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Full-Text Articles in Law

Future Generations: A Prioritarian View, Matthew D. Adler Sep 2009

Future Generations: A Prioritarian View, Matthew D. Adler

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Should we remain neutral between our interests and those of future generations? Or are we ethically permitted or even required to depart from neutrality and engage in some measure of intergenerational discounting? This Article addresses the problem of intergenerational discounting by drawing on two different intellectual traditions: the social welfare function (“SWF”) tradition in welfare economics, and scholarship on “prioritarianism” in moral philosophy. Unlike utilitarians, prioritarians are sensitive to the distribution of well-being. They give greater weight to well-being changes affecting worse-off individuals. Prioritarianism can be captured, formally, through an SWF which sums a concave transformation of individual utility, rather …


Foreseeability And Copyright Incentives, Shyamkrishna Balganesh Apr 2009

Foreseeability And Copyright Incentives, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

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Copyright law’s principal justification today is the economic theory of creator incentives. Central to this theory is the recognition that while copyright’s exclusive rights framework provides creators with an economic incentive to create, it also entails large social costs, and that creators therefore need to be given just enough incentive to create in order to balance the system’s benefits against its costs. Yet, none of copyright’s current doctrines enable courts to circumscribe a creator’s entitlement by reference to limitations inherent in the very idea of incentives. While the common law too relies on providing actors with incentives to behave in …


Social Facts, Constitutional Interpretation, And The Rule Of Recognition, Matthew D. Adler Jan 2009

Social Facts, Constitutional Interpretation, And The Rule Of Recognition, Matthew D. Adler

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This essay is a chapter in a volume that examines constitutional law in the United States through the lens of H.L.A. Hart’s “rule of recognition” model of a legal system. My chapter focuses on a feature of constitutional practice that has been rarely examined: how jurists and scholars argue about interpretive methods. Although a vast body of scholarship provides arguments for or against various interpretive methods --such as textualism, originalism, “living constitutionalism,” structure-and-relationship reasoning, representation-reinforcement, minimalism, and so forth -- very little scholarship shifts to the meta-level and asks: What are the considerations that jurists and scholars bring to bear …


Time Out, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 2009

Time Out, Stephen B. Burbank

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No abstract provided.


Policing Politics At Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Max M. Schanzenbach, Emerson H. Tiller Jan 2009

Policing Politics At Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Max M. Schanzenbach, Emerson H. Tiller

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No abstract provided.


Symposium: Supreme Court Review, Symposium Foreword, Mitchell N. Berman Jan 2009

Symposium: Supreme Court Review, Symposium Foreword, Mitchell N. Berman

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No abstract provided.


Constitutional Theory And The Rule Of Recognition: Toward A Fourth Theory Of Law, Mitchell N. Berman Jan 2009

Constitutional Theory And The Rule Of Recognition: Toward A Fourth Theory Of Law, Mitchell N. Berman

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This essay, a contribution to a forthcoming edited volume on Hart's rule of recognition and the U.S. Constitution, advances one argument and pitches one proposal. The argument is that Hart's theory of law does not succeed. On Hart's account, legal propositions are what they are - that is, they have the particular content and status that they do - by virtue of their satisfying necessary and sufficient conditions that are themselves established by a special sort of convergent practice among officials. American constitutional theorists are often troubled by this account because it seems to imply that in the "hard cases" …


Originalism Is Bunk, Mitchell N. Berman Jan 2009

Originalism Is Bunk, Mitchell N. Berman

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No abstract provided.


Liability Insurance At The Tort-Crime Boundary, Tom Baker Jan 2009

Liability Insurance At The Tort-Crime Boundary, Tom Baker

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This essay explores how liability insurance mediates the boundary between torts and crime. Liability insurance sometimes separates these two legal fields, for example through the application of standard insurance contract provisions that exclude insurance coverage for some crimes that are also torts. Perhaps less obviously, liability insurance also can draw parts of the tort and criminal fields together. For example, professional liability insurance civilizes the criminal law experience for some crimes that are also torts by providing defendants with an insurance-paid criminal defense that provides more than ordinary means to contest the state’s accusations. The crime-tort separation in liability insurance …


The First Amendment And Commercial Speech, C. Edwin Baker Jan 2009

The First Amendment And Commercial Speech, C. Edwin Baker

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After a quick summary of constitutional treatment of commercial speech, this essay outlines four reasons why commercial speech should be denied First Amendment protection. Working from the claim that the primary rationale for constitutional protection of speech is the mandate that government respect individual freedom or autonomy, the essay argues: 1) that the individual does not choose, but rather the market dictates the content of commercial speech; 2) that the commercial speech should be attributed to an artificial, instrumentally entity – the business enterprise – rather than the flesh and blood person whose liberty merits protection; 3) market exchanges involve …


Law, Society, And Medical Malpractice Litigation In Japan, Eric Feldman Jan 2009

Law, Society, And Medical Malpractice Litigation In Japan, Eric Feldman

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No abstract provided.