Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Law
Law As Culture, Naomi Mezey
Law As Culture, Naomi Mezey
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This Essay is an attempt to theorize the relationship of law to culture and culture to law beyond the intuitive, commonplace sense that law partakes of culture - by reflecting it as well as by reacting against it - and that culture refracts law. It proposes a theory of law as culture that, in detailing the mutually constitutive nature of the relationship, distinguishes itself from the way law and culture have been conceived by realist and critical legal scholars, as well as by social norms writers. The Essay concludes by speculating about one possible method by which this theorizing might …
The Right To Liberty In A Good Society, Randy E. Barnett, Douglas B. Rasmussen
The Right To Liberty In A Good Society, Randy E. Barnett, Douglas B. Rasmussen
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
We have been asked to consider how a "Constitution of Civic Virtue" might contribute to a "good society." To answer this question, we need to have some idea of what a good society might be, and we need to be able to articulate that idea. Certainly, we think we know a good movie when we see it, a good book when we read it, a good argument when we hear it, and a good idea when we have one, but we are not sure we have a handle on what a good society is. Even what we think we know …
Formalism, Realism, And The War On Drugs, David Cole
Formalism, Realism, And The War On Drugs, David Cole
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
One of the ways our legal system has avoided confronting this ugly reality is through a commitment to legal formalism. Legal formalism allows us to ignore the social determinants that my AUSA friend saw every day as he prosecuted federal drug cases. As my colleague Professor Michael Seidman has suggested, legal formalism, which has been effectively critiqued and displaced by legal realism in many other areas of law, continues to exercise considerable influence over the way we think about criminal law. This formalist approach, in my view, has strongly affected the way we approach the drug problem. One consequence is …
Berle And Means Reconsidered At The Century's Turn, William W. Bratton
Berle And Means Reconsidered At The Century's Turn, William W. Bratton
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Part I places Berle and Means in the context of the legal theory of its day by comparing the work of Dewey on the theory of the firm and Douglas on corporate reorganization. This discussion highlights two progressive assumptions Berle and Means shared with these business law contemporaries-a confidence in the efficacy of judicial intervention to vindicate distributive policies and a distrust of the institution of contract. These assumptions would, in the long run, cause the book's prescription to land wide of the mark. After 1980, Berle and Means lost their paradigmatic status due to a combination of skepticism respecting …