Digital Commons Network^™

Doctrinal Reasoning As A Disruptive Practice, Jessie Allen

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Legal doctrine is generally thought to contribute to legal decision making only to the extent it determines substantive results. Yet in many cases, the available authorities are indeterminate. I propose a different model for how doctrinal reasoning might contribute to judicial decisions. Drawing on performance theory and psychological studies of readers, I argue that judges’ engagement with formal legal doctrine might have self-disrupting effects like those performers experience when they adopt uncharacteristic behaviors. Such disruptive effects would not explain how judges ultimately select, or should select, legal results. But they might help legal decision makers to set aside subjective biases.

Mitochondrial Dna Replacement: Moral And Halakhic Concerns, J. David Bleich

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Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), transmitted from mother to child, have their own genetic code that may cause debilitating genetic diseases. To prevent such unfortunate occurrences, researchers have developed a process enabling them to completely replace an ovum’s mitochondria with mitochondria contributed by a donor. Children born by use of this method have genetic material from both the mitochondrial donor and the birth mother; they are “three-parent babies.” Resultant medical, ethical, legal and theological problems are obvious.

Moreover, this technology may pose significant risks to neonates born of such procedures. Certainly no person has the right to cause harm to a fellow …

Value Hypocrisy And Policy Sincerity: A Food Law Case Study, Joshua Galperin

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It is tempting to say that in 2017 there is a unique problem of hypocrisy in politics, where words and behaviors are so often in opposition. In fact, hypocrisy is nothing new. A robust legal and psychological literature on the importance of procedural justice demonstrates a longstanding concern with developing more just governing processes. One of the important features of this scholarship is that it does not focus only on the consequences of policymaking, in which behaviors, but not words, are relevant. Instead, it respects the intrinsic importance of fair process, lending credence not only to votes but also to …

A Theory Of Copyright Authorship, Christopher Buccafusco

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The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to grant rights to “Authors” for their “Writings.” Despite the centrality of these terms to copyright jurisprudence, neither the courts nor scholars have provided coherent theories about what makes a person an author or what makes a thing a writing. This article articulates and defends a theory of copyrightable authorship. It argues that authorship involves the intentional creation of mental effects in an audience. A writing, then, is any fixed medium capable of producing mental effects. According to this theory, copyright may attach to the original, fixed, and minimally creative form or manner …

Empirical Doctrine, Jessie Allen

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We can observe and measure how legal decision makers use formal legal authorities, but there is no way to empirically test the determinative capacity of legal doctrine itself. Yet, discussions of empirical studies of judicial behavior sometimes conflate judges’ attention to legal rules with legal rules determining outcomes. Doctrinal determinacy is not the same thing as legal predictability. The extent to which legal outcomes are predictable in given contexts is surely testable empirically. But the idea that doctrine’s capacity to produce or limit those outcomes can be measured empirically is fundamentally misguided. The problem is that to measure doctrinal determinacy, …

Abortion Distortions, Caroline Mala Corbin

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No abstract provided.

Law And Artifice In Blackstone's Commentaries, Jessie Allen

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William Blackstone is often identified as a natural law thinker for whom property rights were preeminent, but reading the Commentaries complicates that description. I propose that Blackstone’s concept of law is more concerned with human invention and artifice than with human nature. At the start of his treatise, Blackstone identifies security, liberty and property as “absolute” rights that form the foundation of English law. But while security and liberty are “inherent by nature in every individual” and “strictly natural,” Blackstone is only willing to say that “private property is probably founded in nature.” Moreover, Blackstone is clear that there is …

The Promises Of Freedom: The Contemporary Relevance Of The Thirteenth Amendment, William M. Carter Jr.

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This article, an expanded version of the author's remarks at the 2013 Honorable Clifford Scott Green Lecture at the Temple University Beasley School of Law, illuminates the history and the context of the Thirteenth Amendment. This article contends that the full scope of the Thirteenth Amendment has yet to be realized and offers reflections on why it remains an underenforced constitutional norm. Finally, this article demonstrates the relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment to addressing contemporary forms of racial inequality and subordination.

Effect Precedes Cause: Kant And The Self-In-Itself, David G. Carlson

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This article describes the metaphysics of Kant, according to which we never know the Thing In Itself but only the appearance of it. When applied to selfhood (which is a “thing”), Kant implies that we never know what motivates us to do what we do. Our reasons are after-the-fact apologies to justify our acts. For that reason the “cause” of our deed always (that is to say, our reasons) follows the deed itself. Effect precedes cause, on Kantian metaphysics.

The Persistence Of Proximate Cause: How Legal Doctrine Thrives On Skepticism, Jessie Allen

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This Article starts with a puzzle: Why is the doctrinal approach to “proximate cause” so resilient despite longstanding criticism? Proximate cause is a particularly extreme example of doctrine that limps along despite near universal consensus that it cannot actually determine legal outcomes. Why doesn’t that widely recognized indeterminacy disable proximate cause as a decision-making device? To address this puzzle, I pick up a cue from the legal realists, a group of skeptical lawyers, law professors, and judges, who, in the 1920s and 1930s, compared legal doctrine to ritual magic. I take that comparison seriously, perhaps more seriously, and definitely in …

The First Principles Of Standing: Privilege, System Justification, And The Predictable Incoherence Of Article Iii, Christian Sundquist

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This Article examines the indeterminacy of standing doctrine by deconstructing recent desegregation, affirmative action, and racial profiling cases. This examination is an attempt to uncover the often unstated meta-principles that guide standing jurisprudence. The Article contends that the inherent indeterminacy of standing law can be understood as reflecting an unstated desire to protect racial and class privilege, which is accomplished through the dogma of individualism, equal opportunity (liberty), and “white innocence.” Relying on insights from System Justification Theory, a burgeoning field of social psychology, the Article argues that the seemingly incoherent results in racial standing cases can be understood as …

Seeing Subtle Racism, Pat K. Chew

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Traditional employment discrimination law does not offer remedies for subtle bias in the workplace. For instance, in empirical studies of racial harassment cases, plaintiffs are much more likely to be successful if they claim egregious and blatant racist incidents rather than more subtle examples of racial intimidation, humiliation, or exclusion. But some groundbreaking jurists are cognizant of the reality and harm of subtle bias - and are acknowledging them in their analysis in racial harassment cases. While not yet widely recognized, the jurists are nonetheless creating important precedents for a re-interpretation of racial harassment jurisprudence, and by extension, employment discrimination …

A Theory Of Adjudication: Law As Magic, Jessie Allen

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This article takes a new approach to the problem of legal rationality. In the 1920s and 1930s the Legal Realists criticized judicial decisions as "magic solving words" and "word ritual." Though the Realist critique continues to shape American jurisprudence, the legal magic they observed has never been seriously explored. Here, drawing on anthropological studies of magic and ritual, I reconsider the irrational legal techniques the Realists exposed. My thesis is that the Realists were right that law works like magic, but wrong about how magic works. That is, they were right that adjudication makes use of a particular combination of …

Second Annual Culp Latcrit Lecture The Constitution Of Terror: Big Lies, Backlash Jurisprudence, And The Rule Of Law In The United States Today, Francisco Valdes

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No abstract provided.

Jurisprudential Schizophrenia: On Form And Function In Islamic Finance, Haider Ala Hamoudi

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Despite its explosive growth over the past several decades, Islamic finance continues to have trouble attracting large numbers of otherwise pious Muslims as potential investors. The underlying reason for this is that the means that the practice employs to circumvent some of the central Muslim bans relating to finance (most notably, the ban on interest) are entirely formal in their structure and are equivalent to conventional structures both legally and economically. However, the practice purports to serve functional ends; namely, through offering Muslims alternative means of finance that are intended to further Islamic ideals of fairness and social justice. This …

Freeing Racial Harassment From The Sexual Harassment Model, Pat K. Chew

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Judges, academics, and lawyers alike base their legal analyses of workplace racial harassment on the sexual harassment model. Legal principles derived from sexual harassment jurisprudence are presumed to be equally appropriate for racial harassment cases. The implicit assumption is that the social harms and public policy goals of racial harassment and sexual harassment are sufficiently similar to justify analogous scrutiny and remedies. Parties to racial harassment cases cite the reasoning and elements of sexual harassment cases without hesitation, as if racial harassment and sexual harassment are behaviorally and legally indistinguishable.

This Article, however, questions the assumption that there should be …

Unwrapping Racial Harassment Law, Pat K. Chew

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This article is based on a pioneering empirical study of racial harassment in the workplace in which we statistically analyze federal court opinions from 1976 to 2002. Part I offers an overview of racial harassment law and research, noting its common origin with and its close dependence upon sexual harassment legal jurisprudence. In order to put the study's analysis in context, Part I describes the dispute resolution process from which racial harassment cases arise.

Parts II and III present a clear picture of how racial harassment law has played out in the courts - who are the plaintiffs and defendants, …

Nationalizing Trademarks: A New International Trademark Jurisprudence?, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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A new international trademark jurisprudence is currently in formation that has negative impact on international trade. Indeed, this new trademark jurisprudence includes the recent phenomenon of states monopolizing the use of generic names through the elevation of such names to trademarks of national stature and the rise of global recognition and registration of geographic indication status for generic names. Professor Nguyen identifies and analyzes the new trademark jurisprudence, and critiques its impact on international trade relations and language propertization. Professor Nguyen proposes a certification mark regime to end the expansion of generic name protection and to promote fair competition.

Why Are There Four Hegelian Judgments, David G. Carlson

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Hegel is the philosopher of threes. His entire system is triune: logic-nature-spirit. Within the logic is a triune structure: being, essence, notion. Within notion there is a triad: subject-object-idea. Within subjectivity, there is a triad: notion, judgment, syllogism. Yet when we examine Hegel's critique of judgment, there are four (not three): inherence-reflection-necessity-notion.

This paper tries to explain why this is so. There is a disturbing element present at all times in Hegel's logic - what Slavoj Zizek named a silent fourth, which erupts and manifests itself in judgment. This paper refines and justifies Zizek's insight, arguing from the text of …

Hegel’S Theory Of Measure, David G. Carlson

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The final segment in Hegel's analysis of "being" is measure - the unity of quality and quantity. At stake in these chapters is the difference between quantitative and qualitative change. A being or thing is indifferent to quantitative change, which comes from the outside. For instance, a legislature can increase the stringency of zoning regulations, and yet the legislation is still constitutional "zoning." But there comes a point at which quantitative change effects a qualitative change - zoning becomes an uncompensated "taking" of property. This paper analyzes how Hegel, in the "Science of Logic," derives measure from the categories of …

The Traumatic Dimension In Law, David G. Carlson

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This paper applies Jacques Lacan's theory of retrospective cause to the jurisprudence of H.L.A. Hart and his followers. The thesis is that "effect" (judicial decision) precedes "cause" (law). The proper tense for legal discourse is, therefore, future anterior. The following points follow from this: (1) Positivism asserts that law is not necessarily connected to morality, but this is a priori wrong. Law wishes to be separate from morality, but it necessarily fails. (2) The theory vindicates Dworkin's notorious "right answers" theory, but makes the additional point that there is only one answer: you are guilty; you failed to conform to …

The Physician As A Conscientious Objector, J. David Bleich

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No abstract provided.

Cyberproperty And Judicial Dissonance: The Trouble With Domain Name Classification, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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The nature of cyberspace continues to be woven into the fabric of our daily existence. Not surprisingly, cyberspace and the expansion of e-commerce pose challenges to existing law, particularly the legal definition of cyberproperty domain names. The nature of cyberspace allows many e-companies to possess no traditional assets such as buildings and inventories. Some e-companies own few computers, often using service providers to maintain their web sites. In the virtual space that e-companies inhabit, the primary assets that e-companies own are intangibles such as domain names, customer information, and intellectual property that includes business method patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

Domain …

Amatory Jurisprudence And The Querelle Des Lois, Peter Goodrich

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It is my view, and here, no doubt, I am pre-empting my conclusion, that what literary and feminist historicism recognizes as the querelle des femmes, the debate as to the status and political role of women, is in fact underpinned and motivated by a much less explicit, yet nonetheless portentous, querelle des lois. The querelle des femmes, in other words, was always a polemic as to the legal status of women, as to their definition and role in theology and jurisprudence, canon and civil law. More than that, however, what the recovery of amatory jurisprudence can help to show is …

Lynching Ethics: Toward A Theory Of Racialized Defenses, Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

Unemployment Insurance: American Social Wage, Labor Organization And Legal Ideology, Kenneth M. Casebeer

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No abstract provided.

Life As An Intrinsic Rather Than Instrumental Good: The “Spiritual” Case Against Euthanasia, J. David Bleich

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No abstract provided.

Moral Debate And Semantic Sleight Of Hand, J. David Bleich

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No abstract provided.

Autopoiesis And Justice, Michel Rosenfeld

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No abstract provided.

Foreword, David Rudenstine

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No abstract provided.