Law Commons^™

Philosophical Legal Ethics: Ethics, Morals, And Jurisprudence, Alice Woolley, W. Bradley Wendel, William H. Simon, Stephen Pepper, Daniel Markovitz, Katherine R. Kruse, Tim Dare

Faculty Scholarship

The authors and moderator David Luban participated in a plenary session of the International Legal Ethics Conference IV, held at Stanford. Each author answered and discussed questions arising from short papers they had written about the principal concern of legal ethics was the morality of lawyers, the morality of clients, or the morality of laws?

Those papers, which are to be published in Legal Ethics, are compiled here, along with the question and background information with which the panelists were provided.

The Person In Law, The Number In Math: Improved Analysis Of The Subject As Foundation For A Noveau Régime , Orlando I. Martínez-García

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Symposium: The Future Of The Exclusionary Rule And The Aftereffects Of The Herring And Hudson Decisions, Barry Kamins

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article is an introduction the symposium, "The Future of the Exclusionary Rule and the Aftereffects of the Herring and Hudson Decisions," hosted by the Fordham Urban Law Journal. The symposium explored the effects of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Herring v. United States and Hudson v. Michigan—what the Supreme Court will do with the Rule in the future, as well as varying interpretations of what the Supreme Court should do. The federal exclusionary rule, which is approaching its 100th anniversary, was extended to the states almost fifty years ago by the Supreme Court in its landmark decision of Mapp …

The Exclusionary Rule Redux - Again, Lloyd L. Weinreb

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The exclusionary rule itself is not very complicated: if the police obtain evidence by means that violate a person’s rights under the Fourth Amendment, the evidence is not admissible against that person in a criminal trial. The basic provision, however, has been freighted with innumerable epicycles, and epicycles on epicycles ever since it was made part of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. The exclusionary rule survives in a kind of doctrinal purgatory, neither accepted fully into the constitutional canon nor cast into the outer darkness. It survives, but its reach is uncertain, its rational questioned, and its value doubted. Hudson v. Michigan …

Finding A Footing: A Theological Perspective On Law And The Work Of Joseph Vining, John L. Mccausland

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Non-Fatal Collision: Interpreting Rluipa Where Religious Land Uses And Community Interests Meet, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

Imagine a large church located in a multi-family residential zoning district, where commercial uses are not permitted and religious uses are permitted by special use permit. The church applies for a special use permit to open a coffee shop, which would operate throughout the week during normal business hours and would supplement and support the church's other ministries. At the hearing on the permit application, many neighbors object. They fear increased traffic, visual blight, and safety hazards for their children. The city denies the permit. The church files an action against the city, alleging that the city has substantially burdened …

Towards A Jurisprudence Of Hybridity, Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Debates about non-state normative communities often devolve into clashes between two polarized positions. On the one hand, we see the desire to eradicate difference through forced obeisance to a single overarching state norm. On the other, we see claims of complete autonomy for non-state lawmaking, as if such non-state communities could plausibly exist in isolation from the communities that both surround and intersect them.

Neither of these positions takes seriously the importance of engagement and dialogue across difference. Navigating difference doesn’t require either assimilation or separation; it requires negotiation. Legal pluralists have long charted this process of negotiation, noting, for …

Traditional Versus Economic Analysis: Evidence From Cardozo And Posner Torts Opinions, Lawrence A. Cunningham

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article contributes a new approach and evidence to the longstanding debate concerning the relative merits of traditional legal analysis compared to contemporary economic analysis of law. It evaluates prominent opinions of two judicial exemplars of the contending conceptions, the traditionalist Benjamin Cardozo and the economist Richard Posner, in torts, the field where economic analysis has greatest impact. Comparative critique of their opinions appearing in current torts casebooks, where they are the most ubiquitous judges, provides evidence that traditional legal analysis is a more capacious and persuasive basis of justification than contemporary economic analysis of law.

Justice Stevens' Temperance, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

On the last opinion day of the last of his 35 Terms on the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens issued his valedictory opinion, a 57-page dissent in McDonald v. City of Chicago. Justice Stevens laid out an expansive vision of constitutional interpretation that Justice Alito aptly called "eloquent" in his plurality opinion. Not one for sentimental farewells, Justice Scalia was less generous: "Justice Stevens' approach," he wrote in the last line of his concurring opinion," puts democracy in peril."

Stare Decisis As Judicial Doctrine, Randy J. Kozel

Journal Articles

Stare decisis has been called many things, among them a principle of policy, a series of prudential and pragmatic considerations, and simply the preferred course. Often overlooked is the fact that stare decisis is also a judicial doctrine, an analytical system used to guide the rules of decision for resolving concrete disputes that come before the courts.

This Article examines stare decisis as applied by the U.S. Supreme Court, our nation’s highest doctrinal authority. A review of the Court’s jurisprudence yields two principal lessons about the modern doctrine of stare decisis. First, the doctrine is comprised largely of malleable factors …

Review Of Law At The Vanishing Point By Aaron Fichtelberg, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

This is a largely critical review of Professor Aaron Fichtelberg’s philosophical analysis of international law. The centerpiece of the book’s affirmative agenda, a “non-reductionist” definition of international law that purports to elide various forms of international law skepticism, strikes the reviewer as circular, misguided in general, and, in its application to substantive international legal issues, difficult to distinguish from a rote form of legal positivism. Law at the Vanishing Point’s avowed empirical methodology and critical agenda, while largely unobjectionable, offer little that has not been said before, often with equal if not greater force. I commend the author’s effort to …

Science, Public Bioethics, And The Problem Of Integration, O. Carter Snead

Journal Articles

Public bioethics — the governance of science, medicine, and biotechnology in the name of ethical goods — is an emerging area of American law. The field uniquely combines scientific knowledge, moral reasoning, and prudential judgments about democratic decision making. It has captured the attention of officials in every branch of government, as well as the American public itself. Public questions (such as those relating to the law of abortion, the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and the regulation of end-of-life decision making) continue to roil the public square.

This Article examines the question of how scientific methods and …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Inter-American System, Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Remaking Law: Moving Beyond Enlightenment Jurisprudence, John A. Powell, Stephen M. Menendian

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Different “Enlightened” Jurisprudence?, David R. Loy

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Global Law Of The Land, Amnon Lehavi

University of Colorado Law Review

Are we witnessing the gradual universality of national land laws, which have traditionally been considered to be the paradigm of legal idiosyncrasy by virtue of their reflection of place-specific society, culture, and politics? This Article offers an innovative analysis of the conflicting forces at work in this legal field, based on a historical, comparative, and theoretical study of the structures and strictures of domestic land laws and current cross-border phenomena that dramatically affect national land systems. The central thesis of this Article is that, irrespective of our basic normative viewpoint regarding the opening up of domestic land laws to the …

Seeing Subtle Racism, Pat K. Chew

Articles

Traditional employment discrimination law does not offer remedies for subtle bias in the workplace. For instance, in empirical studies of racial harassment cases, plaintiffs are much more likely to be successful if they claim egregious and blatant racist incidents rather than more subtle examples of racial intimidation, humiliation, or exclusion. But some groundbreaking jurists are cognizant of the reality and harm of subtle bias - and are acknowledging them in their analysis in racial harassment cases. While not yet widely recognized, the jurists are nonetheless creating important precedents for a re-interpretation of racial harassment jurisprudence, and by extension, employment discrimination …

Breaking New Ground In International Criminal Law And Philosophy, Michelle Dempsey

Michelle Madden Dempsey

This is a book review of Larry May and Zachary Hoskins, eds., International Criminal Law and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Extraordinary Justice, David Gray

David C. Gray

This article is squarely opposed to views advanced by Eric Posner, Adrian Vermeule, and others that transitional justice is just a special case of “Ordinary Justice.” Paying special attention to debates about reparations, this article argues that transitional justice is extraordinary, reflecting the source and nature of atrocities perpetrated under an abusive regime, and focused on the challenges and goals that define transitions to democracy. In particular, this Article argues that transitional justice is not profane, preservative, and retrospective, but, rather, Janus-faced, liminal, and transformative. The literature on reparations in transitions is divided between critics who regard reparations as quasi-tort …

Erie's Suppressed Premise, Michael S. Green

Michael S. Green

The Erie doctrine is usually understood as a limitation on federal courts’ power. This Article concerns the unexplored role that the Erie doctrine has in limiting the power of state courts. According to Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, a federal court must follow state supreme court decisions when interpreting state law. But at the time that Erie was decided, some state supreme courts were still committed to Swift v. Tyson. They considered the content of their common law to be a factual matter, concerning which federal (and sister state) courts could make an independent judgment. Indeed, the Georgia Supreme Court still …

When Users Are Authors: Authorship In The Age Of Digital Media, Alina Ng

Alina Ng

This Article explores what authorship and creative production means in the digital age. Notions of the author as the creator of the work provided a point of reference for recognizing ownership rights in literary and artistic works in conventional copyright jurisprudence. The role of the author, as the creator and producer of a work, has been seen as distinct and separate from that of the publisher and user. Copyright laws and customary norms protect the author’s rights in his creation to provide the incentive to create and allow him to appropriate the social value generated by his creativity as recognition …

Memory And Punishment, Orlando Carter Snead

O. Carter Snead

This article is the first scholarly exploration of the implications of neurobiological memory modification for criminal law. Its point of entry is the fertile context of criminal punishment, in which memory plays a crucial role. Specifically, this article will argue that there is a deep relationship between memory and the foundational principles justifying how punishment should be distributed, including retributive justice, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, moral education, and restorative justice. For all such theoretical justifications, the questions of who and how much to punish are inextricably intertwined with how a crime is remembered — by the offender, by the sentencing authority, …

Gay And Lesbian Elders: History, Law, And Identity Politics In The United States, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The approximately two million gay and lesbian elders in the United States are an underserved and understudied population. At a time when gay men and lesbians enjoy an unprecedented degree of social acceptance and legal protection, many elders face the daily challenges of aging isolated from family, detached from the larger gay and lesbian community, and ignored by mainstream aging initiatives. Drawing on materials from law, history, and social theory, this book integrates practical proposals for reform with larger issues of sexuality and identity. Beginning with a summary of existing demographic data and offering a historical overview of pre-Stonewall views …

Lucy V. Adams, Sage Encyclopedia Of African American Education, Armando G. Hernandez

Armando G. Hernandez

Each topic in this 2-volume encyclopedia is discussed as it relates to the education of African Americans. The entries provide a comprehensive overview of educational institutions at every level, from preschool through graduate and professional training, with special attention to historically and predominantly Black colleges and universities. The encyclopedia follows the struggle of African Americans to achieve equality in education—beginning among an enslaved population and evolving into the present—as the efforts of many remarkable individuals furthered this cause through court decisions and legislation.

Putting The World Back Together? Recovering Faithful Citizenship In A Postmodern Age, Harry G. Hutchison

Harry G. Hutchison

Archbishop Chaput’s book, Render Unto Caesar, signifies the continuation of an impressive and persistent debate about what is means to be Catholic and how Catholics should live out the teachings of the Church in political life in our postmodern society. Render Unto Caesar provides evidence that the America’s identity and future are endangered by trends reifying radical human autonomy and choice. New threats surface in the form of legislation and judicial interpretations permitting choices that were once considered criminal to be accepted. This trend has been accompanied, if not facilitated, by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have contributed greatly to …

Finding Footing In A Postmodern Conception Of Law, Bryan H. Druzin

Bryan H. Druzin

The following jurisprudence paper examines the implications of postmodern thought upon our conception of law. In this paper I argue that, despite the absolute, all-consuming moral relativism towards which postmodernism seems to lead in its most extreme form, its acceptance in fact in no way undermines the possibility of finding solid ground for our legal principles. This paper contends that moral objectivity can be found in the individual experience of suffering generated by these very subjective concoctions. Subjective concoctions or not, they are real in that they imbue a sense of value into conditions, and may thus serve as foundational …

Law Without The State: The Theory Of High Engagement And The Emergence Of Spontaneous Legal Order Within Commercial Systems, Bryan H. Druzin

Bryan H. Druzin

The Oft-Ignored Mr. Turton: The Role Of District Collector In A Passage To India, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India presents Brahman Hindu jurisprudence as an alternative to British rule of law, a utilitarian jurisprudence that hinges on mercantilism, central planning, and imperialism. Building on John Hasnas’s critiques of rule of law and Murray Rothbard’s critiques of Benthamite utilitarianism, this essay argues that Forster’s depictions of Brahman Hindu in the novel endorse polycentric legal systems. Mr. Turton is the local district collector whose job is to pander to both British and Indian interests; positioned as such, Turton is a site for critique and comparison. Forster uses Turton to show that Brahman Hindu jurisprudence is …

The End Of Originalism, Jeffrey M. Shaman

Jeffrey M. Shaman

This essay maintains that originalism—the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning--is nearing its demise. Ironically, the beginning of the end of originalism may have been prompted by the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, marking the first time that a majority of the Court signed onto an opinion emphatically taking an originalist slant. Heller may represent the apogee of originalism and, because it exposes the fundamental flaws of originalism, may also mark the beginning of its decline. Originalism is a radical departure from the Supreme Court’s well-established jurisprudence of a living …