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Full-Text Articles in Law
Should We Have A Liberal Constitution?, Louis Michael Seidman
Should We Have A Liberal Constitution?, Louis Michael Seidman
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this brief essay, I attempt to accomplish two things. In Part I, I defend my proposed constitution against its putative liberal critics. In Part II, I argue that given contingent but highly plausible empirical assumptions, the differences between my constitution and a liberal constitution are less dramatic than one might suppose. There are often sound, nonliberal grounds for supporting institutional arrangements that appear liberal. It turns out, then, that liberalism is both less attractive (Part I) and less necessary (Part II) than its defenders suppose.
Critical Constitutionalism Now, Louis Michael Seidman
Critical Constitutionalism Now, Louis Michael Seidman
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The starting point for this essay is the claim that if the texts that critical scholars studied are unstable over time, then this must also be true of the studies themselves. There is no reason to suppose that the critical perspective, uniquely among all possible perspectives, reflects timeless and contextless truth. The question I want to ask, then, is what meaning the critical perspective has for us now in our new and dramatically transformed environment. I proceed in four parts. First, I address the meaning that critical scholars attributed to constitutional law in the late twentieth century. Second, I describe …
A Voice Of Reason: The Products Liability Scholarship Of Gary T. Schwartz, Joseph A. Page
A Voice Of Reason: The Products Liability Scholarship Of Gary T. Schwartz, Joseph A. Page
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Of my many fond personal memories of Gary Schwartz, the one that stands out most vividly summons from the mists of time an evening in June 1983 at Boston's Fenway Park. It was my last visit to a childhood haunt where I had seen my first professional baseball game in 1941, an occasion that marked the beginning of a lifelong passion for the national pastime. Settled into an excellent seat that faced the storied left-field wall (and brought to mind visions of the large advertisements that covered its surface before it became known as the "Green Monster”,), I began to …
Legal Scholarship As A Vocation, David Luban
Legal Scholarship As A Vocation, David Luban
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Law professors occupy a twin role as scholars and (most of them, at any rate) as lawyers. Deborah Rhode has pointed out, in her contribution to this symposium, that the lawyer role of the professor carries with it some frequently overlooked obligations, specifically the obligation to perform pro bono service. I agree with her, and have ventured similar arguments myself. Here I will address the more purely theoretical side of the legal scholar's vocation. The text I will take for my sermon is the famous speech on the scholar's role that Max Weber delivered to a student audience eighty years …
“Environmental Racism! That’S What It Is.”, Richard J. Lazarus
“Environmental Racism! That’S What It Is.”, Richard J. Lazarus
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this essay, Professor Lazarus discusses former NAACP director the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Chavis's characterization of U.S. environmental policy as "environmental racism." He first justifies this provocative topic choice and then suggests that Chavis's allegation has transformed environmental law. Professor Lazarus next discusses the details of this transformation, arguing that Rev. Chavis has essentially reshaped the way environmental law and justice are conceived. He offers examples of various environmental programs and social and political effects traceable to Chavis's environmental racism comment. Finally, the conclusion provides some of the author's ruminations about the future of environmental law and policy.
The Word On Trial, Robin West
The Word On Trial, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Milner Ball's extraordinary book, The Word and the Law, begins with a narrative account of "seven practices in law." The seven practitioners Ball brings to life for the reader share two powerful traits: they all, in quite different ways, use law to lessen the multiple sufferings of various communities of poor people, and they all, by doing so, strengthen the communities within which and for which they labor. The reader gains from these accounts not only a sympathetic understanding of the lives of seven lawyers, but a renewed sense of the possibilities their practices present. This can be put any …