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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Tenuous Case For Conscience, Steven D. Smith
The Tenuous Case For Conscience, Steven D. Smith
Steven D. Smith
If there is any single theme that has provided the foundation of modern liberalism and has infused our more specific constitutional commitments to freedom of religion and freedom of speech, that theme is probably “freedom of conscience.” But some observers also perceive a progressive cheapening of conscience– even a sort of degradation. Such criticisms suggest the need for a contemporary rethinking of conscience. When we reverently invoke “conscience,” do we have any idea what we are talking about? Or are we just exploiting a venerable theme for rhetorical purposes without any clear sense of what “conscience” is or why it …
Emerging Models For Alternatives To Marriage, Sanford N. Katz
Emerging Models For Alternatives To Marriage, Sanford N. Katz
Sanford N. Katz
Perhaps one of the most important changes in family law in the past thirty years has been the inclusion of certain kinds of friendships in the range of relationships from which rights and responsibilities can flow. Domestic partnership laws, a phenomenon of the 1990s, may be seen as a natural development from the judicial recognition of contract cohabitation and the legislative and judicial response to same-sex couples who, unable to meet statutory requirements for marriage, have sought official recognition of their relationships. This essay discusses an aspect of certain kinds of domestic partnership laws-their formal requirements and the extent to …
Compliance With Advance Directives: Wrongful Living And Tort Law Incentives, Holly Lynch, Michele Mathes, Nadia Sawicki
Compliance With Advance Directives: Wrongful Living And Tort Law Incentives, Holly Lynch, Michele Mathes, Nadia Sawicki
Nadia N. Sawicki
Modern ethical and legal norms generally require that deference be accorded to patients' decisions regarding treatment, including decisions to refuse life-sustaining care, even when patients no longer have the capacity to communicate those decisions to their physicians. Advance directives were developed as a means by which a patient's autonomy regarding medical care might survive such incapacity. Unfortunately, preserving patient autonomy at the end of life has been no simple task. First, it has been difficult to persuade patients to prepare for incapacity by making their wishes known. Second, even when they have done so, there is a distinct possibility that …
Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz
Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …
Defending Against The Defenders Why I Can Be A Good Prosecutor And A Good Person, Sarah Montana Hart
Defending Against The Defenders Why I Can Be A Good Prosecutor And A Good Person, Sarah Montana Hart
Sarah Montana Hart
This article discusses the choice to become a prosecutor, specifically in light of the critics of the profession from writers like Paul Butler and Abbe Smith.
Planetarian Identity Formation And The Relocalization Of Environmental Law, Sarah Krakoff
Planetarian Identity Formation And The Relocalization Of Environmental Law, Sarah Krakoff
Sarah Krakoff
Local food, local work, local energy production—all are hallmarks of a resurgence of localism throughout contemporary environmental thought and action. The renaissance of localism might be seen as a retreat from the world’s global environmental problems. This paper maintains, however, that some forms of localism are actually expressions, and appropriate ones, of a planetary environmental consciousness. The paper’s centerpiece is an in-depth evaluation of local climate action initiatives, including interviews with participants as well as other data and observations about their ethics, attitudes, behaviors, and motivations. The values and identities being forged in these initiatives form the basis for timely …
Redefining Human Rights Lawyering Through The Lens Of Critical Theory: Lessons For Pedagogy And Practice, Deborah M. Weissman, Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, Davida Finger, Meetali Jain
Redefining Human Rights Lawyering Through The Lens Of Critical Theory: Lessons For Pedagogy And Practice, Deborah M. Weissman, Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, Davida Finger, Meetali Jain
Deborah M. Weissman
In recent years, human rights clinics have mushroomed across United States law schools, specializing in work ranging from direct representation of asylum seekers in U.S. courts, to international litigation, to project-based advocacy that includes fact-finding visits and production of reports documenting human rights violations throughout the world. Increasingly, those human rights clinics have begun to address human rights within the United States, and not just in places beyond our borders. At the same time, domestic poverty law clinics are increasingly looking to human rights norms in framing some of their advocacy, which often takes the forms of direct legal services, …
Workers' Compensation And Hoffman Plastic: Pandora's Undocumented Box, Oliver Beatty
Workers' Compensation And Hoffman Plastic: Pandora's Undocumented Box, Oliver Beatty
Oliver T Beatty
The focus of this Comment is whether Hoffman Plastic, which was decided in regard to unionization and back pay, is properly applied when its rationale is utilized in litigation across the country by employers to preclude workers' compensation payments to injured undocumented workers. This Comment examines the rationale and policy from courts across the nation in determining whether Hoffman Plastic belongs in workers' compensation cases, when such an application has serious consequences for workplace safety and state police power. Part I of this Comment discusses the historical background of federal immigration and labor statutes examined in the Hoffman Plastic decision. …
Why Our Justice System Convicts Innocent People And The Challenges Faced By Innocence Projects Trying To Exonerate Them, Steven A. Krieger
Why Our Justice System Convicts Innocent People And The Challenges Faced By Innocence Projects Trying To Exonerate Them, Steven A. Krieger
Steven A. Krieger
Despite the prominence and success of the over sixty innocence projects in the United States, there is almost no empirical literature discussing how these organizations operate, what resources or factors contribute to their success, and what challenges they must overcome. This article is a foundational step to fill this void. Following a brief introduction, Part I of the article surveys the reasons why innocent individuals get convicted, including: inaccuracy of eyewitnesses, perjured testimony, availability of DNA testing, accuracy of DNA testing and scientific evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective defense representation, ineffective capital representation, police misconduct: false confessions, and pretrial criminal procedure …
The Corporation As Imperfect Society, Brian M. Mccall
The Corporation As Imperfect Society, Brian M. Mccall
Brian M McCall
Corporations are ubiquitous in modern society. They pervade every aspect of our life, consumer, professional, investment activity. Probably, people have more contact with corporations on a daily basis than any other institution, including government. From the South Sea Bubble to the Stock market Crash of 1929 to Enron to General Motors and Countrywide Mortgage, corporate scandals and controversies invite fundamental questions about corporate law. This article attempts to bring a fresh perspective to the question: “what is a corporation and how should the law treat it?” The article articulates a corporate metaphysics rooted in political philosophy. The dominant models of …