Law Commons^™

Sosa, Federal Question Jurisdiction, And Historical Fidelity, Anthony J. Bellia

Anthony J. Bellia

In his paper "International Human Rights in American Courts," Judge Fletcher concludes that Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain “has left us with more questions than answers.” Sosa attempted to adapt certain principles belonging to the "general law" to a post-Erie positivistic conception of common law while maintaining fidelity to certain historical expectations. “[I]t would be unreasonable,” the Court thought, “to assume that the First Congress would have expected federal courts to lose all capacity to recognize enforceable international norms simply because the common law might lose some metaphysical cachet on the road to modern realism.” The Court was unwilling, however, out …

The Unwritten Law And Its Writers, Frederick J. Moreau

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Holmes And The Common Law: A Jury's Duty, Matthew P. Cline

Matthew P Cline

The notion of a small group of peers whose responsibility it is to play a part in determining the outcome of a trial is central to the common conception of the American legal system. Memorialized in the Constitution of the United States as a fundamental right, and in the national consciousness as the proud, if begrudged, duty of all citizens, juries are often discussed, but perhaps not always understood. Whatever misunderstandings have come to be, certainly many of them sprang from the juxtaposition of jury and judge. Why do we have both? How are their responsibilities divided? Who truly decides …

The Restatement (Second): Its Misleading Quality And A Proposal For Its Amelioration, W. Noel Keyes

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Restatement (Second): A Tribute To Its Increasingly Advantageous Quality, And An Encouragement To Continue The Trend, John W. Wade

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Positivism In The Historiography Of The Common Law, David K. Millon

David K. Millon

A great deal of important legal historical scholarship is doctrinal in focus, its objective being to chart the history of substantive common law rules. In this Article, Professor Millon suggests that doctrinal legal history is based implicitly on the modern positivist theory of law as a system of state-endorsed rules designed to resolve disputes in a consistent, predictable manner. He questions the validity of efforts to write the history of the premodern common law from this theoretical point of view. Focusing on pre-seventeenth century civil cases, he finds that trial procedure seems to have allowed or even encouraged juries to …

Positivism In The Historiography Of The Common Law, David K. Millon

David K. Millon

A great deal of important legal historical scholarship is doctrinal in focus, its objective being to chart the history of substantive common law rules. In this Article, Professor Millon suggests that doctrinal legal history is based implicitly on the modern positivist theory of law as a system of state-endorsed rules designed to resolve disputes in a consistent, predictable manner. He questions the validity of efforts to write the history of the premodern common law from this theoretical point of view. Focusing on pre-seventeenth century civil cases, he finds that trial procedure seems to have allowed or even encouraged juries to …

The “Unwritten Constitution” And Unwritten Law, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

America’s Unwritten Constitution is a prod to the profession to look for legal rules outside the Constitution’s text. This is a good thing, as outside the text there’s a vast amount of law—the everyday, nonconstitutional law, written and unwritten, that structures our government and society. Despite the book’s unorthodox framing, many of its claims can be reinterpreted in fully conventional legal terms, as the product of the text’s interaction with ordinary rules of law and language.

This very orthodoxy, though, may undermine Akhil Amar’s case that America truly has an “unwritten Constitution.” In seeking to harmonize the text with deep …