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Judicial Criticism, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

Today I shall talk about the criticism of judicial opinions, especially of constitutional opinions. This may at first seem to have rather little to do with our larger topic, "The Constitution and Human Values," but I hope that by the end I will be seen to be talking about that subject too. In fact I hope to show that in what I call our "criticism," our "values" are defined and made actual in most important ways.

I will begin with a double quotation. I recently heard my friend and colleague Alton Becker, who writes about language and culture, begin a …

A Retrospective On The Criminal Trial Jury, 1200-1800, Thomas A. Green

Book Chapters

My recent book provided an overview of the history of the institutional aspects of the English criminal trial jury upon which all of the contributors to this volume have, tacitly or otherwise, commented. That tentative institutional background was intended both to stand on its own terms and to provide a framework for the studies on the relationship between law and society and on the history of ideas regarding the jury that made up the larger part of the volume. The two aspects of my book were joined: the socio-legal analysis and the history of ideas were to a large extent …