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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Politics Of Postmodern Jurisprudence, Stephen M. Feldman Oct 1996

The Politics Of Postmodern Jurisprudence, Stephen M. Feldman

Michigan Law Review

What is the politics of postmodern jurisprudence? Forms of postmodern interpretivism, including philosophical hermeneutics and deconstruction, assert that we are always and already interpreting. This assertion has provoked numerous scholarly attacks, many of which invoke standard modernist hobgoblins such as textual indeterminacy, solipsism, ethical relativism, and nihilism. From the modernist standpoint, postmodern jurisprudence thus is either conservative or apolitical because it lacks the firm foundations necessary for knowledge and critique. In this article, I argue that these modernist attacks not only are mistaken but that they also obscure the potentially radical political ramifications of postmodern interpretivism. My discussion focuses on …


Computers, Urinals, And The Fourth Amendment: Confessions Of A Patron Saint, Wayne R. Lafave Aug 1996

Computers, Urinals, And The Fourth Amendment: Confessions Of A Patron Saint, Wayne R. Lafave

Michigan Law Review

At least the title indicates that the article is somehow concerned with "the Fourth Amendment," though for anyone who knows me or is at all familiar with my work, that piece of information hardly would come as a revelation. The fact of the matter is that I almost always write about the Fourth Amendment; I am in an academic rut so deep as to deserve recognition in the Guinness Book World of Records. Search and seizure has been my cheval de bataille during my entire time as a law professor and even when I was a mere law student. …


Counter-Revolution In Constitutional Criminal Procedure? Two Audiences, Two Answers, Carol S. Steiker Aug 1996

Counter-Revolution In Constitutional Criminal Procedure? Two Audiences, Two Answers, Carol S. Steiker

Michigan Law Review

For the purposes of my argument, I adapt Professor Meir Dan-Cohen's distinction (which he in turn borrowed from Jeremy Bentham) between "conduct" rules and "decision" rules. Bentham and Dan-Cohen make this distinction in the context of substantive criminal law; for their purposes, "conduct" rules are addressed to the general public in order to guide its behavior (for example, "Let no person steal") and "decision" rules are addressed to public officials in order to guide their decisionmaking about the consequences of violating conduct rules (for example, "Let the judge cause whoever is convicted of stealing to be hanged"). But as any …


Gossip And Metaphysics: The Personal Turn In Jurisprudential Writing, Michael Ansaldi May 1996

Gossip And Metaphysics: The Personal Turn In Jurisprudential Writing, Michael Ansaldi

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Neil Duxbury, Patterns of American Jurisprudence and John Henry Schlegel American Legal Realism and Empirical Social Science


Are The Similarities Between A Woman's Right To Choose An Abortion And The Alleged Right To Assisted Suicide Really Compelling?, Marc Spindelman Apr 1996

Are The Similarities Between A Woman's Right To Choose An Abortion And The Alleged Right To Assisted Suicide Really Compelling?, Marc Spindelman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, Marc Spindelman examines the relationship between abortion and assisted suicide. He begins his discussion with the constitutional framework within which courts should consider the assertion that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects an individual's decision to commit assisted suicide. The Author then considers and, based on relevant Supreme Court doctrine, rejects the conception of personal autonomy that undergirds the claimed constitutional right to assisted suicide. Finally, the Author points out some legal and cultural distinctions between abortion and assisted suicide, arguing that these distinctions offer courts good reasons for holding that the Fourteenth Amendment's …


Loss Of Protection As Injury In Fact: An Approach To Establishing Standing To Challenge Environmental Planning Decisions, Miles A. Yanick Apr 1996

Loss Of Protection As Injury In Fact: An Approach To Establishing Standing To Challenge Environmental Planning Decisions, Miles A. Yanick

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

As currently interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, Article III of the Constitution creates a significant hurdle for plaintiff citizen groups seeking standing to challenge environmental planning or management decisions. In particular, plaintiffs have had difficulty in making the required showing of an 'injury in fact" where an agency has not yet approved a site-specific action but has approved only a general plan for an area to govern future site-specific actions. The Supreme Court has not articulated a clear rule for standing to challenge the latter type of agency decision making, and the courts of appeals for the various …


Reconsidering Strict Scrutiny Of Affirmative Action, Brent E. Simmons Jan 1996

Reconsidering Strict Scrutiny Of Affirmative Action, Brent E. Simmons

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Under the artificial constraints of strict scrutiny, however, the courts are free to veto the government's choice of more effective, race-conscious means. The Supreme Court's unfortunate and ill-conceived adoption of strict scrutiny as the constitutional standard for reviewing race-conscious affirmative action should be reconsidered for several reasons. This Article examines those reasons.


Law's Normative Claims, Philip E. Soper Jan 1996

Law's Normative Claims, Philip E. Soper

Book Chapters

People can look at non-conforming behaviour in two ways: either the person is acting immorally or the moral theory that condemns the behaviour is mistaken. To choose the former is to reflect a confidence in the existing moral theory, while choosing the latter is evidence that moral theory for that particular behaviour is wrong. This point says a lot about the link between the descriptive and evaluative enterprises of law. The development of basic moral principles, which draws from moral intuition, is a similar process when it comes to developing social practices, which in turn draw from human behaviour. Legal …


An Epilogue To The Age Of Pound, Thomas A. Green Jan 1996

An Epilogue To The Age Of Pound, Thomas A. Green

Articles

Doubts about the reality of criminal offenders' autonomy have sometimes played a role in the movement to abolish, or greatly reduce the reach of, the sanction of capital punishment.