Law Commons^™

Democratic Experimentalism, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Democratic Experimentalism is an orientation in contemporary legal thought that draws on both the critical impulses of modernist theory and the constructive practice of postbureaucratic organization.

Some of the core ideas of Democratic Experimentalism were formulated long ago, notably by pragmatists in the John Dewey mold, but they have been elaborated in response to social developments of recent decades. A recurring challenge presented by these developments is uncertainty, by which we mean the inability to anticipate, much less to assign a probability to, future states of the world. The constellation of changes that make contemporary economies more innovative produces uncertainty …

Some Legal Realism About Legal Theory, Jeremy Kessler, David Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

This is a brief surreply to Charles Barzun, Working for the Weekend: A Response to Kessler & Pozen, 83 U. Chi. L. Rev. Online 225 (2017), which responds to Jeremy K. Kessler & David E. Pozen, Working Themselves Impure: A Life Cycle Theory of Legal Theories, 83 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1819 (2016).

Our article Working Themselves Impure concludes by calling for lawyers to take more seriously the failure of prescriptive legal theories to produce the results they once promised. When prescriptive legal theories that fail to achieve their initial, publicly stated goals nonetheless gain and sustain broad …

Jerry L. Mashaw And The Public Law Curriculum, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

Jerry L. Mashaw’s magisterial account of the first one hundred years of Administrative law sharply distinguishes between internal and external administrative law – between those contributions to the regularity and legality of agency behavior that emerge from its own institutions and practices, and the constraints imposed by external actors – legislative, executive, and judicial. The “systems of internal control and audit” he found common to nineteenth-century governance are subordinated, if not suppressed in today’s thinking about administrative law.

In our world of multiple transsubstantive statutes and ubiquitous judicial review, we tend to think of our administrative constitution as a set …

Equality Law Pluralism, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

This contribution to the Constance Baker Motley Symposium examines the future of civil rights reform at a time in which longstanding limitations of the antidiscrimination law framework, as well as newer pressures such as the rise of economic populism, are placing stress on the traditional antidiscrimination project. This Essay explores the openings that nevertheless remain in public law for confronting persistent forms of exclusion and makes the case for greater pluralism in equality law frameworks. In particular, this Essay examines innovations that widen the range of regulatory levers for promoting inclusion, such as competitive grants, tax incentives, contests for labor …

Can Moral Principles Change?, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The paper considers the main arguments against the possibility that basic normative principles can change, and finds them wanting. The principal argument discussed derives from the claim that normative considerations are intelligible, and therefore that they can be explained, and their explanations presuppose the prior existence of basic normative principles. The intelligibility thesis is affirmed but the implication that basic change is impossible is denied. Subsumptive explanations are contrasted with explanations by analogy. Later in the paper, other objections are considered more briefly: that normative properties are queer, that they are unconnected to the rest of reality, and therefore cannot …

The Choice Theory Of Contracts – Preface & Introduction, Hanoch Dagan, Michael Heller

Faculty Scholarship

This concise landmark in law and jurisprudence offers the first coherent, liberal account of contract law. "The Choice Theory of Contracts" answers the field's most pressing questions: What is the “freedom” in “freedom of contract”? What core values animate contract law and how do those values interrelate? How must the state act when it shapes contract law? Hanoch Dagan and Michael Heller show exactly why and how freedom matters to contract. They start with the most appealing tenets of modern liberalism and end with their implications for contract law. This readable, engaging book gives contract scholars, teachers, and students a …

Courts As Institutional Reformers: Bankruptcy And Public Law Litigation, Kathleen G. Noonan, Jonathan C. Lipson, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

This article compares two spheres in which courts induce and oversee the restructuring of organizations that fail systematically to comply with their legal obligations: bankruptcy reorganization and public law litigation (civil rights or regulatory suits seeking structural remedies). The analogies between bankruptcy and public law litigation (PLL) have grown stronger in recent years as structural decrees have evolved away from highly specific directives to “framework” decrees designed to induce engagement with stakeholders and make performance transparent. We use the comparison with bankruptcy, where the value and legitimacy of judicial intervention are better understood and more accepted, to address prominent criticisms …