Law Commons^™

Romer V. Evans And The Permissibility Of Morality Legislation, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, two of England's most respected jurists engaged in an on-going debate that would take the legal world by storm. The debate concerned whether and to what extent morality should be reflected in the law and was instigated by the publication of the Wolfenden Report, a study presented to Parliament as it considered whether to repeal certain antisodomy laws in Great Britain. On the one hand was Lord Patrick Devlin, a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary later elevated to the House of Lords, Britain's highest court. Devlin opposed the conclusions contained in the Wolfenden …

Comment On Maccormick, William Ewald

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On Living One Way In Town And Another Way At Home, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The title of this Lecture is from Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The occasion for the proposition is when the smalltown southern gentleman-lawyer Atticus Finch is given an opportunity to lie to protect his son from harm. He refuses. He says that the most important thing he has for his son is not protection but integrity. He says, "I can't live one way in town and another way in my home. "

The separation of town from home is an old one in the history of lawyers in America. When you trace the nineteenth-century development of legal ethics, …

Integrity And Universality: A Comment On Dworkin's Freedom's Law, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Ronald Dworkin has done more than any other constitutional lawyer, past or present, to impress upon us the importance of integrity to constitutional law, and hence to our shared public life. Far from being merely a private virtue, Dworkin has shown that integrity imposes constraints upon and provides guidance to the work of judges in constitutional cases: Every constitutional case that comes before a court must be decided by recourse to the same moral principles that have dictated results in relevant similar cases in the past. Any group or individual challenging the constitutionality of legislation which adversely affects his or …