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Law’S Evolution And Law As Custom, William A. Edmundson Dec 2014

Law’S Evolution And Law As Custom, William A. Edmundson

San Diego Law Review

normative, and law works by channeling custom-in-gross into progressively finer and more precise grooves. If there is normative moral value resident in the custom of elevating and following leaders, then that normativity ought to flow downstream into the finer channels officials carve and into the fresh territory they wish us to occupy. In places, that flow is too diluted, and normativity trails off. In places, officials direct the stream over a cliff, and it is no longer normative at all. In places, the stream is overtaken by stronger normative streams and can only make a difference yet farther downslope, where …


“Religion” As A Bundle Of Legal Proxies: Reply To Micah Schwartzman, Andrew Koppelman Dec 2014

“Religion” As A Bundle Of Legal Proxies: Reply To Micah Schwartzman, Andrew Koppelman

San Diego Law Review

The debate among legal scholars about whether religion is special is chronically confused by the scholars’ failure to grasp a point familiar in the academic study of religion: “religion” is a label for something that has no ontological reality. Religion has no essence. If it has a determinate meaning, it is simply because there is a settled and familiar practice of applying the label of religion in predictable ways. The question of religious accommodation arises in cases where a law can allow some exceptions. Many laws, such as military conscription, taxes, environmental regulations, and antidiscrimination laws, will accomplish their ends …


Do People Obey The Law?, Frederick Schauer Dec 2014

Do People Obey The Law?, Frederick Schauer

San Diego Law Review

It is customary in a symposium honoring a book as valuable as Laurence Claus’s for the commentators to begin by noting their general agreement with the author’s thesis and then explaining that, in the spirit of academic engagement, they will focus on one small but interesting area in which the author and the commentator disagree. On this occasion, however, it seems more appropriate to reverse that approach. For reasons I will make clear, I am in substantial disagreement with Claus’s normative argument against authority. Unlike Claus, I believe that “because I said so” is often, especially when backed by the …


Freedom, Benefit And Understanding: Reflections On Laurence Claus’S Critique Of Authority, John Finnis Dec 2014

Freedom, Benefit And Understanding: Reflections On Laurence Claus’S Critique Of Authority, John Finnis

San Diego Law Review

With wide-ranging and illuminating determination, Law’s Evolution and Human Understanding offers a refutation of the illusion of authority. No one, it rightly contends, has the right to be obeyed. Still less, as it correctly says, do any persons have the right that their say so be obeyed because they said so. Given the book’s stipulative definition of “authority,” these truths entail that authority is an illusion, and provide some important premises for a plausible further conclusion or pair of conclusions: it is harmful, both in practice and in theory, to say that some person or body has authority (“the rule …


Where's The Beef?, Stanley Fish Dec 2014

Where's The Beef?, Stanley Fish

San Diego Law Review

A key concern of the papers written for this conference is the relationship between religious beliefs and secular beliefs of the kind that carry with them deep ethical obligations. Are these systems of belief essentially the same or are they different in important respects? The question is typically posed abstractly, and I thought it might be useful to have before us an example of religious belief and the demands that attend it. The example is taken from the beginning of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian, Bunyan’s protagonist, has suddenly become aware that his salvation is imperiled, and he is …


Religion And Insularity: Brian Leiter On Accommodating Religion, Christopher J. Eberle Dec 2014

Religion And Insularity: Brian Leiter On Accommodating Religion, Christopher J. Eberle

San Diego Law Review

Crucial to Leiter’s overall case is the claim that there is no credible reason to accommodate religious objectors but not secular objectors: “[N]o one has been able to articulate a credible principled argument . . . that would explain why . . . we ought to accord special legal and moral treatment to religious practices.” He reaches this skeptical conclusion, in significant part, because he takes religion to be afflicted with a troubling defect, that is, religion involves commitment to categorical demands that are insulated from scientific and commonsensical scrutiny. But, I will argue, there is no good reason to …


Why Distinguish Religion, Legally Speaking?, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan Dec 2014

Why Distinguish Religion, Legally Speaking?, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

San Diego Law Review

Law professors commonly answer this critique by scholars of religion, as Andrew Koppelman does, with the comment that, after all, any ambiguity in definition only arises in a few cases. Most of the time the reference is obvious, he says. Moreover, he insists, it has worked fine for all those for whom it should work. But that is the problem—its very obviousness. The problems of exclusion are largely invisible. The reference is so obvious to many and so obviously inclusive of those who are deserving that there is no way to have a conversation about it without the conversation devolving …


Prediction Theories Of Law And The Internal Point Of View, Michael S. Green Dec 2014

Prediction Theories Of Law And The Internal Point Of View, Michael S. Green

San Diego Law Review

In my remarks here, I will try to defend Claus’s iconoclastic tone by identifying the important difference between prediction theories of law and Hart’s. I start with a number of distinctions. By a prediction theory of law I mean a theory under which a statement about the law, such as “The Securities Exchange Act is valid law,” is a prediction of the behavior and attitudes of people in a community. In addition to offering this theory, Claus tacks on what I will call a prediction theory of lawmaking, under which the words uttered or written by lawmakers are themselves essentially …


Law’S Evolution And Human Understanding, Laurence Claus Dec 2014

Law’S Evolution And Human Understanding, Laurence Claus

San Diego Law Review

What a privilege and delight it was to welcome the participants to this conference. I am deeply grateful to the outside commentators, Bill Edmundson, John Finnis, Michael Steven Green, Mark Greenberg, Fred Schauer, and Larry Solum, for contributing so generously. My thanks also go to the many faculty colleagues who joined in the celebration, and particularly to Larry Alexander for convening the event and leading the proceedings, as he so often does, and does so well. This response to the insightful commentaries on Law’s Evolution and Human Understanding grows out of three propositions: law comes first, law is signals, law …


Religion, Conscience, And The Case For Accommodation, William A. Galston Dec 2014

Religion, Conscience, And The Case For Accommodation, William A. Galston

San Diego Law Review

I do not believe that religion is an obsolete constitutional category. But I do believe that the holdings in United States v. Seeger and Welsh v. United States, the Vietnam-era draft cases that extended conscientious objector status to individuals invoking nonreligious claims, were correct. Can I consistently embrace both propositions? I think I can. My argument, in brief, is that religion is indeed special. But when we understand what it is about religion that warrants both distinctive privileges and distinctive burdens, we will see that some other systems of belief track these features of religion closely enough to warrant comparable …


Galston On Religion, Conscience, And The Case For Accommodation, Larry Alexander Dec 2014

Galston On Religion, Conscience, And The Case For Accommodation, Larry Alexander

San Diego Law Review

So these are some reasons why political theory might dictate that religious dissenters be accommodated even though, by enacting the laws to which the dissenters object, government indicates that it believes the dissenters err. If political theory justifies religious accommodations, however, then when government acts on the basis of political theory, is it establishing a religion? Bill argues, in support of Seeger, that claims of conscience derived from moral theory can qualify for accommodations under the Free Exercise Clause. But the two religion clauses in the Constitution use the noun “religion” only once. So if claims of conscience derived from …


Religion, Meaning, Truth, Life, Frederick Mark Gedicks Dec 2014

Religion, Meaning, Truth, Life, Frederick Mark Gedicks

San Diego Law Review

I am a believer, yet I will also say that it is simply not correct that only religion can offer deep meaning to life, and I can say this out of my own experience. Ordinary activities can be crucial to the meaning of one’s life, whether or not they are experienced or defined as “religious.” Though not all such activities are as morally serious as religious belief and practice, some are, and they are surely not “nihilistic” or “nothing” because they lack the character of transcendent religious truth.


Religion As A Legal Proxy, Micah Schwartzman Dec 2014

Religion As A Legal Proxy, Micah Schwartzman

San Diego Law Review

In what follows, after briefly summarizing Koppelman’s position, I argue that his view is vulnerable to the charge that using religion as a legal proxy is unfair to those with comparable, but otherwise secular, ethical and moral convictions. Koppelman has, of course, anticipated this objection, but his responses are either ambivalent or insufficient to overcome it. The case for adopting religion as a proxy turns partly on arguments against other potential candidates. In particular, Koppelman rejects the freedom of conscience as a possible substitute. But even if he is right that its coverage is not fully extensive with the category …


How Much Autonomy Do You Want?, Maimon Schwarzschild Dec 2014

How Much Autonomy Do You Want?, Maimon Schwarzschild

San Diego Law Review

At root, the questions of special accommodation and religious adjudicatory independence arise most urgently when a government grows in its reach and ambition. After all, if most areas of life, including those that touch on religious life, are left to people’s private arrangement, then not much special accommodation will be necessary. But when government takes control over more and more areas of life, regulating who shall do what and under what rules and conditions, then clashes with one or another religious way of life are almost inevitable. The dispute over government mandates to provide abortive drugs and contraception, in the …


Constitutional Theories: A Taxonomy And (Implicit) Critique, Larry Alexander Aug 2014

Constitutional Theories: A Taxonomy And (Implicit) Critique, Larry Alexander

San Diego Law Review

I am honored to have been invited to present this Madison Lecture, and I want to thank my hosts, Robby George and Brad Wilson, for their hospitality and for the excellence achieved by the Madison Program under their stewardship. My charge was to present something on constitutional theory. Now, as you shall see, I do work in one corner of constitutional theory, and of course I believe it is the right corner to work in and that all constitutional theorists should be working in my corner. The baleful truth, however, is that most constitutional theorists reject that claim, despite several …


After Caronia: First Amendment Concerns In Off-Label Promotion, Stephanie M. Greene Aug 2014

After Caronia: First Amendment Concerns In Off-Label Promotion, Stephanie M. Greene

San Diego Law Review

The government has successfully prosecuted pharmaceutical companies for off-label promotion of drugs, maintaining that such promotion impermissibly undermines the FDA’s premarket approval process and jeopardizes the public health. In several recent cases, however, pharmaceutical companies have alleged that regulations prohibiting such promotion are unconstitutional because off-label promotion is protected under the First Amendment. Two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases contain language that gives broad protection to advertising and marketing in the pharmaceutical field. This Article questions the reach of these cases as applied to the practice of off-label promotion through detailing.


Keep Your Facebook Friends Close And Your Process Server Closer: The Expansion Of Social Media Service Of Process To Cases Involving Domestic Defendants, Alyssa L. Eisenberg Aug 2014

Keep Your Facebook Friends Close And Your Process Server Closer: The Expansion Of Social Media Service Of Process To Cases Involving Domestic Defendants, Alyssa L. Eisenberg

San Diego Law Review

This Comment addresses why service by social media better meets the constitutional standard for service of process than publication and advocates change at the state level, including suggesting arguments attorneys can use to persuade courts to allow them to serve defendants over social media. Part II of this Comment discusses the constitutional and statutory evolution of service of process beginning with traditional personal service, moving on to service by publication, and ending with electronic service of process. Part III explores recent cases in which courts have authorized and denied social media service for serving both parties abroad and parties in …


Fortune Favors The Franchisor: Survey And Analysis Of The Franchisee’S Decision Whether To Hire Counsel, Robert W. Emerson Aug 2014

Fortune Favors The Franchisor: Survey And Analysis Of The Franchisee’S Decision Whether To Hire Counsel, Robert W. Emerson

San Diego Law Review

The franchisee-franchisor relationship has often been referred to as the little guy against the big guy. Franchising may encompass the seemingly innocuous defining characteristics of distribution, know-how, brand identification, profits, risk, independence, control, and standards, but there is much more to this relational contract. If parties enter into a franchise or licensing agreement rather than some other business agreement, this does not necessarily insulate the parties from liability. For example, simply because the parties have formed a franchisor-franchisee relationship does not mean the parties did not also form an agent-principal (agency) relationship. In addition to the franchise relationship, the latter …


Those Doggone Police: Insufficient Training, Canine Companion Seizures, And Colorado’S Solution, Kaylan E. Kaatz Aug 2014

Those Doggone Police: Insufficient Training, Canine Companion Seizures, And Colorado’S Solution, Kaylan E. Kaatz

San Diego Law Review

This Comment advocates that California adopt Colorado’s Dog Protection Act or a similar measure mandating police training for dog interactions and implementing specific procedures by law enforcement agencies to reduce dog shootings by police. With the increasing occurrence and coverage of police dog shootings, the need for more adequate law enforcement training on animal encounters is ever present. Additional training, as recently mandated by the Colorado legislature, would minimize police dog shootings. It would also help clarify the applicability of 42 U.S.C. section 1983, the federal statute permitting recovery for the loss of a dog due to a police shooting. …


The Punishment Should Fit The Crime—Not The Prior Convictions Of The Person That Committed The Crime: An Argument For Less Impact Being Accorded To Previous Convictions, Mirko Bagaric Jun 2014

The Punishment Should Fit The Crime—Not The Prior Convictions Of The Person That Committed The Crime: An Argument For Less Impact Being Accorded To Previous Convictions, Mirko Bagaric

San Diego Law Review

The seriousness of the offense is the main consideration that should determine the severity of criminal punishment. This cardinal sentencing principle is undermined by the reality that often the criminal history of the offender is the most decisive sentencing consideration. Recidivists are frequently sent to imprisonment for long periods for crimes, which, when committed by first-time offenders, are dealt with by a bond, probation, or a fine. This makes sentencing more about an individual’s profile than the harm caused by the offender and has contributed to a large increase in prison numbers. Intuitively, it feels right to punish repeat offenders …


Drugged Out: How Cognitive Bias Hurts Drug Innovation, Cynthia M. Ho Jun 2014

Drugged Out: How Cognitive Bias Hurts Drug Innovation, Cynthia M. Ho

San Diego Law Review

This Article hopes to provide a balanced picture of how current patent law and policy promotes mostly modest, yet high priced new drugs, as well as how cognitive biases have perpetuated this situation. This Article highlights the important interplay of cognitive biases not only by the frequently maligned industry but also previously presumed neutral parties, such as academics and policymakers. Most scholars would likely agree that considering how to optimize or at least not distort innovation is an important part of legal scholarship. However, to date, there has been little recognition, let alone robust discussion, of how patent and related …


Should Organizations Promoting Dangerous Sports Enjoy Maximum Tax Benefits?, William A. Drennan Jun 2014

Should Organizations Promoting Dangerous Sports Enjoy Maximum Tax Benefits?, William A. Drennan

San Diego Law Review

Perhaps one in every 1000 BASE jumps results in death, and the fatality and injury rates for BASE jumping may be forty-three times higher than for standard skydiving. Some other new sports are extremely dangerous. In addition, some medical researchers are finding that repeated jolts to the head in traditional contact sports correlate to midlife Alzheimer’s disease, suicide, depression, inability to work or function without a caregiver, and early death from the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). “[N]early a quarter of a million new patients turn up each year with long-term deficits resulting from . . . so-called mild …


Regulating Three-Dimensional Printing: The Converging Worlds Of Bits And Atoms, Lucas S. Osborn Jun 2014

Regulating Three-Dimensional Printing: The Converging Worlds Of Bits And Atoms, Lucas S. Osborn

San Diego Law Review

Three-dimensional printing (3D printing) is invading society, bringing with it the ability to “print” objects (atoms) from computer files (bits). Posting a computer-assisted design (CAD) file of an object—an illegal gun or an infringing shoe—to the Internet essentially makes the physical object available to the world. The technology portends dramatic shifts in manufacturing, trade, medicine, and more and will require a legal regime that integrates the legal concepts governing the digital and physical worlds. This Article represents the first broad descriptive and normative study of this technology and its multivalent effects on law. The Article separates truly novel legal issues …


National Geographics: Toward A “Federalism Function” Of American Tort Law, Riaz Tejani Mar 2014

National Geographics: Toward A “Federalism Function” Of American Tort Law, Riaz Tejani

San Diego Law Review

This Article will situate the federalism function among existing scholarly frameworks and assess the “contoured” approach to federal and state power balancing across the existing subject matter of torts. Part II will assess conflicting characterizations of tort law as on one hand “private” and on the other “public” law. Part III will define and explain competing functions of tort law with an eye to whether federalism fits the common criteria of these coexisting objectives, goals, purposes, and methods for adjudication. In Part IV, the Article will explore historical and contemporary roles of federalism to understand why this process becomes so …


Should Public Law Accommodate The Claims Of Conscience?, William A. Galston Mar 2014

Should Public Law Accommodate The Claims Of Conscience?, William A. Galston

San Diego Law Review

In the end, it seems to me, the matter boils down to a single issue. Many individuals consider themselves bound by two sources of authority, public law and conscience, whose demands do not always coincide. Is the state prepared to take cognizance of this fact, and if so, how should it respond? Unlike other regimes, liberal democracies should not find these questions unduly challenging. To be a liberal state is to recognize limits on the legitimate scope of public authority; to be a liberal democracy is to recognize limits on the authority of the people and on the writ of …


False Speech: Quagmire?, Christopher P. Guzelian Mar 2014

False Speech: Quagmire?, Christopher P. Guzelian

San Diego Law Review

Recently decided cases in several Federal Courts of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court show that First Amendment false speech case law is contradictory and unpredictable. This Article gives examples and concludes that legal liability for false speech will continue to be arbitrary and even susceptible to intentionally unjust decisionmaking if judges and juries individually and collectively disregard or downplay the necessity of an honest search for truth under the guise of tolerance and evenhandedness. If Americans wish to avoid an anything-goes “quagmire” about truth, they must—despite inevitable resistance in a civilization increasingly rife with skeptics—undergo transformations of their …


Will The “Nexus” Requirement Of Apple V. Samsung Preclude Injunctive Relief In The Majority Of Patent Cases?: Echoes Of The Entire Market Value Rule, Daniel Harris Brean Mar 2014

Will The “Nexus” Requirement Of Apple V. Samsung Preclude Injunctive Relief In The Majority Of Patent Cases?: Echoes Of The Entire Market Value Rule, Daniel Harris Brean

San Diego Law Review

In eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., the Supreme Court put an end to the practice of presuming that injunctive relief is appropriate upon a finding of patent infringement, where it held that “the decision whether to grant or deny injunctive relief rests within the equitable discretion of the district courts, and that such discretion must be exercised consistent with traditional principles of equity, in patent disputes no less than in other cases governed by such standards.” 547 U.S. 388, 394 (2006). This decision made injunctive relief much more difficult to obtain but also attempted to maintain discretion and avoid rigid …


Overseas Lawful Permanent Resident Terrorists: The Novel Approach For Revoking Their Lpr Status, Daniel Pines Mar 2014

Overseas Lawful Permanent Resident Terrorists: The Novel Approach For Revoking Their Lpr Status, Daniel Pines

San Diego Law Review

This Article seeks to break the silence by examining the issue of overseas LPRs and offering a mechanism by which the U.S. government could take affirmative action to file cases in immigration courts to strip out-of-status LPR terrorists of their LPR status. As the United States legally can, and routinely does, revoke the LPR status of out-of-status LPRs who appear at U.S. borders, the United States could also take away such status for those who have resorted to terror, without having to wait—perhaps in vain—for them to appear on the United States’ doorstep. The purpose of granting an individual LPR …


The Chairman Or The Board? Appointments At Multimember Agencies, Sean Croston Mar 2014

The Chairman Or The Board? Appointments At Multimember Agencies, Sean Croston

San Diego Law Review

For the past 130 years, Congress has alternated between two competing structural visions of ideal administrative agency design—single-administrator versus multimember organization. Over time, Congress has frequently reacted to strong arguments from both sides by approving various arrangements that conflate the two models, particularly with respect to the important but often overlooked authority to appoint “inferior Officers” within multimember agencies. In many cases, the chairmen—or their equivalent—of these multimember boards and commissions retain some or all power to select high-ranking agency staff, whereas their fellow board or commission members have authority over agency rulemaking, adjudication, and other key functions. Although such …


A Modern King Solomon’S Dilemma: Why State Legislatures Should Give Courts The Discretion To Find That A Child Has More Than Two Legal Parents, Ann E. Kinsey Mar 2014

A Modern King Solomon’S Dilemma: Why State Legislatures Should Give Courts The Discretion To Find That A Child Has More Than Two Legal Parents, Ann E. Kinsey

San Diego Law Review

This Comment reviews the current state of parental rights and proposes statutory clarifications that would provide courts with the power to find that a child has more than two legal parents. Part II provides background information on the decline of the traditional family. The Part reviews how the law of parentage has progressed over time and provides an overview of the laws of several states and Canada that provide rights to, and impose duties on, a third parent. Part III discusses California Senate Bill 1476, which, had Governor Jerry Brown signed it into law in 2012, would have given California …