Law Commons^™

On Preferences And Promises: A Response To Harsanyi, Donald H. Regan

Articles

John C. Harsanyi sketches an entire normative and metaethical theory in under twenty pages. Combining breadth and brevity, his essay is useful and interesting. It reveals the interrelations between Harsanyi's positions on various issues as no longer work or series of articles could do. But by virtue of its programmatic nature, the essay creates a dilemma for a commentator, at least for one who finds many things to disagree with. If I responded to Harsanyi in the same sweeping terms in which he argues, we would end up with little more than opposing assertions. At the other extreme, I could …

Founders And Foundations Of Legal Positivism, David Lyons

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Essays on Bentham: Studies In Jurisprudence and Political Theory by H.L.A. Hart, and John Austin by W.L. Morison

Intuition And Security In Moral Philosophy, Stephen R. Munzer

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point by R.M. Hare

Injustice, Inequality And Ethics, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Injustice, Inequality, and Ethics by Robin Barrow

Promises, Morals, And Law, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Promises, Morals, and Law by P.S. Atiyah

Against Evaluator Relativity: A Response To Sen, Donald H. Regan

Articles

In a recent essay in this journal Amartya Sen introduced the notion of an evaluator-relative consequence-based morality. The basic idea can be described very simply. A consequence-based morality is a morality that instructs each agent to maximize some objective function defined over states of affairs. Such a morality is evaluator neutral if it assigns to every agent the same objective function. If different agents have different objective functions, then the morality is evaluator relative. For example, a morality would be evaluator relative if it assigned to Jones an objective function giving greater weight to the welfare of Jones's children than …

Suicide And The Failure Of Modern Moral Theory, Donald H. Regan

Articles

The question I want to address is when and why suicide is morally wrong. There is something peculiar in my writing on this question at all. It will soon become apparent that although I think suicide involves genuine moral issues. I also think that the moral problem of suicide is a problem which most people answer correctly. That is, I think that in the vast majority of cases where people ought not to commit suicide, they do not. They are not even tempted. Conversely, most people who do commit suicide, or who want to, are either justified or at least …

Utilitarianism Reformed, L. W. Sumner

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Utilitarianism and Co-operation by Donald H. Regan

Reason And Law, George C. Christie

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Justice, Law, and Argument: Essays in Moral and Legal Reasoning by Chaim Perelman

Desert And Deterrence: An Assessment Of The Moral Bases Of The Case For Capital Punishment, Richard O. Lempert

Michigan Law Review

The controversy over the death penalty has generated arguments of two types. The first argument appeals to moral intuitions; the second concerns deterrence. Although both types of argument speak to the morality of systems of capital punishment, the first debate has been dominated by moral philosophers and the second by empirical social scientists. For convenience I shall at times refer to the approach of the moral philosophers as the moral case for (or against) capital punishment or as the argument from morality.

A Theory Of The Good And The Right, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of A Theory of the Good and the Right by Richard B. Brandt

Balzacian Legality: A Proposal For Natural Law Juridicial Standards Of Legality, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Journal Articles

The task of the present article is twofold. First, it represents an attempt to make an original English language contribution to the continuing interdisciplinary inquiry, begun in France, into the presence of law in Balzac's The Human Comedy, by focusing upon themes and novels that have not been the subject of previous individual study. Second, it seeks to contribute to an area of growing interest to legal scholars in the United States – the study of law and literature – by providing an example of the insights one French novelist with legal training and experience had into questions that …

Rejoinders To Hart On Rules And Rights, Stanley L. Paulson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law, Morality, and Society: Essays in Honour of H.L.A. Hart by P.M.S. Hacker and J. Raz

Persons And Consequences: Observations On Fried's Right And Wrong, Stephen R. Munzer

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Right and Wrong by charles Fried

Lying: Moral Choice In Public And Private Life, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life by Sissela Bok

Balzacian Legality, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Journal Articles

The study of law and literature is an area of growing interest to legal scholars in the United States. Honore de Balzac incorporated in his works a panoramic view of the social reality of nineteenth century France. In this context, the fidelity of Balzac's plots and characters to their external models has been well-documented in a number of fields, including sociology, commerce, and finance. In addition to this penchant for realism, however, Balzac laced his novels with an equally evident moral content. This commitment to accuracy and morality also influenced Balzac's novelistic treatment of the law and lawyers.

Balzac's work …

Knowledge And Politics, Phillip Soper

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Knowledge and Politics by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

H. L. A. Hart On Legal And Moral Obligation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

One of the central problems in both moral and legal philosophy has been to offer a satisfactory analysis of the concept of obligation. In ordinary language the word "obligation" is used in several different contexts. It may refer to moral obligation (e.g., "I am morally obligated to keep my promise to help my uncle with his knitting"), legal obligation (e.g., "I am legally obligated to report as income on my tax return whatever funds I embezzle from my employer"), political obligation (e.g., "I am politically obligated to vote"), or social obligation (e.g., …

Justifications For Paternalism, Donald H. Regan

Book Chapters

One of the most troublesome problems concerning the appropriate extent of government interference with individuals' activity is the problem of paternalism-that is, the problem of when, if ever, the state may compel an individual to do or to refrain from some act or activity "for his own good." One would hardly know this was a troublesome problem just from looking at the literature on political and legal philosophy. It is hard to think of an influential philosophical discussion of the matter more recent than John Stuart Mill's. But paternalism is a problem which keeps coming up in discussions among philosophers …

Bayne: Conscience, Obligation, And The Law, E. F. Roberts

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Conscience, Obligation, and the Law by David Cowan Bayne

Book Review. Law And Morality By Leon Petrazycki, Wencelas J. Wagner

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Cahn: The Moral Decision, William R. Jentes S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Moral Decision. By Edmond Cahn

Petrazycki: Law And Morality, William R. Jentes S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law and Mortality. By Leon Petrazycki

Hall: Living Law Of Democratic Society, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of LIVING LAW OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY. By Jerome Hall.

Copyright And Morals, Edward S. Rogers

Michigan Law Review

The basis for national copyright legislation in this country is Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: "The Congress shall have power * * * to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

Nature Of Legal Rights And Duties, Joseph W. Bingham

Michigan Law Review

One cannot long talk on a legal topic without using the words right and duty or some synonyms. It is familiar hearsay that a purpose of law is to create, delimit, and protect rights and to define and enforce duties. Therefore it is of importance to inquire what is meant by "a right" and by "a duty" when we use these terms in legal discussion. The question is a linguistic one; but in the process of finding the proper answer, we shall have to analyze some of our common sorts of mental concepts and perhaps shall finish with a clear …