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Articles 1 - 29 of 29
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Temptation Of Cosmic Private Law Theory, Nathan B. Oman
The Temptation Of Cosmic Private Law Theory, Nathan B. Oman
Faculty Publications
It’s a heady time to be a theorist of private law. After decades of vague post-Realist functionalism or reductive economic theories, the latest generation of private law theorists have provided a proliferation of new philosophies of tort, contract, and property. The result has been a tremendous burst of intellectual creativity. While Kant and Hegel have been dragooned into debates over torts and contracts and even such supposedly wooly headed thinkers as Coke and Blackstone have been rehabilitated, there have been fewer efforts to generate natural law accounts of private law than one might expect, particularly in light of the revival …
Law, Fact, And Procedural Justice, G. Alexander Nunn
Law, Fact, And Procedural Justice, G. Alexander Nunn
Faculty Scholarship
The distinction between questions of law and questions of fact is deceptively complex. Although any first-year law student could properly classify those issues that fall at the polar ends of the law-fact continuum, the Supreme Court has itself acknowledged that the exact dividing line between law and fact—the point where legal inquiries end and factual ones begin—is “slippery,” “elusive,” and “vexing.” But identifying that line is crucially important. Whether an issue is deemed a question of law or a question of fact often influences the appointment of a courtroom decision maker, the scope of appellate review, the administration of certain …
Foreword: From Personal Life To Private Law: The Jurisprudence Of John Gardner, Scott Hershovitz
Foreword: From Personal Life To Private Law: The Jurisprudence Of John Gardner, Scott Hershovitz
Other Publications
John Gardner was a great philosopher. He was appointed as the Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford when he was still quite junior in the profession. It was a big job. Ronald Dworkin held the post before Gardner, and H.L.A. Hart before him. Gardner delivered on his promise. He had wide-ranging interests. He wrote about jurisprudence, criminal law, and tort law. His pushed those fields forward—and others too. Gardner’s scholarship was incisive, creative, rigorous, generous, and witty. He had a knack for illuminating law and life too. In recent years, Gardner published two books that tackled tort law: From Personal Life …
Public Policy And The Insurability Of Cyber Risk, Asaf Lubin
Public Policy And The Insurability Of Cyber Risk, Asaf Lubin
Articles by Maurer Faculty
In June 2017, the food and beverage conglomerate Mondelez International became a victim of the NotPetya ransomware attack. Around 1,700 of its servers and 24,000 of the company’s laptops were suddenly and permanently unusable. Commercial supply and distribution disruptions, theft of credentials from many users, and unfulfilled customer orders soon followed, leading to losses that totaled more than $100 million. Unfortunately, Zurich, which had sold the company a property insurance policy that included a variety of coverages, informed Mondelez in 2018 that cyber coverage would be denied under the policy based on the “war exclusion clause.” This case, now pending, …
Settled Law, G. Alexander Nunn, Alan M. Trammell
Settled Law, G. Alexander Nunn, Alan M. Trammell
Faculty Scholarship
“Settled law” appears frequently in judicial opinions — sometimes to refer to binding precedent, sometimes to denote precedent that has acquired a more mystical permanence, and sometimes as a substantive part of legal doctrine. During judicial confirmation hearings, the term is bandied about as Senators, advocacy groups, and nominees discuss judicial philosophy and deeper ideological commitments. But its varying and often contradictory uses have given rise to a concern that settled law is simply a repository for hopelessly disparate ideas. Without definitional precision, it risks becoming nothing more than empty jargon.
We contend that settled law is actually a meaningful …
Incitement, Insurrection, Impeachment: Inside The Second Trump Impeachment, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden
Incitement, Insurrection, Impeachment: Inside The Second Trump Impeachment, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden
School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events
No abstract provided.
Law School News: Whitehouse, Cicilline To Offer 'Inside View' Of 2nd Trump Impeachment Trial 02-17-2021, Michael M. Bowden
Law School News: Whitehouse, Cicilline To Offer 'Inside View' Of 2nd Trump Impeachment Trial 02-17-2021, Michael M. Bowden
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Confrontation In The Age Of Plea Bargaining [Comments], William Ortman
Confrontation In The Age Of Plea Bargaining [Comments], William Ortman
Law Faculty Research Publications
No abstract provided.
Objective Punishment, Anthony M. Dillof
Objective Punishment, Anthony M. Dillof
Law Faculty Research Publications
Should the punishment fit the criminal as well as the crime? The article argues that idiosyncratic features of the criminal that might affect subjective punishment experience should not be considered when assessing the severity of the punishment for proportionality purposes.
Submission To House Of Commons General Committee On Judicial Review And Courts Bill 152 2021-22 (Prospective Quashing Orders), Samuel Beswick
Submission To House Of Commons General Committee On Judicial Review And Courts Bill 152 2021-22 (Prospective Quashing Orders), Samuel Beswick
All Faculty Publications
I disagree with the proposal in the Judicial Review and Courts Bill, clause 1(1)(29A)(1)(b), to create prospective-only remedies in judicial review, because:
a. Prospective Quashing violates Professor A.V. Dicey’s canonical three meanings of the Rule of Law.
b. The premise of Subsection (1)(b), ‘that legal certainty, and hence the Rule of Law, may be best served by only prospectively invalidating’ impugned acts, is contradicted by the leading mainstream theories of adjudication in the common law world.
c. Prospective Quashing draws judges into making policy and encourages judicial activism.
d. Prospective Quashing is inconsistent with the English common law judicial method …
Dissenting From The Bench, Christine Venter
Dissenting From The Bench, Christine Venter
Journal Articles
This paper examines the oral dissents of Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg from the year 2000 to the times of their respective deaths. It explores the concept and purpose of oral dissent and details the kinds of cases in which each justice was more likely to orally dissent. The paper analyzes the kinds of rhetoric that each justice used to refer to their subject matter, and argues that Scalia's rhetoric evinces a view of the law as "autonomous", operating independently of the facts of the case. In contrast, Ginsburg's view espouses a view of the law as responsive …
Federal Judge Seeks Patent Cases, Jonas Anderson, Paul R. Gugliuzza
Federal Judge Seeks Patent Cases, Jonas Anderson, Paul R. Gugliuzza
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
That probably seems like a bizarre Craigslist ad. It’s not real—we mocked it up for this article. Still, and startlingly, it accurately portrays what’s happening in the Waco Division of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. One judge, appointed to the Western District only three years ago, has been advertising his courtroom through presentations to patent lawyers, comments to the media, procedural practices, and decisions in patent cases as the place to file a patent infringement lawsuit. That advertising has succeeded. In 2016 and 2017, the Waco Division received a total of five patent cases. In …
Oliver Wendell Holmes's Theory Of Contract Law At The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Oliver Wendell Holmes's Theory Of Contract Law At The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Practicing The Be Practice Ready: Making Competent Legal Researchers Using The New Process And Practice Method, Jason Murray
Practicing The Be Practice Ready: Making Competent Legal Researchers Using The New Process And Practice Method, Jason Murray
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Submission To The Ministry Of Justice On Judicial Review: Proposals For Reform – ‘Prospective Invalidation/Overruling’, Samuel Beswick
Submission To The Ministry Of Justice On Judicial Review: Proposals For Reform – ‘Prospective Invalidation/Overruling’, Samuel Beswick
All Faculty Publications
The Government Response to the Independent Review of Administrative Law proposes to provide judges a discretionary power to grant prospective-only remedies in judicial review proceedings. It further proposes to legislate a presumption or a requirement of prospective-only remedies when statutory instruments are quashed. The Government’s Report relies on arguments made in Sir Stephen Laws QC’s IRAL Submission advocating for prospective-only judicial remedies. My submission responds to the content of both documents.
The Government should abandon its proposal to legislate in favour of Prospective Invalidation in the judicial review context (and in any other context) because:
a. Prospective Invalidation violates the …
Disruptive Implications Of Legal Positivism’S Social Efficacy Thesis, Brian Z. Tamanaha
Disruptive Implications Of Legal Positivism’S Social Efficacy Thesis, Brian Z. Tamanaha
Scholarship@WashULaw
The social efficacy thesis holds that for law to exist it must be generally obeyed by the populace. Accepted by virtually all legal positivists, this is the most neglected thesis of legal positivism. Despite its nigh universal acceptance by theorists, however, the efficacy thesis is surrounded with unanswered questions with significant implications. Several questions immediately come to mind: How widespread must conformity to law be? What must people conform to (all areas of law)? Who must conform (legal officials, government officials, the entire populace, significant groups)? What does conformity entail (normatively, knowingly, behaviorally)? This essay explores these issues and a …
Racial Revisionism, Shaun Ossei-Owusu
Racial Revisionism, Shaun Ossei-Owusu
All Faculty Scholarship
Review of Corey Robin, The Enigma of Clarence Thomas (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019).
Hard Cases Make Bad Law? A Theoretical Investigation, Sepehr Shahshahani
Hard Cases Make Bad Law? A Theoretical Investigation, Sepehr Shahshahani
Faculty Scholarship
I use formal models to probe the aphorism that “hard cases make bad law.” The analysis illuminates important features of the common law process, especially the influence of case characteristics on lawmaking and the role of strategic litigators. When a case raises concerns that are not reflected in doctrine, the court might distort the law to avoid a hardship. Distortion is more likely when the case is important or the facts are close to the border of legality. Litigators may exploit courts’ attention to extra-doctrinal concerns by strategically selecting cases for litigation. Surprisingly, though, a strategic litigator improves lawmaking relative …
The Lost Promise Of Progressive Formalism, Andrea Scoseria Katz
The Lost Promise Of Progressive Formalism, Andrea Scoseria Katz
Scholarship@WashULaw
Today, any number of troubling government pathologies—a lawless presidency, a bloated and unaccountable administrative state, the growth of an activist bench—are associated with the emergence of a judicial philosophy that disregards the “plain meaning” of the Constitution for a loose, unprincipled “living constitutionalism.” Many trace its origins to the Progressive Era
(1890–1920), a time when Americans turned en masse to government as the solution to emerging problems of economic modernity—financial panics, industrial concentration, worsening workplace conditions, and skyrocketing unemployment and inequality—and, the argument goes, concocted a flexible, new constitutional philosophy to allow the federal government to take on vast, new …
Functions Of The Rule Of Law, Brian Z. Tamanaha
Functions Of The Rule Of Law, Brian Z. Tamanaha
Scholarship@WashULaw
This concise essay examines multiple manifest and latent functions of the rule of law. The rule of law is characterized as a society in which government officials and the populace are generally bound by and abide law. The functions covered include: personal and collective security and trust; integration of society; legal restrictions on officials; liberty and guiding conduct; economic development; a pivotal place for legal professionals; entrenching power structures; normative commitment and critical standard; and rhetoric. The discussion raises core issues about each function.
A Reconstruction Of Transnational Legal Pluralism And Law’S Foundations, Brian Z. Tamanaha
A Reconstruction Of Transnational Legal Pluralism And Law’S Foundations, Brian Z. Tamanaha
Scholarship@WashULaw
This essay addresses core theoretical issues surrounding global/transnational legal pluralism, taking up the work of leading theorists. First, I demonstrate that global legal pluralism is very different from earlier versions of legal pluralism (postcolonial and sociological). Next, I expose the flaw of over-inclusive conceptions of legal pluralism, which appears in the global legal pluralism of Paul Berman, and I explain why theoretical concepts of law cannot solve this flaw. I then address the profusion of private and hybrid regulatory forms on the domestic and transnational levels, and I mark the line between theory and practice. Thereafter, I expose problems with …
Supreme Court Precedent And The Politics Of Repudiation, Robert L. Tsai
Supreme Court Precedent And The Politics Of Repudiation, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
This is an invited essay that will appear in a book titled "Law's Infamy," edited by Austin Sarat as part of the Amherst Series on Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought. Every legal order that aspires to be called just is held together by not only principles of justice but also archetypes of morally reprehensible outcomes, and villains as well as heroes. Chief Justice Roger Taney, who believed himself to be a hero solving the great moral question of slavery in the Dred Scott case, is today detested for trying to impose a racist, slaveholding vision of the Constitution upon America. …
Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall: Disney Princesses’ Reflections Of Equal Protection, Kermit Roosevelt Iii, Abigail Tootell
Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall: Disney Princesses’ Reflections Of Equal Protection, Kermit Roosevelt Iii, Abigail Tootell
All Faculty Scholarship
Constitutional doctrine and public opinion often move in tandem, particularly in the area of equal protection decisions. The Supreme Court tends to use the clause to invalidate unreasonable or oppressive discrimination, where what is unreasonable or oppressive is determined not by the values of 1868 but by those of contemporary America. This Article offers a microstudy in applied constitutional theory by juxtaposing the development of the Supreme Court's sex discrimination jurisprudence and the evolution of Disney Princesses. The analysis expands beyond confirming that prevailing cultural norms inform Supreme Court decisions; it also offers insight into the limitations of constitutional sex …
Legacies Of Pragmatism, Robert L. Tsai
Legacies Of Pragmatism, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
Pragmatism has triumphed in the law by becoming all things to all people—or has it? This essay, prepared for a symposium at Drake University Law School's Constitutional Law Center, examines the future of pragmatism in constitutional thought. First, I revisit the work of William James to recover the ideal disposition of a pragmatist decision maker. Second, I analyze pragmatism's impact on constitutional theory from Richard Posner to Cass Sunstein, from Philip Bobbitt to Willy Forbath and Joey Fishkin. I show that pragmatism lives on in constitutional theories that don't self-consciously characterize themselves in such terms. I also contend that pragmatism …
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Wise Legal Giant, Thomas A. Schweitzer
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Wise Legal Giant, Thomas A. Schweitzer
Scholarly Works
No abstract provided.
Restatements Of Statutory Law: The Curious Case Of The Restatement Of Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell
Restatements Of Statutory Law: The Curious Case Of The Restatement Of Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell
Faculty Scholarship
For nearly a century, the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatements of the Law have played an important role in the American legal system. And in all of this time, they refrained from restating areas of law dominated by a uniform statute despite the proliferation and growing importance of such statutes, especially at the federal level. This omission was deliberate and in recognition of the fundamentally different nature of the judicial role and of lawmaking in areas governed by detailed statutes compared to areas governed by the common law. Then in 2015, without much deliberation, the ALI embarked on the task …
The Morality Of Fiduciary Law, Paul B. Miller
The Morality Of Fiduciary Law, Paul B. Miller
Journal Articles
Recent work of fiduciary theory has provided conceptual synthesis requisite to understanding core fiduciary principles and the structure of fiduciary liability. However, normative questions have received only sporadic attention. What values animate fiduciary law? How does, or ought, fiduciary law prove responsive to them?
Where in other areas of private law theory – notably, tort theory – pioneering scholars went directly at normative questions like these, fiduciary theory has been exceptional for the reticence shown toward them. The reticence is sensible. Fiduciary principles are the product of equity’s most extended and convoluted program of supplementing surrounding law. They span several …
Reevaluating Legal Theory, Jeffrey Pojanowski
Reevaluating Legal Theory, Jeffrey Pojanowski
Journal Articles
Must a good general theory of law incorporate what is good for persons in general? This question has been at the center of methodological debates in general jurisprudence for decades. Answering “no,” Julie Dickson’s book Evaluation and Legal Theory offered both a clear and concise conspectus of positivist methodology, as well as a response to the longstanding objection that such an approach has to evaluate the data it studies rather than simply describe facts about legal systems. She agreed that legal positivism must evaluate. At the same time, she argued, it is possible to offer an evaluative theory of the …
Majestic Law And The Subjective Stop, Kyron J. Huigens
Majestic Law And The Subjective Stop, Kyron J. Huigens
Articles
Justice John Paul Stevens subscribed to "a majestic conception" of the Constitution. This Article articulates and defends that vision. Majestic law and legal reasoning characteristically involve frank moral reasoning, such as one finds in the Eighth Amendment's "evolving standards of decency" test for proportionate punishment, or in Due Process formulations such as an appeal to "immutable principles of justice, which inhere in the very idea of free government." Majestic law employs moral values, norms, and judgments in legal reasoning, taking them on their own terms. Majestic legal reasoning does not weigh revealed preferences for decency, for example. It asks whether …