Law Commons^™

Why Kant, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

These essays are the outgrowth of a conference on Kantian Legal Theory held at the the Arden Homestead in Harriman, New York, September 26-28, 1986. Some of them are versions of papers originally presented at the conference (Weinrib, Murphy, Finnis, Fletcher); others are a response to the three days of provocative discussion (Richards, Grey, Benson). The underlying premise of the conference was that although philosophers and academic lawyers have devoted considerable attention to Kant's moral theory, very few have written much about Kant's legal theory. I should add: written in English. The recent German literature overflows with books and articles …

The Case For Limiting Judicial Review Of Labor Board Certification Decisions, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

Part I of this Article explains in more technical detail the effects of the present system of judicial review of Board certification decisions and how that system developed. Part II argues that this review should be sharply curtailed, suggesting that unless a court is able to rule that the Board has rendered a certification decision for an improper motive, it should reconsider that decision only to the extent it involves a constitutional issue, a narrow jurisdictional issue, or one of a few bounded technical issues. Such a curtailment of review should be embraced by all who remain sympathetic to the …

Death And The Magic Machine: Informed Consent To The Artificial Heart, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Jay Katz introduces his remarkable and insightful book, The Silent World of Doctor and Patient, by recounting a portion of Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. He describes an encounter between a patient, Oleg Kostoglotov, and his doctor, Dr. Ludmilla Afanasyevna. The doctor wanted to use experimental hormone treatment, but the patient refused. Katz argues that what made conversation impossible between them was the patient's undisclosed intention of leaving the hospital to treat himself with "a secret medicine, a mandrake root from Issyk Kul." He could not trust the doctor with this information because the doctor would make the decision for the patient …

Protecting The Liberty Of Pregnant Patients, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

We are seeing the beginning of an alliance between physicians and the state to force pregnant women to follow medical advice for the sake of their fetuses. No irreversible commitments to such an alliance have yet been made, but only a principled discussion of the issues is likely to prevent forced treatment from becoming standard medical practice.

In her futuristic novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood envisions a world in which physicians and the state combine to strip fertile women of all human rights. These women come to view themselves as "two-legged wombs, that's all; sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices." …

A Synthesis And Integration Of Supreme Court Precedent Regarding The Regulatory Taking Of Land, John W. Ragsdale Jr

Faculty Works

In the post World War II era of rapid land development, emergent environmental problems, and heightened legislative response, the taking clause has proved to be the most pervasive and significant limitation on the power of government over private land usage. The dimensions and implications of this provision and the interpretive Supreme Court opinions have attracted the attention of numerous scholars whose efforts, usually, have been rather critical. The authors have often sought to question the logic, language and premises of fundamental opinions, to warn of the economic, moral and ecological consequences of portended judicial trends, to pose new taking tests …

Preemption Of Section 1983 By Title Vii: An Unwarranted Deprivation Of Remedies, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Trying To Live Forever, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Since the case of Karen Ann Quinlan, legal actions regarding the dying have become commonplace. Unfortunately, so has legal misinformation, misapplication, fantasy, and inhumanity. We seem to have frightfully underestimated the ability of lawyers to focus on trivia and self protection, and to ignore the basic human rights of dying persons. As the authors of the Hasting Center's Guidelines declare in the introduction:

Hospital legal counsel, lawyers serving other health care institutions, and legal advisors to individual health care professionals have a critical role to play in seeing that medicine is not driven by law, and health care professionals are …

Constitutional Decisions And The Supreme Law, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

What status do Supreme Court decisions have for officials in the political branches of our government? Six months ago, Attorney General Edwin Meese III rekindled controversy over this enduring and troublesome question when he claimed in a widely reported lecture that Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Constitution are not the supreme law of the land, and are properly subject to forms of opposition by other governmental officials. The general reaction to the speech was that it was meant to reduce the perceived authority of Supreme Court opinions, and a close reading of the speech certainly leaves this impression. Yet, even …

Chernobyl Fallout: Recent Iaea Conventions Expand Transboundary Nuclear Pollution Law, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

After releasing a radioactive cloud over Europe, the April 1986 nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl in the USSR sparked a chain-reaction of diplomatic negotiation that culminated in two recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conventions on nuclear accidents. The Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident (Convention on Early Notification) and the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency (Convention on Assistance) were both opened for signature on September 26, 1986 at the end of a three-day IAEA special session on the lessons of the Soviet nuclear plant disaster. In the months …

Church-State Relations And Religious Convictions, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Since the title of my talk is hardly self-explanatory, I want to begin by outlining my topic. My overall concern is with the proper place of religious convictions in lawmaking in our society. My special focus is on the place of religious convictions in the political resolution of churchstate issues.

Edward L. Barrett, Jr.: The Critic With 'That Quality Of Judiciousness Demanded Of The Court Itself', Yale Kamisar

Articles

Barrett was as talented and as dedicated a law teacher as any of his distinguished (or soon-to-become-distinguished) contemporaries. But Barrett resisted the movement toward new rights in fields where none had existed before. At least, he was quite uneasy about the trend. To be sure, others in law teaching shared Barrett's concern that the clock was spinning too fast. Indeed, some others were quite vociferous about it.' But because his criticism was cerebral rather than emotional - because he fairly stated and fully explored the arguments urging the courts to increase their tempo in developing constitutional rights - Barrett was …

Loss Of Innocence: Eyewitness Identification And Proof Of Guilt, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

It is no news that eyewitness identification in criminal cases is a problem; it is an old and famous problem. Judges and lawyers have long known that the identification of strangers is a chancy matter, and nearly a century of psychological research has confirmed this skeptical view. In 1967 the Supreme Court attempted to mitigate the problem by regulating the use of eyewitness identification evidence in criminal trials; since then it has retreated part way from that effort. Legal scholars have written a small library of books and articles on this problem, the courts' response to it, and various proposed …

The Puzzling Persistence Of The Constrained Prudent Man Rule, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Gordon examines a seeming paradox: How did a rule named for the "prudent man," with its connotations of wisdom and judiciousness, become a constraint that discourages trustees and other fiduciaries from making investments now regularly favored by prudent investors? He argues that the current understanding of the Prudent Man Rule, the standard governing investments by trustees and other financial fiduciaries, is founded on a narrow conception of risk and safety that has been superseded by contemporary understanding of markets and investments, and in particular, portfolio theory. He identifies three factors that have prevented the Rule from evolving in response …

Legal Enforcement Of "Duties To Oneself": Kant Vs. Neo-Kantians, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This Article considers writings by modern scholars including Rawls, Dworkin, and D.A.J. Richards on the topic of Kant's discussion of the neutrality principle and the harm principle.

Session Law 87-387, Florida Senate & House Of Representatives

Staff Analysis

No abstract provided.

Session Law 87-065, Florida Senate & House Of Representatives

Staff Analysis

No abstract provided.

Regulatory Economics In The Courts: An Analysis Of Judge Scalia's Nhtsa Bumper Decision, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The automobile bumper standard issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 1982 was the product of a decade of policy debate.' This debate continued in the courts until ultimately the NHTSA bumper standard was upheld in 1985. Judge Antonin Scalia authored the majority opinion in the case upholding the standard, and his opinion is the subject of this paper. The NHTSA bumper standard is by no means a landmark regulation with sweeping economic consequences. The debate over the standard centers on the degree of protectiveness to be required of front and rear automobile bumpers. In particular, the …

The Founders' Unwritten Constitution, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In seeking to understand and interpret our written Constitution, judges and scholars have often focused on two related issues: how did the founding generation understand the Constitution they created, and to what extent should that understanding be relevant to modern constitutional interpretation? This article will address the first of these questions, but in a manner that profoundly affects the second question as well. I will suggest that the founding generation did not intend their new Constitution to be the sole source of paramount or higher law, but instead envisioned multiple sources of fundamental law. The framers thus intended courts to …

Archival Research In The History Of The Law: A User's Perspective, Douglas Hay

Articles & Book Chapters

Legal history and the social history of law have become very active fields of research in Britain, the United States, and Canada in the past ten years. Moreover, they have begun to affect each other, so that social historians are now much more sensitive to doctrinal changes, shifts in legal rules, and legal concepts, while legal historians increasingly appreciate that explaining legal change – or the lack of it – may require extensive research outside the law library. In short, lawyers and historians are beginning to meet not only in law libraries, but also in archives. And, like all users, …

The Charter's Relevance To Private Litigation: Does Dolphin Deliver?, Brian Slattery

Articles & Book Chapters

The author critically examines the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Local 580 v. Dolphin Delivery Ltd. This case holds that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms only applies to the relations between government and private persons and not to relations between private persons alone, with two exceptions. The author argues that the first exception - when a private person invokes a statute, rather than the common law, against another private person - is untenable because both the common law and the droit civil are grounded in legislative instruments, respectively …

Understanding Aboriginal Rights, Brian Slattery

Articles & Book Chapters

The entrenchment of aboriginal rights in the Constitution Act, 1982 and the importance of aboriginal claims now reaching the courts highlight the need to understand these long-ignored rights. This article sets out a general theory of the subject, drawing on the leading cases and the complex history of relations between native peoples and the Crown. Aboriginal rights are based on a set of basic common law principles that operate uniformly across Canada, except where modified by treaty or legislation. Under those principles, native peoples presumptively hold full rights to lands in their possession, and retain their accustomed laws andpolitical institutions, …

Workers' Compensation: Wage Effects, Benefit Inadequacies, And The Value Of Health Losses, W. Kip Viscusi, Michael J. Moore

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Using the 1977 Quality of Employment Survey in conjunction with BLS risk series and state workers' compensation benefit formulas, the authors assess the labor market implications of workers' compensation. Higher levels of workers' compensation benefits reduce wage levels, and controlling for workers' compensation raises estimates of compensating differentials for risk. The rate of trade-off between wages and workers' compensation suggests that benefit levels provide suboptimal levels of income insurance, abstracting from moral hazard considerations. The value of non-monetary losses from job injuries (including pain and suffering and non-work disability) is estimated to be $17,000-$26,000.

Disestablished Religion In Pennsylvania And Kentucky: A Study In Constitutional Interpretation, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Is The Fourth Amendment Obsolete?–Restating The Fourth Amendment In Functional Terms, John M.A. Dipippa

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Extradition Of Canadian Citizens And Sections I And 6(I) Of The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Jean-Gabriel Castel, Sharon A. Williams

Articles & Book Chapters

This article is devoted to the question of whether the extradition from Canada of a fugitive Canadian citizen charged with having committed an act that constitutes a criminal offence for which he or she may be prosecuted both in Canada and in the requesting state is a violation of his or her right as a citizen of Canada to remain in Canada, that is guaranteed by section 6( I ) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.' In analysing this question we shall ( i ) give a brief history of and rationale for extradition, with emphasis on the …

Unitary Taxation In The United States Of America, Jean-Gabriel Castel

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.