Law Commons^™

The Situational Character: A Critical Realist Perspective On The Human Animal, Jon Hanson, David Yosifon

Faculty Publications

This Article is dedicated to retiring the now-dominant "rational actor" model of human agency, together with its numerous "dispositionist" cohorts, and replacing them with a new conception of human agency that the authors call the "situational character." This is a key installment of a larger project recently introduced in an article titled

The Situation: An Introduction to the Situational Character, Critical Realism, Power Economics, and Deep Capture. That introductory article adumbrated, often in broad stroke, the central premises and some basic conclusions of a new approach to legal theory and policy analysis. This Article provides a more complete version of …

Nietzsche In Law's Cathedral: Beyond Reason And Postmodernism, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

Nietzsche had very little to say about law and what he did say is fragmentary and sporadic. Nietzsche's philosophy, however, offers a basis for theorizing about law. I use Nietzsche's important works to interpret two major movements in legal thought. The first part of the paper examines how Nietzsche's philosophy augments our understanding of deontological theories about the law. Nietzsche produced a substantial ethical theory. The second part of the paper examines how Nietzsche's philosophy helps us to understand law and economics. Nietzsche had a great deal to say about the intellectual predecessor to law and economics, utilitarianism, and his …

The Power Behind The Promise: Enforcing No Child Left Behind To Improve Education, Amy M. Reichbach

Faculty Publications

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court's recognition in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, that education is of paramount importance, six million middle and high school students are still in danger of being left behind. Less than seventy-five percent of eighth graders, fifty percent in urban schools, are graduating from high school within five years. Advocates for educational equity have appealed to the courts, achieving limited success. They have also turned to the legislature, which most recently enacted the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 ("NCLB"). Thus far, however, the federal government has not enforced NCLB adequately. This …

My Dinner At Langdell's, Pierre Schlag

Publications

This essay begins on one of those cold wet April Cambridge mornings. It was too wet for fog, but too indifferent for rain. My head ached. My lips were dry and my tongue felt bloated. The fever had surely come back. Worse - the laudanum was wearing off. Tonight would be dinner at Langdell's. It occurred to me that not everyone is invited to Langdell's for dinner - certainly not wayward law professors from the provinces. This was an extraordinary opportunity. Blackstone would be there. Duncan Kennedy perhaps. Certainly the early Llewellyn. I knocked on the door.