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The Origin, Development, And Regulation Of Norms, Richard H. Mcadams Nov 1997

The Origin, Development, And Regulation Of Norms, Richard H. Mcadams

Michigan Law Review

For decades, sociologists have employed the concept of social norms to explain how society shapes individual behavior. In recent years, economists and rational choice theorists in philosophy and political science have started to use individual behavior to explain the origin and function of norms. For many in this group, the focus of study is the interaction of law and norms, of formal and informal rules. Exemplified by Robert Ellickson's Order Without Law, this literature uses norms to develop more robust explanations of behavior and to predict more accurately the effect of legal rules. Norms turn out to matter in legal …

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The Empty Circles Of Liberal Justification, Pierre Schlag Oct 1997

The Empty Circles Of Liberal Justification, Pierre Schlag

Michigan Law Review

American liberal thinkers are fascinated with the justification of the liberal state. It is this question of justification that inspires and organizes the work of such leading liberal thinkers as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Frank Michelman, and Bruce Ackerman. The manifest import and prevalence of the question of justification among liberal thinkers makes it possible to speak here of a certain "practice of liberal justification." This practice displays a certain order and certain recursive characteristics. It is composed of a common ontology and a common narrative. It poses for itself a series of recursive intellectual problems answered with a stock …

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Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan Oct 1997

Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan

Michigan Law Review

It's axiomatic that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." My aim in this essay is to examine what the "mistake of law doctrine" reveals about the relationship between criminal law and morality in general and about the law's understanding of moral responsibility in particular. The conventional understanding of the mistake of law doctrine rests on two premises, which are encapsulated in the Holmesian epigrams with which I've started this essay. The first is liberal positivism. As a descriptive claim, liberal positivism holds that the content of the law can be identified without reference to morality: one needn't be a …

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Pavčnik's Theory Of Legal Decisionmaking: An Introduction, Louis E. Wolcher Apr 1997

Pavčnik's Theory Of Legal Decisionmaking: An Introduction, Louis E. Wolcher

Washington Law Review

Professor Pavčnik is one of the most prolific and interesting of those academics from the formerly communist states of Central and Eastern Europe who are currently writing on topics germane to legal philosophy. I had the privilege of co-teaching two classes with him at the University of Ljubljana in the fall of 1996-one on legal theory and the other on the philosophy of law-and in the course of our collaboration I acquired a great deal of respect for both the man and his work. The editors of the Washington Law Review, having had the excellent judgment to want to publish …

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Legal Decisionmaking As A Responsible Intellectual Activity: A Continental Point Of View, Marijan Pavčnik Apr 1997

Legal Decisionmaking As A Responsible Intellectual Activity: A Continental Point Of View, Marijan Pavčnik

Washington Law Review

The legal decision in a concrete case is never completely given in advance in the statute. A theory of legal decisionmaking that sees the decider as someone who merely "applies the law" is inadequate to explain what goes on in the process of legal decisionmaking. The legal decision is a value synthesis assessing the normative starting point with regard to the factual starting point, and vice versa. This means that a legal decision can only be made when the normative state of constituent facts of the case has been formed on the basis of the statute, when from the life …

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Death Penalty: A Philosophical And Theological Perspective, 30 J. Marshall L. Rev. 463 (1997), Walter Berns, Nancy Bothne, William Bowers, Richard Dieter, Richard Land, James Lund, Austin Sarat Jan 1997