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Full-Text Articles in Law

Commonsense Consent, Roseanna Sommers Jun 2020

Commonsense Consent, Roseanna Sommers

Articles

Consent is a bedrock principle in democratic society and a primary means through which our law expresses its commitment to individual liberty. While there seems to be broad consensus that consent is important, little is known about what people think consent is. This Article undertakes an empirical investigation of people’s ordinary intuitions about when consent has been granted. Using techniques from moral psychology and experimental philosophy, it advances the core claim that most laypeople think consent is compatible with fraud, contradicting prevailing normative theories of consent. This empirical phenomenon is observed across over two dozen scenariosspanning numerous contexts in which …


International Law And Theories Of Global Justice: Remarks, Steven R. Ratner, James Stewart, Jiewuh Song, Carmen Pavel Jan 2020

International Law And Theories Of Global Justice: Remarks, Steven R. Ratner, James Stewart, Jiewuh Song, Carmen Pavel

Articles

International law (IL) and political philosophy represent two rich disciplines for exploring issues of global justice. At their core, each seeks to build a better world based on some universally agreed norms, rules, and practices, backed by effective institutions. International lawyers, even the most positivist of them, have some underlying assumptions about a just world order that predisposes their interpretive methods; legal scholars have incorporated concepts of justice in their work even as their overall pragmatic orientation has limited the nature of their inquiries. Many philospophers, for their part, have engaged with IL to some extent—at a minimum recognizing that …


Ennobling Direct Democracy, Sherman J. Clark Jan 2007

Ennobling Direct Democracy, Sherman J. Clark

Articles

In this essay, Professor Clark argues that we should be attentive to the effect that direct democracy might have on our public character. Building upon earlier work, Clark suggests that the initiative in particular threatens to debase us by undercutting a crucial character trait which might best be called "responsibility-taking." The bulk of this essay is devoted to explaining what this means, and why it matters. Why should we care about the effect of political processes on public character? Why is this particular trait important and worth preserving? How is it threatened by direct democracy? In conclusion, and by way …


A Populist Critique Of Direct Democracy, Sherman J. Clark Jan 1998

A Populist Critique Of Direct Democracy, Sherman J. Clark

Articles

It is often assumed that direct democratic processes - referenda and initiatives - offer the people a chance to speak more clearly than is possible through representative processes. Courts, commentators, and political leaders have defended or described direct democratic outcomes as the voice of the "people themselves." Because plebiscites allow the people to speak directly, without the potential distortion inherent in representation, they seem ideally responsive to popular will. Indeed, even critics of direct democracy appear to grant as much. Critics are quick to point out, of course, that actual plebiscites often fall far short of the ideal. Uneven voter …