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GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Series

2003

Democracy

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

Adjudication, Antisubordination, And The Jazz Connection, Christopher A. Bracey Jan 2003

Adjudication, Antisubordination, And The Jazz Connection, Christopher A. Bracey

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

We live in the midst of a pervasive and sustained democratic crisis. Our society expresses a deep commitment to core notions of freedom, justice, and equality for all citizens. Yet, it is equally clear that our democracy tolerates a great deal of social and economic inequality. Membership in a socially disfavored group can (and often does) profoundly distort one's life chances and opportunities. Our constitutional democracy acknowledges this tension, providing for both majority rule and the protection of minority rights and interests. Although we seek to safeguard minority rights and interest through express legal prohibitions on the subordination of socially …


Thinking Race, Making Nation (Reviewing Glenn C. Loury, The Anatomy Of Racial Inequality), Christopher A. Bracey Jan 2003

Thinking Race, Making Nation (Reviewing Glenn C. Loury, The Anatomy Of Racial Inequality), Christopher A. Bracey

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

We live in a race-conscious culture. As Americans, we are a nation of people who self-consciously chose to adopt a vision of society that embraced lofty ideals of individual freedom and democracy for all along with powerful mechanisms for devastating racial oppression. Our history is replete with instances of differential treatment on account of race - slavery being only the most egregious example - that achieved the desired effect of generating remarkable disparities in socioeconomic well-being among individuals and between different racial groups. Such disparities are not simply historical artifacts. They are facts of the contemporary American racial landscape as …


Can Pragmatism Be Radical? Richard Posner And Legal Pragmatism, Daniel J. Solove, Michael Sullivan Jan 2003

Can Pragmatism Be Radical? Richard Posner And Legal Pragmatism, Daniel J. Solove, Michael Sullivan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Richard Posner's Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy (2003) is the most comprehensive account to date of his pragmatic vision of the law and democracy. For the most part, Posner's theory of pragmatism has been attacked externally, mainly by theorists unsympathetic to pragmatism. In contrast, in this Review, we contest Posner's account of pragmatism from within the pragmatic tradition. We contend that Posner's views are problematic not because they are pragmatic, but because they are often not pragmatic enough.

We put Posner's account of pragmatism to the pragmatic test by examining its implications. Posner views ideals as useless and philosophical theorizing as …