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Full-Text Articles in Law
Calculating Compensation Sums For Private Law Wrongs: Underlying Imprecisions, Necessary Questions, And Toward A Plausible Account Of Damages For Lost Years Of Life, Michael Pressman
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The ubiquitous corrective-justice goals of “making a party whole” or “returning a party to the position she was in” are typically understood in monetary terms, and in this context, it is fairly clear what these terms mean. If, as this Article argues, these corrective-justice goals should instead be understood in terms of something that has intrinsic value, such as happiness, various imprecisions come to the fore. This Article identifies and explores these imprecisions and, in so doing, articulates a novel framework that can be used for understanding and systematizing our approach to private law remedies. This is the Article’s first …
Why And How To Compensate Exonerees, Erik Encarnacion
Why And How To Compensate Exonerees, Erik Encarnacion
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
How can we bring greater uniformity to exoneree compensation in a principled and just way? This paper argues that answering this question becomes easier once we identify the principles of justice that best justify and explain compensation statutes. In particular, commentators have assumed incorrectly that the goal of compensating exonerees should be understood primarily in terms of corrective justice, which posits a duty to undo or repair wrongfully inflicted harms. This paper argues, by contrast, that restitutionary justice, which forces parties to relinquish unjust gains, better justifies and explains compensation statutes. The unjust gains at issue are fair wages withheld …
Legal Pluralism In Tort Law Theory: Balancing Instrumental Theories And Corrective Justice, Benjamin Shmueli
Legal Pluralism In Tort Law Theory: Balancing Instrumental Theories And Corrective Justice, Benjamin Shmueli
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Unified-monistic theories of tort law focus on a single goal, usually corrective justice, distributive justice, or optimal deterrence. Unlike these approaches, mixedpluralistic theories attempt to balance between various goals of tort law by integrating several of the considerations underlying these different goals. These theories of legal pluralism reflect ideological diversity, in this case between different theories of the same legal system. This Article discusses the challenge of legal pluralism to settle the possible collision between different goals of tort law within the framework of tort law theory. Starting from a position of support for the mixed-pluralistic thesis, this Article first …
The "Enlightened Barbarity" Of Inclusive Fitness And Wrongful Death: Biological Justifications For An Investment Theory Of Loss In Wycko V. Gnodtke, Ryan Shannon
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Wrongful death laws should permit and encourage courts and juries to consider the survivors' investment in decedents when determining wrongful death damages, given new biological justifications for this theory of loss. The investment theory of damages, which permits an award of damages based on the investment of financial resources relatives make in one another, originated in Michigan's courts in the early 1 960s, but as of present day has been largely abrogated. In the context of modern understandings of evolutionary biology, including kin selection theory and sociobiology, the investment theory of recovery accords with the goals of corrective justice as …
Pragmatism Regained, Christopher Kutz
Pragmatism Regained, Christopher Kutz
Michigan Law Review
Jules Coleman's The Practice of Principle serves as a focal point for current, newly intensified debates in legal theory, and provides some of the deepest, most sustained reflections on methodology that legal theory has seen. Coleman is one of the leading legal philosophers in the Anglo-American world, and his writings on tort theory, contract theory, the normative foundations of law and economics, social choice theory, and analytical jurisprudence have been the point of departure for much of the most interesting activity in the field for the last three decades. Indeed, the origin of this book lies in Oxford University's invitation …
Rights And Wrongs, John C.P. Goldberg
Rights And Wrongs, John C.P. Goldberg
Michigan Law Review
If one were to ask an American lawyer or legal scholar for a definition of liberalism, her explanation would likely include mention of constitutional provisions such as the First and Fourth Amendments. This is because liberalism is today understood primarily as a theory of what government officials may not do to citizens. Its most immediate expression in law is thus taken to be those parts of the Bill of Rights that set limits on state action. This tendency to conceive of liberalism exclusively as a theory of rights against government is a twentieth century phenomenon. To be sure, liberalism has …
Tort Law As Corrective Justice: A Pragmatic Justification For Jury Adjudication, Catharine Pierce Wells
Tort Law As Corrective Justice: A Pragmatic Justification For Jury Adjudication, Catharine Pierce Wells
Michigan Law Review
The purpose of this article is to develop a pragmatic analysis of corrective justice that will serve as a partial justification for current practices of tort adjudication. Part I discusses the concept of corrective justice and explores its relationship to the problem of justifying tort law. Part II argues that certain contemporary theories of corrective justice fail to provide an adequate basis for regarding individual tort outcomes as just. Part III develops a pragmatic account of corrective justice and argues that it accurately describes current practices of tort adjudication. Finally, Part IV argues that these practices are justified in the …