Law Commons^™

Symposium: Bob Dylan And The Law, Foreword, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Perelman's Theory Of Argumentation And Natural Law, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Chaim Perelman resuscitated the rhetorical tradition by developing an elegant and detailed theory of argumentation. Rejecting the single-minded Cartesian focus on rational truth, Perelman recovered the ancient wisdom that we can argue reasonably about matters that admit only of probability. From this one would conclude that Perelman’s argumentation theory is inalterably opposed to natural law, and therefore that I would have done better to have written an article titled “Perelman’s Th eory of Argumentation as a Rejection of Natural Law.”

However, my thesis is precisely that Perelman’s theory of argumentation connects to the natural law tradition in interesting and productive …

Faithful Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools on January 9, 2009 as part of a panel on "Scriptural and Constitutional Hermeneutics." The panel was co-sponsored by the Law and Religion Section, Section on Jewish Law, and Section on Islamic Law, and the papers will be published by the Michigan State Law Review.

My article compares legal and religious hermeneutics by exploring the dual nature of what I term "faithful hermeneutics." The ambiguity evoked by this phrase is intentional. On one hand, it suggests an investigation of the relationship between legal and religious …