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Full-Text Articles in Law
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 …
American Legal Realism: Sound And Fury Signifying Nothing?, Wouter H. De Been
American Legal Realism: Sound And Fury Signifying Nothing?, Wouter H. De Been
Wouter H. de Been
No abstract provided.
Personae Non Suspect: Sexual Orientation Discrimination Under The Supreme Court’S New Anticlassification Regime, Chris R. Copeland
Personae Non Suspect: Sexual Orientation Discrimination Under The Supreme Court’S New Anticlassification Regime, Chris R. Copeland
Chris R Copeland
As Perry v. Schwarzenegger seemingly makes its way to the Supreme Court, LGBT advocates are staking their legal claims around the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause – arguing for the designation of LGBTs as a suspect or quasi-suspect group. The desire for suspect class designation is in vain though. In the late 1970s, the Supreme Court closed the set of suspect and quasi-classifications, and the set will likely remain closed. Around the same time, the Court faced a series of affirmative action cases in which it was forced to choose between two approaches to equal protection: antisubordination and anticlassification. It …