Law Commons^™

Thinking Like A Lawyer Abroad: Putting Justice Into Legal Reasoning, James Maxeiner

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Americans are taking new interest in legal reasoning. Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning by Professor Frederick Schauer suggests why. According to Schauer, American legal methods often require decision-makers “to do something other than the right thing.” There has got to be a better way.

Now comes a book that offers Americans opportunities to look into a world where legal methods help decision-makers do the right thing. According to Reinhard Zippelius in his newly published Introduction to German Legal Methods, German legal methods help decision makers resolve legal problems “in a just and equitable manner.”

This …

Some Realism About Legal Certainty In The Globalization Of The Rule Of Law, James Maxeiner

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The rule of law is at the heart of globalization. It promises both international and domestic routes to peace, security, democracy, human rights and sustainable development worldwide. A central tenet of the rule of law is legal certainty. For most modern jurists, it is a matter of course that legal certainty is a systemic goal, even if that goal is not always fully realized. But for American jurists who count themselves legal realists, legal certainty is not even a flawed goal; it is a childish myth. This address seeks to raise awareness of this fundamental difference and to show its …

Guiding Litigation: Applying Law To Facts In Germany, James Maxeiner

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"Judges should apply the law, not make it." That plea appears perennially in American politics. American legal scholars belittle it as a "simple-minded demand" that is "silly and misleading. It is not; it is what the public rightly expects from law. H.L.A. Hart, reminded U.S. jurists that "conventional legal thought in all countries conceives as the standard judicial function: the impartial application of determinant existing rules in the settlement of disputes."

This essay discusses the German method of judicial applying of law to facts. called, in German, the "Relationstechnik," that is, in English, literally "relationship technique." This essay shows how …

The New Japanese Law Schools: Putting The Professional Into Legal Education, James Maxeiner, Keiichi Yamanaka

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In April 2004, more than sixty law schools began operation in Japan. Legal education, previously treated as a combination of undergraduate education in law and extra-university training in professional skills, will now be concentrated in new professional law schools. The reforms of Japanese legal education are intended both to produce more attorneys in a nation that has a shortage of legally trained professionals, and to help increase the role of law in Japanese society generally.

In order for Japan's new Jaw schools to achieve their educational objectives, they must successfully address a host of conceptual, pedagogical and organizational challenges. Foremost …

U.S. “Methods Awareness” (Methodenbewußtsein) For German Jurists, James Maxeiner

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The purpose of this contribution is to help develop Methods Awareness in German jurists unfamiliar with American law. It shows how distant from German understanding present-day American practice is. It proceeds from Fikentscher's thumbnail sketch of German Prevailing Teaching: "this method starts from norm-thinking, therefore thinks in rules, that are applied to the case at hand." It refers to the core elements of this teaching, namely the place of the legal norm (Rechtssatz) in the legal order (Rechtsordnung) and its application to a particular set of facts (i.e., subsumption), and discusses the significance of these concepts in American law. It …