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Full-Text Articles in Law
Are Constitutional Cases Political?, Brian Slattery
Are Constitutional Cases Political?, Brian Slattery
Articles & Book Chapters
To argue that constitutional adjudication is political does not carry us very far unless we go on to specify what the pursuit of politics entails, the goals it seeks to attain, and the basic principles informing its practice. The word political has no clearly defined meaning in modern usage. Rather, it has the chameleon-like capacity to change colours so as to blend with a variety of different conceptual backgrounds. Of course, if we adopt an Aristotelian notion of politics as the pursuit of the common good of a community and the individual goods of its members, we can agree that …
The Importance Of Not Being Ernest, Allan C. Hutchinson
The Importance Of Not Being Ernest, Allan C. Hutchinson
Articles & Book Chapters
Formalists have long tried to develop a legal theory, based on the internal rationality of law, which would free it from the influences of instrumentality and ideology. Focussing on the philosophical proposals of Ernest Weinrib, the author argues that this goal is both illusory and undesirable. Weinrib's theory assumes rather than proves the existence of this rationality, which is simply defined as an interrelationship between form and content. In order to maintain the coherence of this fragile relationship, Weinrib is either forced to articulate his theory on such a level of abstration so as to be irrelevant or to reintroduce …