps contrary to the instincts of human rights thinkers and activists: namely, that international human rights can best be philosophically justified and effectively applied to the extent that they strive for minimal ism. Human rights activists generally argue for the opposite conclusion: that international human rights be …

Opening The Dichotomy Of Universalism And Relativism, Chih-Yu Shih

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Negotiating Culture and Human Rights edited by Linda S. Bell, Andrew J. Nathan and Ilan Peleg. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 428 pp.

and

East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia by Daniel A. Bell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 369 pp.

The Positive Political Theory Of Cost-Benefit Analysis: A Comment On Johnston, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Democracy And Legitimation: A Response To Professor Guinier, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is a response to Supreme Democracy: Bush v. Gore Redux, an essay by Lani Guinier (2002).

The author critiques Professor Lani Guinier’s essay through a discussion of the maldistribution of wealth in American society, which he argues is accepted by American people thanks to the existence complex structures that allow them to distance themselves from it. He discusses four legitimation structures as he critiques this essay.

Professor Guinier focuses on the belief in meritocracy. For our purposes, we might define a believer in meritocracy as someone who thinks that, in a given society, people get more or less …

Legal Theory And The Rule Of Law, Noel B. Reynolds

Noel B Reynolds

In "Legal Theory and the Rule of Law" Noel Reynolds maintains that the rule of law can be understood as a set of conditions that rational actors would impose on any authority they would create to act in their stead in creating and administering legally binding rules. The authority and obligation associated with law derive from this fundamental convention, and the principles of the rule of law are the conditions of that agreement, which become thereby governing principles to which legislatures, judges, and enforcement agencies can be held in their official actions. These generally recognized standards are inherent in this …