Law Commons^™

December 29, 2019: Secular Responses To Anti-Semitic Violence, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Secular Responses to anti-Semitic Violence“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 25, 2019: Christmas 2019, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Christmas 2019“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 22, 2019: Light In This Dark Season, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Light in this Dark Season“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 17, 2019: Today's Column On Hate Speech In The Pennsylvania Capital-Star, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Today's column on hate speech in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Think We’Re Powerless Against Hate Speech? The Constitution Provides Plenty Of Room To Address It, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

December 7, 2019: Churchill Champions Free Trade And Castigates Republican Tariffs As Secular, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Churchill Champions Free Trade and Castigates Republican Tariffs as Secular“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 4, 2019: A Good Day For The Rule Of Law, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “A Good Day for the Rule of Law“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Calif. Supreme Court Right To Strike Down Law Requiring Trump To Release Tax Returns To Get On The Ballot, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Still Writing At The Master’S Table: Decolonizing Rhetoric In Legal Writing For A “Woke” Legal Academy, 21 The Scholar 255 (2019), Teri A. Mcmurtry-Chubb

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Personality Disruption As Mental Torture: The Cia, Interrogational Abuse, And The U.S. Torture Act, David Luban, Katherine S. Newell

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article is a contribution to the torture debate. It argues that the abusive interrogation tactics used by the United States in what was then called the “global war on terrorism” are, unequivocally, torture under U.S. law. To some readers, this might sound like déjà vu all over again. Hasn’t this issue been picked over for nearly fifteen years? It has, but we think the legal analysis we offer has been mostly overlooked. We argue that the basic character of the CIA’s interrogation of so-called “high-value detainees” has been misunderstood: both lawyers and commentators have placed far too much emphasis …

November 28, 2019: Happy Thanksgiving, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Happy Thanksgiving“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 22, 2019: What Is The Point Of This Column?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What is the Point of this Column?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Examining Pharmaceutical Exceptionalism: Intellectual Property, Practical Expediency, And Global Health, Govind Persad

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Advocates, activists, and academics have criticized pharmaceutical intellectual property ("pharma IP") rights as obstacles to access to medicines for the global poor. These criticisms of pharma IP holders are frequently exceptionalist: they focus on pharma IP holders while ignoring whether others also bear obligations to assist patients in need. These others include holders of other lucrative IP rights, such as music copyrights or technology patents; firms, such as energy companies and banks, that do not rely on IP; and wealthy private individuals. Their resources could be used to aid patients by providing direct medical assistance, funding prizes or biomedical research, …

November 19, 2019: Court-Packing, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Court-Packing“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 14, 2019: What’S Wrong With Impeachment, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What’s Wrong With Impeachment“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Contractual Communication, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Response, I will investigate the foundations of both shared and unshared meaning in legal communication. Part I takes a step back from contractual communication and offers a preliminary sketch of a general model of legal communication; the sketch draws on speech act theory and the work of Paul Grice, extending and modifying many of the insights developed by Kar and Radin. Part II turns to contractual communication, differentiating distinct “situations of contractual communication” and interrogating Kar and Radin’s Shared Meaning Analysis. Part III interrogates Kar and Radin’s distinction between “contract” and “pseudo-contract.” The conclusion of the Response briefly …

November 7, 2019: The Politics Of Carl Schmidt Versus The Politics Of Abraham Lincoln, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Politics of Carl Schmidt versus the politics of Abraham Lincoln“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Replaying The Past: Roles For Emotion In Judicial Invocations Of Legislative History, And Precedent, Emily Kidd White

Articles & Book Chapters

Legal reasoning in the common law tradition requires judges to draw on concepts, and examples that are meant to resonate with a particular emotional import and operate in judicial reasoning as though they do. Judicial applications of constitutional rights are regularly interpreted by reference to past violations (either through precedent, contextual framings, and/or legislative history), which in turn elicit a series of emotions which work to deepen and intensify judicial understandings of a right guarantee (freedom of association, freedom of expression, equality, security of the person, etc.). This paper examines the way in which invocations of past political histories, and …

A Literary Lens Into Constitutional Interpretation And A Possible Synthesis Of Natural And Positive Law: The Silmarillion, Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln Iv

Student Scholarship

The nature of identity in the United States lies in the Constitution. Perhaps this is due to “veneration” of the document. It has also been argued that the Declaration of Independence holds a seminal role in the American identity.

The rift seems to occur with the concept of a “living constitution,” whereby the concept of an ever-evolving jurisprudence allows for an evolving interpretation of the Constitution as society changes.

This rift can be demonstrated by the world of J.R.R. Tolkien. In The Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion, the various languages of groups of Middle Earth represent and have distinct …

October 27, 2019: The Shooter And The Death Penalty, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Shooter and the Death Penalty“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 22, 2019: What Is The Universe?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What is the Universe?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 14, 2019: Why The Democrats Need To Tap The Brakes On Impeachment, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Why the Democrats Need to Tap the Brakes on Impeachment“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 9, 2019: Yom Kippur And The Shootings, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Yom Kippur and the Shootings“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 2, 2019: What Are The High Holy Days About?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What are the High Holy Days About?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

September 22, 2019: Bends Toward Justice Podcast--Where You Can Hear It Now, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Bends Toward Justice Podcast--Where You Can Hear It Now“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

September 22, 2019: Nihilism In The Heartland, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Nihilism in the Heartland“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

September 14, 2019: Constitution Day 2019, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Constitution Day 2019“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

September 12, 2019: Bends Toward Justice Podcast Debuts This Week, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Bends Toward Justice Podcast Debuts This Week“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Reliable Revisionist, Caitlyn Schaffer

Philosophy: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The present text explores how the topic of head and heart is much more complicated than one would expect, according to Paul Henne and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, contributors of Neuroexistentialism. “Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality” aims at figuring out the problem of which moral judgments we can trust, judgments from one’s head (revisionism) or judgments from one’s heart (conservatism). My hypothesis suggests the opposite of the authors, I believe that if you are a revisionist, your first order intuitions are reliable. After setting the framework, I make three main arguments. (A.) If you are able to self-correct then you can identify errors …

August 31, 2019: Is Hallowed Secularism Any Longer The Question?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Is Hallowed Secularism Any Longer the Question?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.