Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
- Institution
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
Places In The Heartland: Departure Jurisprudence After Koon, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Places In The Heartland: Departure Jurisprudence After Koon, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
There are two things upon which I suspect most observers will agree following the decision in Koon v. United States. First, the United States Supreme Court wants district courts to have more discretion to depart from the otherwise applicable guideline range, and wants appellate courts to have less authority to overturn those discretionary judgments. Second, in light of the conflicting signals the Court gave by, on the one hand, declaring that the standard of appellate review for departure decisions is to be abuse of discretion,” and on the other hand, finding that two of the five factors relied upon by …
Lynching Ethics: Toward A Theory Of Racialized Defenses, Anthony V. Alfieri
Lynching Ethics: Toward A Theory Of Racialized Defenses, Anthony V. Alfieri
Articles
No abstract provided.
Law And Phrenology, Pierre Schlag
Law And Phrenology, Pierre Schlag
Publications
As the intellectual credentials of American law become increasingly dubious, the question arises: how has this discipline been intellectually organized to sustain belief among its academic practitioners? This Commentary explores the nineteenth-century pseudo-science of phrenology as a way of gaining insight into the intellectual organization of American law. Although there are, obviously, significant differences, the parallels are at once striking and edifying. Both phrenology and law emerged as disciplinary knowledges through attempts to cast them in the form of sciences. In both cases, the "sciences" were aesthetically organized around a fundamental ontology of reifications and animisms -- "faculties" in the …
The Empty Circles Of Liberal Justification, Pierre Schlag
The Empty Circles Of Liberal Justification, Pierre Schlag
Publications
No abstract provided.
Retroactivity And Legal Change: An Equilibrium Approach, Jill E. Fisch
Retroactivity And Legal Change: An Equilibrium Approach, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
In this Article, Professor Fisch assesses currrent retroactivity doctrine and proposes a new framework for retroactivity analysis. Current law has failed to reflect the complexity of defining retroactivity and to harmonize the conflicting concerns of efficiency and fairness that animate retroactivity doctrine. By drawing a sharp distinction between adjudication and legislation, the law has also overlooked the similarity of the issues that retroactivity raises in both contexts. Professor Fisch's analysis, influenced by the legal process school, uses an equilibrium approach to connect retroactivity analysis to theories of legal change. Instead of focusing on the nature of the new legal rule, …
Postures Of Judging: An Exploration Of Judicial Decisionmaking, Daniel J. Solove
Postures Of Judging: An Exploration Of Judicial Decisionmaking, Daniel J. Solove
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This article pits Ronald Dworkin against Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The article critiques Ronald Dworkin's answer to the question of fit: how judges reconcile general legal rules with particular situations. Dworkin's heavy focus on legal principles under-emphasizes the importance of facts in judicial decisionmaking. Exploring how judges approach the question of fit from a more literary perspective, the article examines the posture of a judge - a judge's physical and temporal position in relation to the cases she adjudicates, a position which affects the level of generality with which a judge perceives the facts of a case and directly influences a judge's …
Non-Representational Jurisprudence: A Centennial Reading Of "The Path Of The Law", Robert E. Rodes
Non-Representational Jurisprudence: A Centennial Reading Of "The Path Of The Law", Robert E. Rodes
Journal Articles
This paper analyzes particular passages in Holmes's famous lecture, and notes important inconsistencies and failings in his approach. After arguing strongly that moral considerations should not enter into legal judgments, he criticizes legal judgments in the light of moral considerations. After defining law as a prediction of what the courts will do, he seems to criticize courts for getting the law wrong in their decisions. His advice to learn the legal profession by studying law from the standpoint of a bad man leaves out of account the numerous potential clients who wish to be law abiding citizens and to seal …