Law Commons^™

Judicial Independence In Post-Conflict Iraq: Establishing The Rule Of Law In An Islamic Constitutional Democracy, David Pimentel, Brian Anderson

David Pimentel

Contemporary Iraq is facing the full range of challenges that come with post-conflict transitional justice, including “paving the road toward peace and reconciliation” and establishing a functional state, characterized by the Rule of Law. Prospects for the establishment of an independent judiciary in Iraq are obstructed by a number of factors, including (1) how to apply the explicit recognition of the law of Islam in the Iraqi Constitution, (2) the inability to pass legislation on the Federal Courts of Iraq, leaving several provisions of the Iraqi Constitution unimplemented, and other critical elements of judicial independence unaddressed, including provisions for tenure, …

Ancient Hebrew Militia Law, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

The history of the laws of warfare and of arms possession in the ancient Hebrew kingdoms.

Mexico's Gun Control Laws: A Model For The United States?, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

This article explicates Mexico’s constitutional right to arms and Mexico’s main gun-control statute, the Federal Law of Firearms and Explosives (Ley Federal de Armas de Fuego y Explosivos). Along the way, the article notes various proposals to move U.S. gun laws in a Mexican direction.

Part II of this article is an English translation of the Mexican constitution’s guarantee of the right to arms, as well as predecessor versions of the guarantee.

Part III explains the operation of Mexico’s gun-control system and provides some historical and statistical information about gun ownership and gun smuggling in Mexico.

Part IV describes some …

What Is The Primary Right?, Carter Dillard

Carter Dillard

This essay develops a new human right derived from both domestic substantive due process and international political exit right doctrines, called the primary right, which is best described as a general human claim-right of reasonable access to wilderness. It is a first generation human rights approach to environmental protection, positing a “nonhuman” baseline environment which is a necessary condition for persons to a) be “let alone” by others, and b) withdraw consent to political association and exit any, and therefore all, polities.

From Absence To Presence: A Critique Of Intersex Surgeries (Co-Authored With Maayan Sudai And Or Shai) (Hebrew), Sagit Mor

Sagit Mor

This is the first Article in Israeli legal scholarship that addresses the rights of intersex persons, who were born with "a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seemto fit the typical definitions of female or male" (INSA). The common practice in most Western countries today is to operate intersex infants in order to assign them to one of the “conventional” sexes: either male or female. The Article lays the foundations for an intersex critique of law that supports the rights of intersex persons and lays out the ground for the critique of the current legal arrangement and the design of …

Do Robomemos Dream Of Electric Nouns?: A Search For The Soul Of Legal Writing, Ian Gallacher

Ian Gallacher

This essay considers the possibility that computers might soon be capable of writing many of the documents lawyers typically write, and considers what qualities of writing are uniquely human and whether those qualities are sufficient to render human written work superior to computer generated work. After noting that despite the claims of rhetoricians and narrative theorists, not all legal writing is persuasive writing, and that it is in the non-persuasive area of prosaic, functional documents that computer generated documents might gain a bridgehead into the legal market, the essay tracks the development of computer-generated written work, particularly in the areas …