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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Law
Law As Instrumentality, Jeremiah A. Ho
Law As Instrumentality, Jeremiah A. Ho
All Faculty Scholarship
Our conceptions of law affect how we objectify the law and ultimately how we study it. Despite a century’s worth of theoretical progress in American law—from legal realism to critical legal studies movements and postmodernism—the formalist conception of “law as science,” as promulgated by Christopher Langdell at Harvard Law School in the late-nineteenth century, still influences methodologies in American legal education. Subsequent movements of legal thought, however, have revealed that the law is neither scientific nor “objective” in the way the Langdellian formalists once envisioned. After all, the Langdellian scientific objectivity of law itself reflected the dominant class, gender, power, …
Defensor Fidei: The Travails Of A Post-Realist Formalist, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky
Defensor Fidei: The Travails Of A Post-Realist Formalist, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky
Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky
This Article explores common formalist themes, asking not whether formalism's aspirations are attainable but why formalists still struggle to attain them in the face of sustained attacks by anti-formalists. After briefly sketching the tenets of formalism in Section I, this Article turns to an examination of Summers' "post-realist formalism." Finally, this Article probes the philosophical and psychological attractions of formalism and suggests that formalism's promise of stability and order may be essential to the effective functioning of the legal system, even if this promise can never be realized.
The Great Power Origins Of Human Rights, Seth Mohney
The Great Power Origins Of Human Rights, Seth Mohney
Michigan Journal of International Law
For years, historians depicted the history of human rights as the inexorable triumph of universal norms. This account underestimates both the historical and contemporary uncertainty surrounding many international human rights. As even casual observers must note, the tale of human rights progress is not littered with beneficent heads of state persuaded to pursue progress by the moral charge of universal norms. Instead, this history’s primary scenes feature struggles among great powers, peoples, and movements advancing diverse interests. Recognizing the complexity of human rights history, a new generation of historians has emphasized that human rights progress is not preordained, but rather …
The Real Formalists, The Real Realists, And What They Tell Us About Judicial Decision And Legal Education, Edward Rubin
The Real Formalists, The Real Realists, And What They Tell Us About Judicial Decision And Legal Education, Edward Rubin
Michigan Law Review
The periodization of history, like chocolate cake, can have some bad effects on us, but it is hard to resist. We realize, of course, that Julius Caesar didn’t think of himself as “Classical” and Richard the Lionhearted didn’t regard the time in which he lived as the Middle Ages. Placing historical figures in subsequently defined periods separates us from them and impairs our ability to understand them on their own terms. But it is difficult to understand anything about them at all if we try to envision history as continuous and undifferentiated. We need periodization to organize events that are …
The Paths Of Christian Legal Scholarship, David A. Skeel Jr.
The Paths Of Christian Legal Scholarship, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
The history of twentieth century Christian legal scholarship– really, the absence of Christian legal scholarship in America’s elite law schools– can be told as a tale of two emblematic clashes: the first an intriguing historical footnote, the second a brief, explosive war of words. In the first, a tort action in Nebraska circa 1890,William Jennings Bryan and Roscoe Pound served as opposing counsel; the second was a war of words in the 1940s between a group of neo-Thomist scholars and defenders of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Using these two incidents to frame as a starting point, this essay briefly chronicles the …
Blinking On The Bench: How Judges Decide Cases, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich
Blinking On The Bench: How Judges Decide Cases, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
How do judges judge? Do they apply law to facts in a mechanical and deliberative way, as the formalists suggest they do, or do they rely on hunches and gut feelings, as the realists maintain? Debate has raged for decades, but researchers have offered little hard evidence in support of either model. Relying on empirical studies of judicial reasoning and decision making, we propose an entirely new model of judging that provides a more accurate explanation of judicial behavior. Our model accounts for the tendency of the human brain to make automatic, snap judgments, which are surprisingly accurate, but which …
Remarks By An Idealist On The Realism Of 'The Limits Of International Law', Kenneth Anderson
Remarks By An Idealist On The Realism Of 'The Limits Of International Law', Kenneth Anderson
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
This paper is a response to Jack L. Goldsmith and Eric A. Posner, 'The Limits of International Law' (Oxford 2005), part of a symposium on the book held at the University of Georgia Law School in October 2005. The review views 'The Limits of International Law' sympathetically, and focuses on the intersection between traditional and new methodologies of international law scholarship, on the one hand, and the substantive political commitments that differing international law scholars hold, on the other. The paper notes that some in the symposium claim that the problem with 'The Limits of International Law' is that it …
Sofisma Y Realidad Del Paradigma Democrático Exterior Estadounidense, Ignacio De La Rasilla Del Moral
Sofisma Y Realidad Del Paradigma Democrático Exterior Estadounidense, Ignacio De La Rasilla Del Moral
Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral, Ph.D.
Tomando como punto de partida las principales asunciones del realismo político y de la teoría de la paz democrática este trabajo se propone arrojar cierta luz sobre las razones que se hallan tras el “paradigma exterior democrático estadounidense”. Con el objeto de discernir entre sofisma y realidad al respecto, el autor retraza la evolución del neo-wilsonianismo desde los años de la “doctrina Reagan” hasta la actual “Doctrina Bush”. Como resultado de este análisis, el mito del excepcionalismo estadounidense se verá confrontado a las frías realidades del equilibrio del poder, la guerra contra el terrorismo y otros factores de orden económico …
Sacred Visions Of Law, Robert L. Tsai
Sacred Visions Of Law, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
Around the time of the Bicentennial Celebration of the U.S. Constitution's framing, Professor Sanford Levinson called upon Americans to renew our constitutional faith. This article answers the call by examining how two legal symbols - Marbury v. Madison and Brown v. Board of Education - have been used by jurists over the years to tend the American community of faith. Blending constitutional theory and the study of religious form, the article argues that the decisions have become increasingly linked in the legal imagination even as they have come to signify very different sacred visions of law. One might think that …
Positivism, Emergent And Triumphant, Vincent A. Wellman
Positivism, Emergent And Triumphant, Vincent A. Wellman
Michigan Law Review
Positivism is one of those words that triggers passionate and often contradictory responses. For some, positivism is a pejorative. Lon Fuller, perhaps more than anyone, charged that positivism was confused about the nature of law, blind to law's inherent morality, and morally corrupting to boot. He even suggested, in different ways, that positivism helped promote the rise of fascism in Europe. Others, in contrast, have treated positivism as a modest and undeniable truth about law. Law, they argued, is morally fallible, and accordingly, the existence and validity of law is a matter of social fact rather than moral necessity. H.L.A. …
Defensor Fidei: The Travails Of A Post-Realist Formalist, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky
Defensor Fidei: The Travails Of A Post-Realist Formalist, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Article explores common formalist themes, asking not whether formalism's aspirations are attainable but why formalists still struggle to attain them in the face of sustained attacks by anti-formalists. After briefly sketching the tenets of formalism in Section I, this Article turns to an examination of Summers' "post-realist formalism." Finally, this Article probes the philosophical and psychological attractions of formalism and suggests that formalism's promise of stability and order may be essential to the effective functioning of the legal system, even if this promise can never be realized.
Friedrich: The Philosophy Of Law In Historical Perspective, Edgar Bodenheimer
Friedrich: The Philosophy Of Law In Historical Perspective, Edgar Bodenheimer
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Philosophy of Law in Historical Perspective. By C. J. Friedrich.