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James Wilson And The Moral Foundations Of Popular Sovereignty, Ian C. Bartrum

Ian C Bartrum

This paper explores the moral philosophy underlying the constitutional doctrine of popular sovereignty. In particular, it focuses on the Scottish sentimentalism that informed James Wilson’s understanding of that doctrine. Wilson, a transplanted Scotsman, was perhaps the nation’s preeminent lawyer in the middle 1780s. He was one of the most important delegates to the Constitutional Convention, one of the nation’s first law professors, and served as Associate Justice on the first Supreme Court. In these capacities, he developed the most sophisticated and coherent account of popular sovereignty among the founding generation. My initial effort is to enrich our understanding of Wilson’s …

Bridging The Gap Between Intent And Status: A New Framework For Modern Parentage, Yehezkel Margalit

Hezi Margalit

The last few decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the conceptualization and methodologies of determining legal parentage in the U.S. and other countries in the western world. Through various sociological shifts, growing social openness and bio-medical innovations, the traditional definitions of family and parenthood have been dramatically transformed. This transformation has led to an acute and urgent need for legal and social frameworks to regulate the process of determining legal parentage. Moreover, instead of progressing in a piecemeal, ad-hoc manner, the framework for determining legal parentage should be comprehensive. Only a comprehensive solution will address the differing needs of today’s …

From Baby M To Baby M(Anji): Regulating International Surrogacy Agreements, Yehezkel Margalit

Hezi Margalit

In 1985, when Kim Cotton became Britain’s first commercial surrogate mother, Europe was exposed to the issue of surrogacy for the first time on a large scale. Three years later, in 1988, the famous case of Baby M drew the attention of the American public to surrogacy as well. These two cases implicated fundamental ethical and legal issues regarding domestic surrogacy and triggered a fierce debate about motherhood, child-bearing, and the relationship between procreation, science and commerce. These two cases exemplified the debate regarding domestic surrogacy - a debate that has now been raging for decades. Contrary to the well-known …

Using Social Norms As A Substitute For Law, Bryan H. Druzin

Bryan H. Druzin

Can Dna Be Speech?, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

Democracy And Torture, Patrick A. Maurer

Patrick A Maurer

September 11th spawned an era of political changes to fundamental rights. The focus of this discussion is to highlight Guantanamo Bay torture incidents. This analysis will explore the usages of torture from a legal standpoint in the United States.

Mindful Justice: The Search For Gandhi’S Sympathetic State After Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

One of the most startling examples of unmitigated disaster occurred in Bhopal, India, in 1984, when a Union Carbide pesticide plant exploded tons of methyl isocyanate into the air, killing 3800 people overnight. 30 years later, the plant site has not been remediated, and the estimated death toll from the explosion now has reached over 20,000. Disaster victims repeatedly have sought relief directly from the government. Yet, the Indian and US governments and Union Carbide have refused to provide the necessary resources for proper remediation. In this Article, I examine the state’s response to the Bhopal disaster using the thought …

Hegelian Dialectical Analysis Of United States Election Laws, Charles E. A. Lincoln Iv

Charles E. A. Lincoln IV

This Article uses the dialectical ideas of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1833) in application to the progression of United States voting laws since the founding. This analysis can be used to interpret past progression of voting rights in the US as well as a provoking way to predict the future trends in US voting rights. First, Hegel’s dialectical method is established as a major premise. Second, the general accepted history of United States voting laws from the 1770s to the current day is laid out as a minor premise. Third, the major premise of Hegel’s dialectical method weaves …

Do We Know How To Punish?, Benjamin L. Apt

Benjamin L. Apt

A number of current theories attempt to explain the purpose and need for criminal punishment. All of them depend on some sort of normative basis in justifying why the state may penalize people found guilty of crimes. Yet each of these theories lacks an epistemological foundation; none of them explains how we can know what form punishments should take. The article analyses the epistemological gaps in the predominant theories of punishment: retributivism, including limited-retributivism; and consequentialism in its various versions, ranging from deterrence to the reparative theories such as restorative justice and rehabilitation. It demonstrates that the common putative epistemological …

Public Actors In Private Markets: Toward A Developmental Finance State, Robert Hockett, Saule Omarova

Saule T. Omarova

The recent financial crisis brought into sharp relief fundamental questions about the social function and purpose of the financial system, including its relation to the “real” economy. This Article argues that, to answer these questions, we must recapture a distinctively American view of the proper relations among state, financial market, and development. This programmatic vision – captured in what we call a “developmental finance state” – is based on three key propositions: (1) that economic and social development is not an “end-state” but a continuing national policy priority; (2) that the modalities of finance are the most potent means of …

Cleaning The Muck Of Ages From The Windows Into The Soul Of Income Tax, John Passant

John Passant

The aim of this paper is to provide readers with an insight into Marx’s methods as a first step to understanding income tax more generally but with specific reference to Australia’s income tax system. I do this by introducing readers to the ideas about the totality that is capitalism, appearance and form, and the dialectic in Marx’s hands. This will involve looking at income tax as part of the bigger picture of capitalism, and understanding that all things are related and changes in one produce changes in all. Appearances can be deceptive and we need to delve below the surface …

Putting The Democracy In Democracy And Distrust: The Coherentist Case For Representation Reinforcement, Michael C. Dorf

Michael C. Dorf

Nearly a quarter of a century after its publication, Democracy and Distrust remains the single most perceptive justificatory account of the work of the Warren Court and modern constitutional law more broadly. Yet, the continuing influence of John Hart Ely’s process theory of American constitutional law may seem surprising, given that the account has been incisively criticized as both too limited and too sweeping. Beginning with Laurence Tribe’s "Puzzling Persistence of Process-Based Constitutional Theories" and culminating in the work of Ronald Dworkin and others, critics have argued that the representation-reinforcing approach to interpreting the Constitution is no less laden with …

Through The Lens Of Innovation, Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Mirit Eyal-Cohen

The legal system constantly follows the footsteps of innovation and attempts to discourage its migration overseas. Yet, present legal rules that inform and explain entrepreneurial circumstances lack a core understanding of the concept of innovation. By its nature, law imposes order. It provides rules, remedies, and classifications that direct behavior in a consistent manner. Innovation turns on the contrary. It entails making creative judgments about the unknown. It involves adapting to disarray. It thrives on deviations as opposed to traditional causation. This Article argues that these differences matter. It demonstrates that current laws lock entrepreneurs into inefficient legal routes. Using …

The Neomercantilist Fallacy And The Contextual Reality Of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Philip Nichols

Philip M. Nichols

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is domestic legislation and should be analyzed as such. This article addresses a persistent failure in analysis of the Act, by scholars and policymakers alike. Many discussions of the Act approach it from a neomercantilist perspective. This approach contains three flaws. First, whereas neomercantilism envisions manipulation of the market to give advantage to national champion industries, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was adopted for the purpose of strengthening and enhancing the integrity of the global market. A neomercantilist perspective is contrary to the purpose of the Act. Second, this article shows that neomercantilism fundamentally misunderstands …

Protecting Marine Biodiversity In Latin America Through Area-Based Fisheries Regulation, Xiao Recio-Blanco

Xiao Recio-Blanco

Governments all around the world have addressed the challenge of marine resources management enacting laws and enforcing public policies. To date, most of these initiatives have failed. In Latin America, sophisticated environmental protection statutes are already in place. Unfortunately, these statutes are largely overlooked by sea users and government officials. Lack of compliance has become the most significant hurdle to the sustainable use of Latin America’s marine resources.

Recently, governments and Non-Governmental Organizations in Latin America have showed increased interest in Marine Spatial Planning (MSP). MSP is a process that analyzes the spatial distribution of human activities at sea. The …

Ferguson, The Rebellious Law Professor, And The Neoliberal University, Harold A. Mcdougall Iii

Harold A. McDougall III

Neoliberalism, a business-oriented ideology promoting corporatism, profit-seeking, and elite management, has found its way into the modern American university. As neoliberal ideology envelops university campuses, the idea of law professors as learned academicians and advisors to students as citizens in training, has given way to the concept of professors as brokers of marketable skills with students as consumers. In a legal setting, this concept pushes law students to view their education not as a means to contribute to society and the professional field, but rather as a means to make money. These developments are especially problematic for minority students and …

The Rise Of Judicial Governance In The Supreme Court Of India, Manoj Mate

Manoj S. Mate

One Small Problem With Administrative Driver’S License Suspension Laws: They Don’T Reduce Drunken Driving, Steve R. Darnell

Steve R Darnell

Only eight states continue to rely on the judicial system to suspend a drunken driver’s license instead of an administrative process. Federal agencies and special interest groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety press for Administrative License Suspension (ALS) laws arguing these laws reduce drunken driving. While some research supports this view, there is an equally and more compelling literature indicating ALS laws are not effective in reducing drunken driving. This study analyzed data from eight states that have adopted ALS laws to determine if the ALS laws reduced drunken driving. A …

Deployment Of Geoengineering By The Private And Public Sector: Can The Risks Of Geoengineering Ever Be Effectively Regulated?, Daniela E. Lai

Daniela E Lai

Geoengineering has been described as any large-scale environmental manipulation designed with the purpose of mitigating the effects of climate change without decreasing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Currently there are no specific rules regulating geoengineering activities particularly if geoengineering is deployed in areas beyond national jurisdiction. This article argues that, in order to mitigate the risks of geoengineering, there needs to be effective regulation of its deployment both in international and domestic law. The risks of geoengineering can only be effectively regulated if there is international cooperation between all levels of governments and private individuals involved in the research and development …

A Government Of Laws Not Of Precedents 1776-1876: The Google Challenge To Common Law Myth, James Maxeiner

James R Maxeiner

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States is a common law country of precedents where, until the 20th century (the “Age of Statutes”), statutes had little role. Digitization by Google and others of previously hard to find legal works of the 19th century challenges this common law myth. At the Centennial in 1876 Americans celebrated that “The great fact in the progress of American jurisprudence … is its tendency towards organic statute law and towards the systematizing of law; in other words, towards written constitutions and codification.” This article tests the claim of the Centennial Writers of 1876 and finds …

Duty To Revolt, Katherine Crabtree

Katherine Crabtree

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights not only prescribes universal rights but also individual duties, stating “everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.” This paper examines the nature of the right to revolution and considers whether an individual’s duty to uphold human rights includes a moral duty to revolt when the current social structure permits or requires intolerable systematic human rights violations. Four subsections discuss (1) the development and nature of disciplinary power that a government imposes on citizens in order to force conformity to the laws, (2) …

Dog Whistling, The Color-Blind Jurisprudential Regime And The Constitutional Politics Of Race, Calvin J. Terbeek

Calvin J TerBeek

Ian Haney Lopez’s new book, "Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class", has a provocative thesis. Lopez contends that dog-whistling, that is, coded racial rhetoric, “explains how politicians backed by concentrated wealth manipulate racial appeals to win elections and also to win support for regressive policies that help corporations and the super-rich, and in the process wreck the middle class." Though this may seem plausible enough, the thesis cannot stand up to scrutiny; the relevant political science literature provides no support for this. What is more, Lopez's treatment of the Supreme Court's …

Redefining Terrorism: The Danger Of Misunderstanding The Modern World's Gravest Threat, Jennifer Breedon

Jennifer Breedon

No abstract provided.

Conscience And Complicity: Assessing Pleas For Religious Exemptions After Hobby Lobby, Amy Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

In the paradigmatic case of conscientious objection, the objector claims that his religion forbids him from actively participating in a wrong (e.g., by fighting in a war). In the religious challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, on the other hand, employers claim that their religious convictions forbid them from merely subsidizing insurance through which their employees might commit a wrong (e.g., by using contraception). The understanding of complicity underpinning these challenges is vastly more expansive than what standard legal doctrine or moral theory contemplates. Courts routinely reject claims of conscientious objection to taxes that fund military initiatives, or …

A Quantum Congress, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing. To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …

The Impossibility Of A Prescriptive Paretian, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Most normatively oriented economists appear to be “welfarist” and Paretian to one degree or another: They deem responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the Pareto criteria, to be a desirable attribute of any social welfare function. I show that no strictly “welfarist” or Paretian social welfare function can be normatively prescriptive. Economists who prescribe must embrace at least one value apart from or additional to “welfarism” and Paretianism, and in fact will do best to dispense with Pareto entirely.

The Future Of Polyamorous Marriage: Lessons From The Marriage Equality Struggle, Hadar Aviram, Gwendolyn Manriquez Leachman

Hadar Aviram

Amidst the recent legal victories and growing public support for same-sex marriage, numerous polyamorous individuals have expressed interest in pursuing legal recognition for marriages between more than two consenting adults. This Article explores the possibilities that exist for such a polyamorous marriage equality campaign, in light of the theoretical literature on law and social movements, as well as our own original and secondary research on polyamorous and LGBT communities. Among other issues, we examine the prospect of prioritizing the marriage struggle over other forms of nonmarital relationship recognition; pragmatic regulative challenges, like taxation, healthcare, and immigration; and how law and …

On The Public-Law Character Of Competition Law: A Lesson Of Asian Capitalism, Michael Dowdle

Michael Dowdle

This article argues that competition law is best seen as a form of public law – ‘the law that governs the governing of the state – and not as simply a form of private market regulation. It uses the experiences of ‘Asian capitalism’ to show how capitalist economies are in fact much more variegated than the orthodox model of competition law presumes, and that this variegated character demands a form of regulation that is innately political rather than simply technical. Orthodox competition regimes address this complexity by segregating non-standard capitalisms into alternative doctrinal jurisprudences, but this renders conceptually invisible the …