Law Commons^™

Progressive And Conservative Constitutionalism, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

American constitutional law in general, and fourteenth amendment jurisprudence in particular, is in a state of profound transformation. The "liberal-legalist" and purportedly politically neutral understanding of constitutional guarantees that dominated constitutional law and theory during the fifties, sixties, and seventies, is waning, both in the courts and in the academy. What is beginning to replace liberal legalism in the academy, and what has clearly replaced it on the Supreme Court, is a very different conception - a new paradigm - of the role of constitutionalism, constitutional adjudication, and constitutional guarantees in a democratic state. Unlike the liberal-legal paradigm it is …

Virtues And Voices, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay explores two ideas that have recently played an important role in discourse about the American constitutional order. The first idea has emerged from the revival of civic republicanism. The republican revival has focused our attention on the classical conception of civic virtue. Our basic social arrangements ought to nourish a citizenry with the characteristics of mind and will that promote human flourishing. The second idea, expressed in critical race theory and feminist jurisprudence, is that we have an obligation as a society and as scholars to attend to excluded voices. The juxtaposition of these two themes offers an …

A Critical Legal Studies Perspective On Contract Law And Practice, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The critical legal studies movement is often viewed as highly theoretical, characterized by impenetrable scholarship that makes frequent reference to the work of"famous dead Europeans." Indeed, the theoretical detachment of critical legal studies from real-world concerns has led some to speculate that the methodologies of the movement are so abstract and stylized that they could be used to deny the validity of distinctions that we commonly rely upon in everyday life-even something as basic as the distinction between up and down. Given the level of abstraction at which most critical legal studies analysis occurs, one might wonder why a critical …

Contract Scholarship And The Reemergence Of Legal Philosophy, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It has been thirty years since Arthur Corbin's eight-volume treatise on contracts appeared in condensed form as a one-volume edition. No scholarly book on contract law of comparable scope has been published since. This void in contract law scholarship has been filled only by the occasional law review article, by books discussing particular aspects of contract law, and by the ongoing revisions of the Restatement of Contracts that culminated in the publication of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts in 1979.

The dominant legal climate has not been friendly to any form of literature that attempts to explicate legal doctrine systematically, …

Faith And Justice, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What is the relationship between faith and justice? In particular, this Article will address the question of what a Justice of the United States Supreme Court should do, when her religious faith suggests that a case should be resolved in a way that is either inconsistent with the law or not justified by nonreligious, public reasons. May she rely on her religious beliefs to resolve a hard case? May she write an opinion that uses religious grounds to justify her decision?

In this Article, I will undertake to elaborate and defend a distinctively liberal position concerning faith and justice. My …

Law, Literature, And The Celebration Of Authority, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Richard Posner's new book, Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation, is a defense of “liberal legalism” against a group of modern critics who have only one thing in common: their use of either particular pieces of literature or literary theory to mount legal critiques. Perhaps for that reason, it is very hard to discern a unified thesis within Posner's book regarding the relationship between law and literature. In part, Posner is complaining about a pollution of literature by its use and abuse in political and legal argument; thus, the “misunderstood relation” to which the title refers. At times, Posner suggests …

Jurisprudence And Gender, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What is a human being? Legal theorists must, perforce, answer this question: jurisprudence, after all, is about human beings. The task has not proven to be divisive. In fact, virtually all modern American legal theorists, like most modern moral and political philosophers, either explicitly or implicitly embrace what I will call the "separation thesis" about what it means to be a human being: a "human being," whatever else he is, is physically separate from all other human beings. I am one human being and you are another, and that distinction between you and me is central to the meaning of …

Taking The Framers Seriously, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reviews Taking the Constitution Seriously by Walter Berns (1987).

This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution encapsulates the political philosophy of the Declaration; and that the framers viewed the commercialization of society as a salutary development and were unambivalent champions of the right to property. Examination of these issues suggests that the ideological universe of the framers was far more complex than Berns indicates. While the revolutionary era witnessed a new concern with individual rights and a …

On The Indeterminacy Crisis: Critiquing Critical Dogma, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Critical legal scholarship challenges the liberal claim that modern western societies are characterized by "the rule of law." The liberal conception of the rule of law, critical scholars contend, serves to mystify and legitimate the legal system and thereby obscure the real issues behind individual cases as well as the real nature of the legal system. Frequently, the claim that legal rules are indeterminate is the starting point for such a critique of the rule of law. What I call the indeterminacy thesis goes roughly like this: the existing body of legal doctrines-statutes, administrative regulations, and court decisions-permits a judge …

Adjudication Is Not Interpretation: Some Reservations About The Law-As-Literature Movement, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Among other achievements, the modern law-as-literature movement has prompted increasing numbers of legal scholars to embrace the claim that adjudication is interpretation, and more specifically, that constitutional adjudication is interpretation of the Constitution. That adjudication is interpretation -- that an adjudicative act is an interpretive act -- more than any other central commitment, unifies the otherwise diverse strands of the legal and constitutional theory of the late twentieth century.

In this article, I will argue in this article against both modern forms of interpretivism. The analogue of law to literature, on which much of modern interpretivism is based, although fruitful, …

Why We Need Legal Philosophy, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Do we need legal philosophy? Legal philosophy or jurisprudence, like many other areas of philosophy, is of intrinsic interest to many people. But this does not tell us whether or why we need it. The answer suggested by Lon Fuller is that legal philosophy has - or should have - implications for lawyers, judges, legislators and law professors. And yet in 1952 Fuller concluded that: "Judged by this standard I don't think we can claim that the last quarter of a century has been a fruitful one for legal philosophy in this country - certainly not in terms of immediate …

On Petition For A Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Sixth Circuit, Brief Of The Federal Bar Association As Amicus Curiae, The Upjohn Company, Et Al. V. United States Of America, Et Al., Thomas G. Lilly, Alfred F. Belcuore, Paul F. Rothstein, Ronald L. Carlson

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

This case presents the question of whether communications between employees of a corporation and an attorney representing that corporation are entitled to the full protections of the attorney-client privilege only when the employees are those responsible for deciding and directing the corporation's response to the attorney's legal advice.

Beacon Theatres And The Constitutional Right To Jury Trial, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.