Law Commons^™

The Virtues And Vices Of A Judge: An Aristotelian Guide To Judicial Selection, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A core insight of the legal realists was that many disputes are indeterminate. For example, in many appellate adjudications, respectable legal arguments can be made for both sides of the dispute. A contemporary reaction to the realist insight by critical legal scholars is expressed in the slogan "Law is politics." This critical slogan might be elaborated as follows: in openly political activities, such as the legislative process or partisan elections, debate centers on issues of value and social vision that are outside the scope of "legal reasoning." Judicial opinions merely dress up political decisions in the garb of legal reasoning. …

Taking The Framers Seriously, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reviews Taking the Constitution Seriously by Walter Berns (1987).

This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution encapsulates the political philosophy of the Declaration; and that the framers viewed the commercialization of society as a salutary development and were unambivalent champions of the right to property. Examination of these issues suggests that the ideological universe of the framers was far more complex than Berns indicates. While the revolutionary era witnessed a new concern with individual rights and a …