Law Commons^™

Norms Of Pride And Resistance: Psychology, Virtue, And The Blackmail Puzzle - Draft - 12-31-1992, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Blackmail law can impact on the belief structures (moralisms) and behaviors of both the potential criminal and the potential victim; it also can affect the conceptual and value structures of lawyers and other societal onlookers. These issues surrounding what one might call the "symbolic" virtues of outlawing the act of blackmail may help to explain why blackmail law seems relatively unconcerned with the well-being of the victim.

Norms Of Pride And Resistance: Psychology, Virtue, And The Blackmail Puzzle - Draft 11-17-1992, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Blackmail law can impact on the belief structures (moralisms) and behaviors of both the potential criminal and the potential victim; it also can affect the conceptual and value structures of lawyers and other societal onlookers. These issues surrounding what one might call the "symbolic" virtues of outlawing the act of blackmail may help to explain why blackmail law seems relatively unconcerned with the well-being of victims who would prefer to pay rather than prosecute their tormenters.

Getting Rid Of The Vegetables, David F. Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

There ought to be a more accurate term that describes not just the medical condition but the underlying humanity of the afflicted person. Perhaps something like "Persistent conscious condition" would be a more technically descriptive and less morally freighted substitute. It would, in fact, communicate a more complete picture of what is going on.

Blackmail And Moralisms: Victimhood And Aristotelian Pride - 1992, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Of those persons who favor laws against blackmail, many take that position because of the moral nastiness of the blackmailing act ("pay me or I'll tell ...") These commentators are sometimes blind to where the self-interest of the so-called victim lies, for the victim often prefers paying for silence to having his secrets revealed. Much of the sophisticated literature on blackmail focuses on this gap in vision. Blackmail is called paradoxical because (among other things) it is a crime that a victim would often rather suffer than have discovered and prosecuted.

Moral Responsibility In The Age Of Bureaucracy, David Luban, Alan Strudler, David Wasserman

Michigan Law Review

No twentieth-century writer has thought so deeply, or so yearningly, about natural law as Franz Kafka. Kafka's is a world in which we seek desperately to know the natural law that is sovereign in human affairs but find that knowledge of the law is withheld from us. For this reason, we lead our lives in a state of, if not original sin, then original guilt - guilt for violating the law, or perhaps guilt for not knowing the law, despite the fact that we wish to know it.

The Trial is Kafka's greatest elaboration of this theme. Joseph K. is …

Moral Reality Revisited, Michael S. Moore

Michigan Law Review

Both the moral realist and the relational theses need clarification and motivation as much as they need defense. Because I have recently focused on the relational thesis, in this article I shall focus on the moral realist thesis. I shall ask three questions about the thesis. First, what does the thesis assert? This is a matter of clarifying what one means when one either asserts or denies that moral values are objective. Second, why should we care whether the moral realist thesis is true or false? I shall examine this question both in terms of the impact the truth or …

Justifiably Punishing The Justified, Heidi M. Hurd

Michigan Law Review

Contemporary moral philosophy, political theory, and jurisprudence have converged to create a quite baffling dilemma. This dilemma is generated by the apparent incompatibility of three principles, each of which grounds features of our system of law and government, and each of which carries substantial normative weight. The first I shall call the punishment principle - a moral principle, doctrinally entrenched in American criminal and civil law, which holds that individuals who are morally justified in their actions ought not to be blamed or punished for those actions. The second is the principle of the rule of law - a complex …

Some Natural Confusions About Natural Law, Philip Soper

Michigan Law Review

To describe this renewed interest in natural law as a resurgence does imply, no doubt, that the ideas associated with the concept are too vital to be put permanently to rest; but resurgence also implies that natural law, for whatever reason, has been assigned the role of challenger to the reigning orthodoxy, rather than that of defending champ. By and large, this inference about the role assigned to natural law by the general public is, I think, correct. Natural law seems to evoke a degree of skepticism in our society that forces any theory that goes by the name to …

Bioethics And The Family: The Cautionary View From Family Law, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

For many years, the field of bioethics has been specially concerned with how the authority to make medical decisions should be allocated between doctor and patient. Today the patient's power-indeed, the patient's right-is widely acknowledged, at least in principle. But this development can hardly be the last word in our thinking about how medical decisions should be made. For one thing, sometimes patients cannot speak for themselves. For another, patients· make medical decisions in contexts that significantly include more participants than just the patient and doctor. Now, as this conference demonstrates, bioethics is beginning to ask what role the patient's …

Conceptions Of Value In Legal Thought, Richard H. Pildes

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Love's Knowledge by Martha C. Nussbaum

The Questions Of Authority, Frederick Schauer

Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture

In 1992, Professor, Frederick Schauer of Harvard University, delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s twelfth Annual Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture: "Two Cheers for Authority: Should Officials Obey the Law?."

Frederick Schauer is a David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. Previously he served for 18 years as Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, where he has served as academic dean and acting dean, and before that was a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Law …

Abortion: The Rights Of Whom?, Jennifer Ferguson, Yvette Young

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

The morality of abortion is not as pressing a question as whether a woman has a right to an abortion based on the rights granted her in the ninth and fourteenth amendments. Morality cannot be completely extricated from the issue of abortion. Nonetheless, the constitutional rights determine the legality of abortion, thus having the greatest effect on the woman and her fetus. Two questions must therefore be addressed: first, what are the rights of the woman as stated in the Constitution? second, what are the rights of the fetus?

Honoring The Law In Communities Of Force: Wildman And Terrell's Teleology Of Practice, Linda H. Edwards, Jack L. Simmons

Scholarly Works

When King & Spalding publicly reflects upon itself, through its Managing Partner and its Director of Professional Development, it has improved our profession. All of us profit when a powerful law firm searches for itself. But reflection alone, as Terrell and Wildman know, does not improve the professionalism or the morality of our practice. In order for reflection to work this way it must be based upon a good teleology. Terrell and Wildman offer a teleology of practice in which lawyers are to become people who honor the law. This is justified, they tell us, because the law alone holds …

Operation Desert Storm, R. E. Lee Or W. T. Sherman?, Jeffrey F. Addicott

Faculty Articles

History has shown that one of the most important elements in a successful combat operation is the quality of the commander. The success of Operation Desert Storm confirmed that American commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, was no mediocre leader. By extension, the war also paid tribute, albeit a silent one, to a man who is arguably the greatest military leader the United States has ever produced—Robert E. Lee. Not only in the sphere of battlefield tactics, but also in ensuring strict adherence to the laws regulating warfare, Generals Lee and Schwarzkopf had much in common.

Unfortunately, however, many are unaware of …

Is Altruism Possible In Lawyering?, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgia State University Law Review

No abstract provided.