Law Commons^™

The Made And The Made-Up, Steven L. Winter Walter S. Gibbs Distinguished Professor Of Constitutional Law

Law Faculty Research Publications

Truth is an ethical relation. Facts, whether descriptions of the physical world or of historical events, are necessarily mediated by our frames of reference. This contingency opens a space for disagreement that cannot be adjudicated by an absolute standard of truth. For those seeking power or profit, the temptation to exploit this state of undecidability is strong. When many question the institutions that broker meaning – science, the professions, the media – rumors, misinformation, deliberate distortions and falsehoods all proliferate. In the digital age, the ‘made’ is swiftly supplanted by the made-up. The remedy for this predicament is not technological …

Do All Dogs Go To Heaven? How Our Secular Culture Views Death, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

The Great American Word Purge, Jethro K. Lieberman

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

The One Good Thing About The Independent State Legislature Theory, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Why The Courts Should Stop Philly Da Larry Krasner’S Impeachment Trial, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

When It Comes To Prosecuting Trump, Merrick Garland Needs To Decide Already, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

The Midterms Were Good News For Dems, But Even Better News For The Country, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

A Relational Approach To Property, Jennifer Nedelsky

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

A Law Professors’ Symposium Asks: Should We Control The U.S. Supreme Court?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

There’S A Secular Need For The High Holy Days. This Is Why, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Trump Isn’T Going To Jail. And That’S Good News For Democrats, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

The Nation’S Debt Limit Serves No Purpose. It Should Be Eliminated, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Only You Can Prevent Amendment Abuse, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

The Role Of Recognition In Kelsen's Account Of Legal Obligation And Political Duty, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Kelsen’s critique of absolute sovereignty famously appeals to a basic norm of international recognition. However, in his discussion of legal obligation, generally speaking, he notoriously rejects mutual recognition as having any normative consequence. I argue that this apparent contradiction in Kelsen's estimate regarding the normative force of recognition is resolved in his dynamic account of the democratic generation of law. Democracy is embedded within a modern political ethos that obligates legal subjects to recognize each other along four dimensions: as contractors whose mutually beneficial cooperation measures esteem by fair standards of contribution; as autonomous agents endowed with equal rights; as …

Few Lessons For Pa. From Kansas Abortion Vote. Gop Still Should Beware, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

This Is The Right Moment For The Democrats To Run A Fiscal Hawk, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Dobbs Is Not A Religion Case, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

The Supreme Court’S Abortion, Epa Rulings Could Open The Door To More Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Does The End Of Roe Mean The End Of The Anti-Abortion Movement?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Tax Cuts Cause Inflation, Too. We Need To Resist Quick Fixes, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Here’S A Path To Practical, Immediate Gun Reform, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

The Future Of Secularism, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

Debating When Clarence Thomas Should Recuse Himself Is The Wrong Argument, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Universalizing Fraud, Parmida Enkeshafi

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

The criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes has reanimated public interest in fraud. Holmes, once a Silicon Valley prodigy, was charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and eleven counts of wire fraud. A jury found Holmes guilty on four counts, potentially subjecting her to 80 years in prison. This Note uses the example of Elizabeth Holmes's case to examine more broadly the role of morality in fraud and argues for a new framework by which to articulate and prosecute fraud.

Criminal jurisprudence has struggled to construct a satisfactory definition of "white-collar crime" since sociologist Edwin H. Sutherland …

Technology - Revealing Or Framing The Truth? A Jurisprudential Debate, Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

Technology is so much more than a prosthetic. But how much more? And what else is it? In the legal realm, its role is not yet clear. Such a lack of elucidation becomes problematic, especially when technology has the ability to convert assumptions into facts, and it takes on a truth-making, rather than a mere truth-revealing mission. This Article argues that it is problematic to enable technology to stand in for reflective thinking, and calls attention to the fact that evidentiary rules enable technology to decide what can be proven, ergo what truth is. Technology is a fork in the …

Bridges Of Law, Ideology, And Commitment, Steven L. Winter Walter S. Gibbs Distinguished Professor Of Constitutional Law

Law Faculty Research Publications

Law has a distinctive temporal structure—an ontology—that defines it as a social institution. Law knits together past, present, purpose, and projected future into a demand for action. Robert Cover captures this dynamic in his metaphor of law as a bridge to an imagined future. Law’s orientation to the future necessarily poses the question of commitment or complicity. For law can shape the future only when people act to make it real. Cover’s bridge metaphor provides a lens through which to explore the complexities of law’s ontology and the pathologies that arise from its neglect or misuse. A bridge carries us …

A Leak? The Supreme Court Tipped Its Hand On Abortion Long Ago, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

How A Shuttered Bathroom At A Pgh Grocery Store Explains Structural Racism, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Toomey’S Vote Against Ketanji Brown Jackson Set A Dangerous Precedent. Here's Why, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Bargaining For Abolition, Zohra Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

What if instead of seeing criminal court as an institution driven by the operation of rules, we saw it as a workplace where people labor to criminalize those with the misfortune to be prosecuted? Early observers of twentieth century urban criminal courts likened them to factories.¹ Since then, commentators often deploy the pejorative epithet “assembly line justice” to describe criminal court’s processes.² The term conveys the criticism of a mechanical system delivering a form of justice that is impersonal and fallible. Perhaps unintentionally, the epithet reveals another truth: criminal court is also a workplace, and it takes labor …