Law Commons^™

Does The Reasonable Man Have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?, Lucille Jewel

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

The reasonable man is an anthropomorphic metaphor for legal reasoning. In this role, he sometimes shows symptoms of mental illness. He exhibits a compulsion to organize, rank, and prevent disorder, a process that can create unjust outcomes. When he is symptomatic, the reasonable man becomes a monster borne out of a fear of disorder. As the putative judge whom all lawyers write and speak in front of, the reasonable man is the reader attorneys fine-tune their arguments and language for. After developing a case history for the reasonable man, this Article engages with several questions. First, when advocates emulate the …

Old-School Rhetoric And New-School Cognitive Science: The Enduring Power Of Logocentric Categories, Lucille Jewel

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

For thousands of years, the contours of Western legal argument have remained unchanged. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, lawyers have been presenting arguments in the same basic format, with a heavy reliance on the concept of logos, the idea that arguments are most persuasive when presented in a clear deductive logical structure using clean-cut categories. Forming the basis for the terms that appear in logocentric legal arguments, categories allow humans to group facts and information together into classes. For instance, chairs, tables, and beds occupy the category of furniture and cars; trucks, and motorcycles occupy the category of …

Renegotiating The Social Contract, Jennifer S. Hendricks

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

This essay reviews Maxine Eichner's new book, "The Supportive State: Families, Government, and America's Political Ideals." It highlights Eichner's important theoretical contributions to both liberal political theory and feminist theory, applauding her success in reforming liberalism to account for dependency, vulnerability, and families. The essay then considers some implications of Eichner's proposals and their likely reception among feminists. It concludes that "The Supportive State" is a sound and inspiring response to recent calls that feminist theory move from being strictly a school of criticism to developing a theory of governance.

Do Judges Systematically Favor The Interests Of The Legal Profession? , Benjamin H. Barton

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article answers this question with the following jurisprudential hypothesis: many legal outcomes can be explained, and future cases predicted, by asking a very simple question, is there a plausible legal result in this case that will significantly affect the interests of the legal profession (positively or negatively)? If so, the case will be decided in the way that offers the best result for the legal profession.

The article presents theoretical support from the new institutionalism, cognitive psychology and economic theory. The Article then gathers and analyzes supporting cases from areas as diverse as constitutional law, torts, professional responsibility, employment …

Do Judges Systematically Favor The Interests Of The Legal Profession? , Benjamin H. Barton

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article answers this question with the following jurisprudential hypothesis: many legal outcomes can be explained, and future cases predicted, by asking a very simple question, is there a plausible legal result in this case that will significantly affect the interests of the legal profession (positively or negatively)? If so, the case will be decided in the way that offers the best result for the legal profession.

The article presents theoretical support from the new institutionalism, cognitive psychology and economic theory. The Article then gathers and analyzes supporting cases from areas as diverse as constitutional law, torts, professional responsibility, employment …