Law Commons^™

May 4, 2021: No, We Will Not Find God, But We Might Find Something Else, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “No, We Will Not Find God, But We Might Find Something Else“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

America Won’T Find God. But We Might Find Something Else, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

May 3, 2021: The "America Is Racist" Controversy, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The "America is racist" Controversy“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Deodand, Brian L. Frye

Seattle University Law Review SUpra

Deodands are a delightful example of a common law doctrine that caused something to happen: the Crown was enabled to tax tortfeasors. But not in a way anyone expected at the time or anyone understands today. Look on their logic and despair. You’ll never figure it out, no matter how hard you try. And that’s what makes them so lyrical. The concept of the deodand is beautiful even though we can’t understand it. Or rather, it’s beautiful because we can’t understand it. If we understood deodands, surely they would be as prosaic as life insurance and conceptual art.

In 1964, …

There’S A Pro-Abortion Rights Case To Be Made For Keeping The Hyde Amendment, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

April 22, 2021: The Pro-Choice Case For Retaining The Hyde Amendment--This Week's Pennsylvania Capital-Star Column, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Pro-Choice Case for Retaining the Hyde Amendment--This Week's Pennsylvania Capital-Star Column“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

What To Do About The Coming Crisis In The Rule Of Law, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

United States Judicial System Failures And Solutions, Braden P. Barker

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

For years, the American judicial system has unfairly punished the American people. These actions have led to serious societal consequences. We have prisons that sentence people to harsh punishment for nonviolent offenses, an overfunded and militarized police force, and racial biases that lead to the tragic killings of black people at the hands of the police that are intended to protect and serve us. This essay looks to diagnose the United States judicial system’s woes. More importantly, we take a look at what steps can be taken immediately to begin reversing the negative impact of these issues.

April 8, 2021: Aals Gets It Backward--This Week's Column In The Pennsylvania Capital-Star, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “AALS Gets It Backward--This Week's Column in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

April 4, 2021: Happy Easter, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Happy Easter“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Learning To Love One-Party Rule: A Beginner’S Guide, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

March 24, 2021: Learning To Love One-Party Rule, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Learning to Love One-Party Rule“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Self-Determination In American Discourse: The Supreme Court’S Historical Indoctrination Of Free Speech And Expression, Jarred Williams

Honors Theses

Within the American criminal legal system, it is a well-established practice to presume the innocence of those charged with criminal offenses unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Such a judicial framework-like approach, called a legal maxim, is utilized in order to ensure that the law is applied and interpreted in ways that legislative bodies originally intended.

The central aim of this piece in relation to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution is to investigate whether the Supreme Court of the United States has utilized a specific legal maxim within cases that dispute government speech or expression regulation. …

Lawmakers, Wolf Need To Clarify Pa.’S Mail-In Voting Law Before 2022, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

March 9, 2021: The Future Of Mail-In Voting In Pennsylvania--The Week's Column, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Future of Mail-in Voting in Pennsylvania--the week's column“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

March 6, 2021: A Hallowed Secularism Way Of Life, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “A Hallowed Secularism Way of Life“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Artificial Intelligence And Moral Rights, Martin Miernicki, Irene (Huang Ying) Ng

Centre for AI & Data Governance

Whether copyrights should exist in content generated by an artificial intelligence is a frequently discussed issue in the legal literature. Most of the discussion focuses on economic rights, whereas the relationship of artificial intelligence and moral rights remains relatively obscure. However, as moral rights traditionally aim at protecting the author’s “personal sphere”, the question whether the law should recognize such protection in the content produced by machines is pressing; this is especially true considering that artificial intelligence is continuously further developed and increasingly hard to comprehend for human beings. This paper first provides the background on the protection of moral …

The Moral Ambiguity Of Public Prosecution, Gabriel S. Mendlow

Articles

Classic crimes like theft and assault are in the first instance wrongs against individuals, not against the state or the polity that it represents. Yet our legal system denies crime victims the right to initiate or intervene in the criminal process, relegating them to the roles of witness or bystander—even as the system treats prosecution as an institutional analog of the interpersonal processes of moral blame and accountability, which give pride of place to those most directly wronged. Public prosecution reigns supreme, with the state claiming primary and exclusive moral standing to call offenders to account for their wrongs. Although …

We Have To Defeat The Myth Of The Stolen Election. We Risk Destroying Our Democracy If We Don't, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

February 24, 2021: It Is Not Clear Whether Republicans Really Believe The 2020 Election Was Stolen--This Week's Column, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ It Is Not Clear Whether Republicans Really Believe the 2020 Election Was Stolen--This Week's Column“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

February 10, 2021: The San Francisco School Board Was Wrong To Remove Washington And Lincoln--This Week's Column In The Capital-Star, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The San Francisco School Board Was Wrong to Remove Washington and Lincoln--this week's column in the Capital-Star“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The San Francisco School Board’S Vote Removing Lincoln’S, Washington's Names Was Wrong. Here's Why, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

February 9, 2021: God And The Pandemic, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “God and the Pandemic“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

February 5, 2021: New York Review Letter To The Editor Concerning Originalism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ New York Review Letter to the Editor Concerning Originalism“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Pa. Rep. Mike Kelly Came Closer Than You Think To Stealing The Election For Trump, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

January 28, 2021: Miike Kelly Got Closer Than People Think To Stealing The Election For Trump, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Mike Kelly Got Closer than People Think to Stealing the Election for Trump“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

January 11, 2021: Pa. Senate Republicans Need To Seat Dem. Jim Brewster--This Week's Column In The Pennsylvania Capital-Star, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Pa. Senate Republicans Need to Seat Dem. Jim Brewster--this week's column in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Pa. Senate Republicans Need To Seat Sen. Jim Brewster, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Book Review, Secular Surge: A New Fault Line In American Politics, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Harry Potter And The Gluttonous Machine, Jason A. Beckett

Faculty Journal Articles

In this paper, I outline the colonial structure of international law, and examine the short decline or suppression of its coloniality in the so-called ‘era of decolonisation’, then illustrate its resurgence in the modern neo-colonial order. PIL has split into two separate systems. One includes, and is justified by, the heroic tales of human rights and ‘Humanity’s Law’. The other is the actualised system of International Economic Law (IEL), an order driven by the need of the over-developed states to plunder the under-developed states’ resources and labour, to subsidise the luxury to which we have grown accustomed. One purports to …