Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
-
- Georgetown University Law Center (3)
- University of Baltimore Law (3)
- University of Colorado Law School (3)
- Northwestern Pritzker School of Law (2)
- University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law (2)
-
- University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (2)
- California Western School of Law (1)
- City University of New York (CUNY) (1)
- Cornell University Law School (1)
- Duke Law (1)
- Roger Williams University (1)
- St. Mary's University (1)
- University of Kentucky (1)
- University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law (1)
- University of Michigan Law School (1)
- University of Pittsburgh School of Law (1)
- William & Mary Law School (1)
- Publication Year
Articles 1 - 26 of 26
Full-Text Articles in Law
Why Equity Follows The Law, Adam J. Macleod
Why Equity Follows The Law, Adam J. Macleod
Faculty Articles
Renewed attention to equity in higher education is welcome because true equity helps us to reason together well. When administered correctly, the jurisprudence of equity models civil discourse and, therefore, can teach us how to carry out civic engagement reasonably. Equitable interpretation of the law teaches us how to understand each other charitably. And equity’s deference to law teaches us how to reason well together about our practical problems. Law is the practical reasoning that we do together. Equity serves the ends of justice by serving law, rather than undermining it. These functions of equity in adjudication point toward a …
Theories Of Prosecution, Jeffrey Bellin
Theories Of Prosecution, Jeffrey Bellin
Faculty Publications
For decades, legal commentators sounded the alarm about the tremendous power wielded by prosecutors. Scholars went so far as to identify uncurbed prosecutorial discretion as the primary source of the criminal justice system’s many flaws. Over the past two years, however, the conversation shifted. With the emergence of a new wave of “progressive prosecutors,” scholars increasingly hail broad prosecutorial discretion as a promising mechanism for criminal justice reform.
The abrupt shift from decrying to embracing prosecutorial power highlights a curious void at the center of criminal justice thought. There is no widely accepted normative theory of the prosecutorial role. As …
Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Bridget J. Crawford, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay
Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Bridget J. Crawford, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay
Publications
This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …
Law Library Blog (January 2018): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Law Library Blog (January 2018): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Law Library Newsletters/Blog
No abstract provided.
The Prospects For Change: The Question Of Justice In A Law & Society Framework, Michael W. Raphael
The Prospects For Change: The Question Of Justice In A Law & Society Framework, Michael W. Raphael
Graduate Student Publications and Research
What is the law and society framework and where has it gotten us? A student in a classroom might raise their hand and offer "understanding legal pluralism" as a possible answer. However, the conceptual problem with legal pluralism is the coexistence of potentially conflicting bases of justification. Given this, desiring to understand how the law shapes the structural underpinnings of whichever "legal" phenomena and its "ongoing transformation", is nevertheless an immense achievement that stops short of its underlying goal – the achievement of human dignity through human rights. For example, to talk about 'multi-stakeholder consultations' and other pithy phrases that …
Truth And Legitimacy (In Courts), Kenneth S. Klein
Truth And Legitimacy (In Courts), Kenneth S. Klein
Faculty Scholarship
This Article draws upon empirical and theoretical scholarship from philosophy, economics, social science, psychology, political science, ethics, and jurisprudence, in addition to more traditional legal sources such as Supreme Court decisions, to develop an articulation of the meaning, role, and importance of truth in courts. It is frequently articulated that trials are a search for truth. But as insiders to the judicial system know, if this is so then it is a meaning of truth that differs what truth means in any other context. And exposing this definitional dissonance in turn exposes that the legitimacy of the courts rests on …
A Justice System Overwhelmed, Colin Starger
A Justice System Overwhelmed, Colin Starger
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Resisting Wholesale Electronic Invasion Of The Fourth Amendment, Michael E. Tigar
Resisting Wholesale Electronic Invasion Of The Fourth Amendment, Michael E. Tigar
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Toward A Jurisprudence Of Law, Peace, Justice, And A Tilt Toward Non-Violent And Empathic Means Of Human Problem Solving, Carrie Menkel-Meadow
Toward A Jurisprudence Of Law, Peace, Justice, And A Tilt Toward Non-Violent And Empathic Means Of Human Problem Solving, Carrie Menkel-Meadow
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this essay the author sets out some questions about whether law can be made a site of encouraging more positive, peace seeking, non-violent, and pro-social behaviors. These questions derive from my own family history, as well as from my experience as a social and political activist, and also as a practicing lawyer and legal scholar. She begins in the introduction by setting out these questions in light of current conditions of domestic and international violence and some past considerations of categories of law. In the second section of this essay the author explains where her questions come from—her personal …
Rights-Based Theories Of Accident Law, Gregory J. Hall
Rights-Based Theories Of Accident Law, Gregory J. Hall
All Faculty Scholarship
This article shows that extant rights-based theories of accident law contain a gaping hole. They inadequately address the following question: What justifies using community standards to assign accident costs in tort law?
In the United States, the jury determines negligence for accidental harm by asking whether the defendant met the objective reasonable person standard. However, what determines the content of the reasonable person standard is enigmatic. Some tort theorists say that the content is filled out by juries using cost benefit analysis while others say that juries apply community norms and conventions. I demonstrate that what is missing from this …
On The Connection Between Law And Justice, Anthony D'Amato
On The Connection Between Law And Justice, Anthony D'Amato
Faculty Working Papers
What does it mean to assert that judges should decide cases according to justice and not according to the law? Is there something incoherent in the question itself? That question will serve as our springboard in examining what is—or should be—the connection between justice and law. Legal and political theorists since the time of Plato have wrestled with the problem of whether justice is part of law or is simply a moral judgment about law. Nearly every writer on the subject has either concluded that justice is only a judgment about law or has offered no reason to support a …
Engaged Client-Centered Representation And The Moral Foundations Of The Lawyer-Client Relationship, Katherine R. Kruse
Engaged Client-Centered Representation And The Moral Foundations Of The Lawyer-Client Relationship, Katherine R. Kruse
Scholarly Works
The field of legal ethics, as we know it today, has grown out of thoughtful, systematic grounding of lawyers’ duties in a comprehensive understanding of lawyers’ roles and the situating of lawyers’ roles in underlying theories of law, morality, and justice. Unfortunately, in the process, the field of theoretical legal ethics has mostly lost track of the thing that Freedman insisted was at the heart of a lawyers’ role: the integrity of the lawyer-client relationship. As I will discuss, the field of theoretical legal ethics has developed in ways that are deeply lawyer-centered rather than fundamentally client-centered. I am going …
The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns
The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns
Faculty Working Papers
This short essay is a summary of my assessment of the meaning of the "vanishing trial" phenomenon. It addresses the obvious question: "So what?" It first briefly reviews the evidence of the trial's decline. It then sets out the steps necessary to understand the political and social signficance of our vastly reducing the trial's importance among our modes of social ordering. The essay serves as the Introduction to a book, The Death of the American Trial, soon to be published by the University of Chicago Press.
An Excuse-Centered Approach To Transitional Justice, David C. Gray
An Excuse-Centered Approach To Transitional Justice, David C. Gray
Faculty Scholarship
Transitional justice asks what successor regimes, committed to human rights and the rule of law, can and should do to seek justice for atrocities perpetrated by and under their predecessors. The normal instinct is to prosecute criminally everyone implicated in past wrongs; but practical conditions in transitions make this impossible. As a result, most transitions pursue hybrid approaches, featuring prosecutions of those most responsible, amnesties, truth commissions, and reparations. This approach is often condemned as a compromise against justice. This article advances a transitional jurisprudence that justifies the hybrid approach by taking normative account of the unique conditions that define …
Procedural Justice, Lawrence B. Solum
Procedural Justice, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This article begins in part I, Introduction, with two observations. First, the function of procedure is to particularize general substantive norms so that they can guide action. Second, the hard problem of procedural justice corresponds to the following question: How can we regard ourselves as obligated by legitimate authority to comply with a judgment that we believe (or even know) to be in error with respect to the substantive merits?
The theory of procedural justice is developed in several stages, beginning with some preliminary questions and problems. The first question--what is procedure?--is the most difficult and requires an extensive …
Different Roads To The Rule Of Law: Their Importance For Law Reform In Taiwan, James Maxeiner
Different Roads To The Rule Of Law: Their Importance For Law Reform In Taiwan, James Maxeiner
All Faculty Scholarship
Talk of law reform is in the air throughout East Asia. Whether in Beijing or Tokyo or here, law reform is spoken of in terms of strengthening the Rule of Law. But what is the Rule of Law? Different legal systems have different roads to reach the Rule of Law. These different roads are noticeable mainly in the different emphases different systems place on two critical elements in the realization of the Rule of Law State, namely rules and the machinery for implementing the rules, i.e., courts and administrative agencies. The Rule of Law makes demands on both the legal …
Virtue Jurisprudence: A Virtue-Centered Theory Of Judging, Lawrence B. Solum
Virtue Jurisprudence: A Virtue-Centered Theory Of Judging, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
"Virtue jurisprudence" is a normative and explanatory theory of law that utilizes the resources of virtue ethics to answer the central questions of legal theory. The main focus of the essay is the development of a virtue-centered theory of judging. The exposition of the theory begins with exploration of defects in judicial character such as corruption and incompetence. Next, an account of judicial virtue is introduced. This includes judicial wisdom, a form of phronesis, or sound practical judgment. A virtue-centered account of justice is defended against the argument that theories of fairness are prior to theories of justice. The …
Competing Frameworks For Assessing Contemporary Holocaust-Era Claims, Vivian Grosswald Curran
Competing Frameworks For Assessing Contemporary Holocaust-Era Claims, Vivian Grosswald Curran
Articles
There are many angles from which to perceive the contemporary holocaust-era claims. In 1997, Time magazine quoted Elie Wiesel as saying that, [i]f all the money in all the Swiss banks were turned over, it would not bring back the life of one Jewish child. But the money is a symbol. It is part of the story. If you suppress any part of the story, it comes back later, with force and violence.
Wiesel touches on two perspectives: first, what has been described as litigating the holocaust, with all that that implies about the law's questionable capacity to adjudicate issues …
Managed Care And Managed Sentencing — A Tale Of Two Systems, Ronald Weich
Managed Care And Managed Sentencing — A Tale Of Two Systems, Ronald Weich
All Faculty Scholarship
The daily injustices mount. The front line professionals who administer the system cry out for more discretion to depart from the rigid rules that bind them, Congress finally hears their call, and is poised to enact sweeping reforms.
Are improvements in federal sentencing law on the way? Probably not in the near future. But the new Congress will surely take up proposals to regulate the managed health care industry, and the impending debate over a proposed "Patients' Bill of Rights" law offers important lessons for federal sentencing policy.
At first blush, sentencing reform and health care reform have about as …
Values, Pierre Schlag
Nurturing The Impulse For Justice, Lynne Henderson
Nurturing The Impulse For Justice, Lynne Henderson
Scholarly Works
No abstract provided.
"I Vote This Way Because I'M Wrong": The Supreme Court Justice As Epimenides, John M. Rogers
"I Vote This Way Because I'M Wrong": The Supreme Court Justice As Epimenides, John M. Rogers
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
Possibly the most unsettling phenomenon in the Supreme Court's 1988 term was Justice White's decision to vote contrary to his own exhaustively stated reasoning in Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co. His unexplained decision to vote against the result of his own analysis lends support to those who argue that law, or at least constitutional law, is fundamentally indeterminate. Proponents of the indeterminacy argument sometimes base their position on the allegedly inescapable inconsistency of decisions made by a multi-member court. There is an answer to the inconsistency argument, but it founders if justices sometimes vote, without explanation, on the basis of …
The Judge, Marianne Wesson
Causing The Conditions Of One's Own Defense: A Study In The Limits Of Theory In Criminal Law Doctrine, Paul H. Robinson
Causing The Conditions Of One's Own Defense: A Study In The Limits Of Theory In Criminal Law Doctrine, Paul H. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
One widely-stated goal of criminal law theory is to create the set of rules that best implements our collective sense of justice. To reach this goal, the theorist continuously adjusts his theory so that it generates rules that better reflect our fundamental notions of justice. These rules, moreover, must function as workable doctrine, which in the context of criminal law means precise statutory provisions. It is this process of theoretical refinement and translation that is the topic of this article. Can good theory generate results that approximate our collective sense of justice? Can the theoretical refinements be translated into workable …
Law And Literature: The Contemporary Image Of The Lawyer, Henry B. Cushing, E. F. Roberts
Law And Literature: The Contemporary Image Of The Lawyer, Henry B. Cushing, E. F. Roberts
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Sociological Interpretation Of Law, Joseph H. Drake
Sociological Interpretation Of Law, Joseph H. Drake
Articles
It is not the purpose of this paper to essay a definition of either of the formidable words in the title. The object is rather to call attention away from the metaphysical question, what is law? to the sociological question, how may we best attain justice in the administration of law? and, by the aid of some examples from history and comparative law, to justify as legal and constitutional the sociological method of interpretation. That such justification is necessary is evident from the fact that although the dictum of Mr. Justice. HOLMES in the dissenting opinion in Lochner v. New …