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Full-Text Articles in Law
Rights-Based Theories Of Accident Law, Gregory J. Hall
Rights-Based Theories Of Accident Law, Gregory J. Hall
All Faculty Scholarship
This article shows that extant rights-based theories of accident law contain a gaping hole. They inadequately address the following question: What justifies using community standards to assign accident costs in tort law?
In the United States, the jury determines negligence for accidental harm by asking whether the defendant met the objective reasonable person standard. However, what determines the content of the reasonable person standard is enigmatic. Some tort theorists say that the content is filled out by juries using cost benefit analysis while others say that juries apply community norms and conventions. I demonstrate that what is missing from this …
Public Wrongs And The ‘Criminal Law’S Business’: When Victims Won’T Share, Michelle Madden Dempsey
Public Wrongs And The ‘Criminal Law’S Business’: When Victims Won’T Share, Michelle Madden Dempsey
Working Paper Series
Amongst the many valuable contributions that Professor Antony Duff has made to criminal law theory is his account of what it means for a wrong to be public in character. In this chapter, I sketch an alternative way of thinking about criminalization, one which attempts to remain true to the important insights that illuminate Duff’s account, while providing (it is hoped) a more satisfying explanation of cases involving victims who reject the criminal law’s intervention.
The Anti-Empathic Turn, Robin West
The Anti-Empathic Turn, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Justice, according to a broad consensus of our greatest twentieth century judges, requires a particular kind of moral judgment, and that moral judgment requires, among much else, empathy–the ability to understand not just the situation but also the perspective of litigants on warring sides of a lawsuit.
Excellent judging requires empathic excellence. Empathic understanding is, in some measure, an acquired skill as well as, in part, a natural ability. Some people do it well; some, not so well. Again, this has long been understood, and has been long argued, particularly, although not exclusively, by some of our most admired judges …