Law Commons^™

The Positive Criteria Of Legal Norms, Claudio Bozzi Dr

Claudio Bozzi Dr

With the publication of Faktizitat und Geltung Jurgen Habermas sought to extend his normative critical arguments to jurisprudence. In this work he argues that the law can mediate and coordinate valid social integration in complex modern societies because it is capable of receiving normative inputs from the public sphere, which are then translated into the administrative system. Throughout his extensive writings, Habermas has referred to a principle of the universalisation of the valid norm. Its role in pluralist societies is therefore not to offer a substantial value, but to guide in the character of a regulative idea. This idea would …

The Positive Criteria Of Legal Norms, Claudio Bozzi Dr

Claudio Bozzi Dr

This paper argues that Habermas’s principle of universalisation, which is posited not as a substantive value but a regulative idea which mediates impartially amongst a plurality of goods, fails to maintain the impartiality of the discourse. Rather, positive assumptions about goods are unavoidable entailments of a situated and historical norm. The laws’ coordinating role achieved by translating the normative inputs it receives from the public sphere and applying them to administrative purpose must be understood not as a universal consensus but in deliberative terms whereby the mediation of particular audiences is considered an element of rationality. But normativity cannot simply …

Can You Provide Evidence Of Insufficient Evidence? The Precautionary Principle At The Wto, Elisa Vecchione

Elisa Vecchione

This paper aims to demonstrate that the WTO jurisprudence on science-related trade disputes has become entangled with a specific vision of science that has prevented any possible application of the precautionary principle. This situation is due to reasons of both legal procedures specific to the WTO dispute settlement system and the substantive nature of precautionary measures. Indeed, their foundation on “insufficient scientific evidence” dramatically complicates the question of the probative value of science for the purpose of legal adjudication and creates a seemingly contradictory situation, of which the Panel on the EC-Biotech case confirmed to be a victim: that of …

Friendly Fire Casualties Of American Civil Liberty In The War On Terror: Humanitarian Law Project V. Holder And The Erosion Of Free Speech, Alicia C. Armstrong Esq.

Alicia C Armstrong

The holding in Humanitarian Law Project (HLP) v. Holder marks a significant shift in First Amendment doctrine, unprecedented since the early twentieth century “Red Scare” cases. The HLP decision suggests that free speech principles which have been developing for over half a century—culminating in the paramount protection of “subversive advocacy”—are less deserving of adherence in the face of terrorism than in times of relative peace. Throughout the past several decades, the Court has retreated from the notion that speech which is disturbing to public opinion but benign in its capability to incite imminent lawless action deserves lower legal protection. To …

Immigrant Laws, Obstacle Preemption And The Lost Legacy Of Mcculloch, Lauren Gilbert

Lauren Gilbert

Using Congress’ perceived failure to enforce the immigration laws as a backdrop, this paper will explore how the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Chamber of Commerce v.Whiting upholding the Legal Arizona Workers Act exposes some of the tensions and contradictions in modern preemption doctrine. Examining the relationship among express, field, impossibility and obstacle preemption, I explore three emerging trends, all evident in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting. The first is an increasing reluctance of the Court to find implied obstacle preemption. The second related trend is an inclination to expand the scope of impossibility preemption beyond the physical impossibility cases. …

The Development Of Charity: Anti-Poverty Measures Of Ancient Jewish Law & Jurisprudence, William H. Byrnes Iv

William H Byrnes IV

This article describes the ancient Jewish practices, codified in Biblical law and later legal commentary, to protect the needy. The Jews’ anti-poverty measures - including regulation of agriculture, loans, working conditions, and customs for sharing at feasts - were a significant development in the jurisprudence of charity. The first half begins with a brief history of ancient Jewish civilization, providing context for the development of charity by exploring the living conditions of the poor. The second half concludes with a description of the Jewish laws, Mishnah and Talmudic commentary, as well as the practice and codification of Rabbinical teaching that …

Contract + Tort = Property: The Trade Secret Illustration, Matthew E. Cavanaugh Mba Cpa Esq.

Matthew E. Cavanaugh MBA CPA Esq.

This article commences with an introduction to the use of Hegel’s famous dialectical method as an arithmetic analysis of law. It reviews Hegel’s assertion that the sum of property and contract is tort and crime, and then suggests a better dialectic is that contract plus tort equals property. This article then reviews the doctrines of contract, tort, and property, focusing on the plaintiff’s rights and remedies, and who can be defendants in each of the three doctrines. The article next reviews the law of one particular type of intellectual property, trade secrets, because this article uses trade secrets as a …

Variable Multipolarity And Un Security Council Reform, Bart M.J. Szewczyk

Bart M.J. Szewczyk

One of the fundamental international law questions over the past two decades, and an integral issue for US policy, has been the structure of the United Nations Security Council. In a world of variable multipolarity, whereby changing crises demand different combinations of actors with relevant resources and shared interests, the Council’s reform should be based not on expanded permanent membership—as mistakenly held by conventional wisdom—but on inclusive contextual participation in decision-making. The Council’s five permanent members continue to have collective resources relative to the rest of the world that are not significantly different than at the founding of the UN. …

Hermeneutics And Judicial Interpretation, Fernando Armando Ribeiro

fernando armando ribeiro

Modern hermeneutics teaches us that everything which is perceived and represented by human beings refers to a process of interpretation, and that the world comes to mind through language. Therefore, Law depends on the hermeneutic mediation. Without hermeneutics there is no law, only normative texts. This paper makes use of the philosophical hermeneutics by Gadamer to investigate the limits and possibilities of judicial interpretation. The paper explores the contribution of philosophical hermeneutics to a new model of rationality and how it can influence the application of Law, and not only legal theory. Therefore, we will examine some of the most …

Localizing Religion In A Jewish State, Yishai Blank Prof.

Yishai Blank

Cities in Israel are regulating religion and controlling religious liberty. They decide whether to close down roads during the Sabbath, whether to limit the selling of pork meat within their jurisdiction, whether to prohibit sex stores from opening, and whether to allocate budgets and lands to religious activities. They do all that by using their regular local powers as well as special enablement laws which the Israeli parliament enacts from time to time. The immediacy of these issues, the fact that the traditional powers—business licensing, traffic and road control, spending and more—of local authorities touch upon many of them, and …

Does 'Sorry' Incriminate? Evidence, Harm And The Meaning Of Apologies, Jeffrey S. Helmreich

Jeffrey S. Helmreich

Apology has proven a dramatically effective means of resolving conflict and preventing litigation. Still, many injurers, particularly physicians, withhold apologies because they have long been used as evidence of liability. Recently, a majority of states in the U.S. have passed “Apology Laws” designed to lift this disincentive, by shielding apologies from evidentiary use. However, most of the new laws protect only expressions of benevolence and sympathy (such as “I feel bad about what happened to you”). They exclude full apologies, which express regret, remorse or self-criticism (“I should have prevented it,” for example). The state measures thereby reinforce a prevailing …

New Custom: Customary Law As A Progressive Force In Contemporary International Law, Elizabeth Campbell

Elizabeth Campbell

This paper examines the emergence of a new form of customary international law and its use as a progressive law making tool in the field of international law. It discusses the definitional problems with the orthodox tests of customary law, state practice and opinio juris, and how these ambiguities have been exploited by States wishing support for a particular norm they feel should get customary law status. It is argued that through this laxity, customary international law has inadvertently provided a new forum for the development of progressive law. The paper begins with an examination of the difficulties in defining …

The Reality Of Eu-Conformity Review In France, Juscelino F. Colares

Juscelino F. Colares

French High Courts embraced review of national legislation for conformity with EU law in different stages and following distinct approaches to EU law supremacy. This article tests whether adherence to different views on EU law supremacy has resulted in different levels of EU directive enforcement by the French High Courts. After introducing the complex French systems of statutory, treaty and constitutional review, this study explains how EU-conformity review emerged among these systems and provides an empirical analysis refuting the anecdotal view that different EU supremacy theories produce substantial differences in conformity adjudication outcomes. These Courts' uniformly high rates of EU …

Chevron As A Doctrine Of Hard Cases, Frederick Liu

Frederick Liu

The conventional wisdom holds that the Chevron doctrine rests on a presumption about congressional intent—a presumption that when a statute is ambiguous, Congress intended the gap to be filled by the agency charged with administering the statute. But the presumption is a mere fiction; Congress generally has no view on whether ambiguities in a statute should be resolved by the agency or the court. This Article proposes a new theory of Chevron, one that rests on a simple reality: No matter how determinate the law may seem, there will inevitably be hard cases—cases in which the law runs out before …

Puritanism, Godliness, And Political Development In Boston & The General Court (1630-1640), Peter Mazzacano

Peter Mazzacano

The goal of this article is to examine the degree to which Puritanism influenced early American political culture. That is, how did Puritan values and practices facilitate the development of an exceptional political culture during the formative years of Massachusetts Bay? Utilizing a case-study method of analysis, this article examines the political developments in the General Court and the town of Boston during the decade 1630 to 1640. The research methods used are primarily the writings of leading Puritans, and concomitant town, church, and colonial records. The main finding is that the Puritans paid little heed to notions of democracy, …

Judicial Intervention As Risk Reduction, Juliet P. Kostritsky

Juliet P Kostritsky

JUDICIAL INTERVENTION AS RISK REDUCTION J. P. Kostritsky Employing an economics-based consequentialist approach to contract interpretation (focusing on the prospective effect and the factors that might justify intervention) this Article attempts to identify the precise parameters of an optimal framework for contract interpretation. Such a framework would seek to maximize gains from trade. The issue in such cases is always, given the words the parties used, what is the best (surplus maximizing) interpretation of the bargain. Courts can achieve that interpretation by, in part, minimizing the interpretive risk that parties face when they draft an express contract but fail to …

Applying Constitutional Decision Rules Versus Invalidating Statutes In Toto: An Alternative To Rosenkranz’S Approach To Facial, As-Applied, And Overbreadth Adjudication, Misha Tseytlin, Scott Keller

Misha Tseytlin

Nicholas Rosenkranz has recently proposed a model of judicial review for dealing with facial and as-applied challenges. This model argues that “facial” challenges necessarily apply to suits against legislative actions and, where successful, lead to total invalidation of the statutory provision at issue; whereas “as-applied” challenges are as-executed challenges to executive conduct and can only lead to vindication of the litigant’s rights in the case at issue. This Article explains that there is a fundamental flaw in Rosenkranz’s approach—a flaw often repeated by other scholars and that has caused serious confusion among judges: the failure to differentiate between the object …

Religious Freedom In Private Lawsuits: Untangling When Rfra Applies To Suits Involving Only Private Parties, Sara Lunsford Kohen

Sara Kohen

Religious Freedom in Private Lawsuits: Untangling When RFRA Applies to Suits Involving Only Private Parties, for publication discusses when courts should apply the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) in cases in which the federal government is not a party. Congress passed RFRA in reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith. The Court held in Smith that the Constitution does not require religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws—those that do not target religion and cover non-religious conduct to the same extent as religious conduct. By contrast, RFRA allows a federal law to substantially burden a religious …

Pragmatic Patent Adjudication, Anna B. Laakmann

Anna B Laakmann

The Federal Circuit was created in large part to introduce stability and predictability into the patent law. By many accounts, it is failing to do so. Moreover, current patent doctrine does not adequately incorporate the patent system’s broader utilitarian purpose. Recent decisions on the patentability of diagnostic and therapeutic methods illustrate the fundamental flaws in the Federal Circuit’s jurisprudence. Doctrinal incoherence over medical methods is not simply an isolated glitch in the patent law. Rather, it serves as a case study of a larger problem with the court’s approach to questions of patent scope. By maintaining a façade of adjudicative …

“You’Re Creating New Categories:” Anglo-American Radical Feminism’S Constitutionalism In The Streets, Yxta M. Murray

Yxta M. Murray

In "You’re Creating New Categories:" Anglo-American Radical Feminism’s Constitutionalism in the Streets, I examine the constitutional meaning of two political protests: The 1968 Miss America protest by New York Radical Women and the 1970 British radical feminist protest of the Miss World competition in London. Using the work of Reva Siegel, Jack Balkin, and Lynda G. Dodd as a foundation for my inquiry into how these social movement protests influenced constitutional culture concerning women's rights, I first engage in historical and social analyses of the protests themselves. In particular, I study the different approaches the U.S. and British feminists had …

Religious Freedom In Private Lawsuits: Untangling When Rfra Applies To Suits Involving Only Private Parties, Sara Lunsford Kohen

Sara Kohen

Religious Freedom in Private Lawsuits: Untangling When RFRA Applies to Suits Involving Only Private Parties, for publication discusses when courts should apply the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) in cases in which the federal government is not a party. Congress passed RFRA in reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith. The Court held in Smith that the Constitution does not require religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws—those that do not target religion and cover non-religious conduct to the same extent as religious conduct. By contrast, RFRA allows a federal law to substantially burden a religious …

Tort-Related Risk Costs And The Hand Formula For Negligence, Richard S. Markovits

Richard S. Markovits

No abstract provided.

A Distortion-Analysis Protocol For Economic-Efficiency Analysis: A Third-Best-Economically-Efficient Response To The General Theory Of Second Best, Richard S. Markovits

Richard S. Markovits

No abstract provided.

Justice Holmes At The Intersection Of Philosophical And Legal Pragmatism, Seth C. Vannatta

Seth C Vannatta

Because of the prolific scholarship on legal theory by Judge Richard Posner, especially since his turn away from law and economics toward “pragmatism,” legal scholars began reading “legal pragmatism” as references to Posner’s thought alone. My present task is part of a larger process of rethinking Posner’s version of legal pragmatism. Posner’s inspiration for his turn toward pragmatism can be attributed, in large measure, to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Posner buys into three central insights of legal pragmatism, whose origins lie in the work of Holmes, anti-formalism, the prediction theory of the law, and a modicum of indeterminacy in judicial …

Remedial Secession: What The Law Should Have Done, From Katanga To Kosovo, Thomas W. Simon

Thomas W Simon

In considering Kosovo’s secessionist claims, the International Court of Justice missed a rare opportunity to make a difference. It should have set forth the grounds for granting secession within international law. This Article does not provide yet another doctrinal analysis. Instead, it takes a normative, exploratory route, laying out what the grounds for secession should be and how they should be adjudicated. It defends a refurbished Remedial Model, which provides a morally and legally justification for secession as a last resort remedy for injustices.

The Remedial Model requires a three step inquiry, one relational and two status determinations. First, does …

Tort-Related Risk Costs And The Hand Formula For Negligence, Richard S. Markovits

Richard S. Markovits

No abstract provided.

A Distortion-Analysis Protocol For Economic-Efficiency Analysis: A Third-Best-Economically-Efficient Response To The General Theory Of Second Best, Richard S. Markovits

Richard S. Markovits

No abstract provided.

Individual Liberty And Self-Determination, Fabio Macioce

Fabio Macioce

In this essay I will try to demonstrate that the principle of self-determination is based on a formal and individualistic view of liberty rights. I also propose a different perspective that takes into account the relationships rather than the individual. I will show how this result can only be achieved through a different ascription of rights to individuals: in particular, I will try to demonstrate 1) that any social practices express specific values​​, 2) that these values ​​are the result of historical and cultural circumstances, 3) that they are subject to an ongoing public debate, and finally 4) that only …

Bad Science Makes Bad Law: How The Deference Afforded To Psychiatry Undermines Civil Liberties, Samantha Godwin

Samantha Godwin

Courts and lawmakers trust psychiatric expertise when making judicial and public policy decisions concerning mental health, but is this trust well placed? This paper adopts a philosophy of science approach informed by medical research to evaluating the validity of psychiatric classification. This provides the basis for an interdisciplinary critical analysis of civil commitment law and use of psychiatric expert witnesses in light of legal evidence standards. This analysis demonstrates that involuntary civil commitment as it now stands is incompatible with broader due process and civil rights concerns and affords an unjustifiable evidentiary status to psychiatric diagnosis.

Sexual Reorientation, Elizabeth M. Glazer

Elizabeth M Glazer

There has been a recent shift in the political and legal treatment of bisexuals. Since Ruth Colker, Naomi Mezey, and Kenji Yoshino began writing about the phenomenon of bisexual erasure and the resulting invisibility of the bisexual from sexual orientation law and the LGBT rights movement, something strange has happened. Bisexuality is suddenly hypervisible. And not just on Glee or in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Or even in the 2010 national sex survey reporting that of 7% of the population identifying as non-heterosexual, 40% of the men and a large majority of the women surveyed identified as bisexual. …