Law Commons^™

Re-Focusing On Philanthropy: Revising And Re-Orienting The Standard Model, Robert E. Atkinson

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

This paper undertakes a detailed analysis of today’s standard theory of the philanthropic sector, in order to provide a new model that is both more accurate in its details and more comprehensive in its scope. The standard theory accounts for the philanthropic sector as subordinate and supplementary to our capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity. That approach has two basic short-comings: Its explanation of both the state and philanthropy as adjuncts to the market fails to appreciate the ways in which all three sectors support and supplement each other. Even more basically, the standard model’s primary focus on the …

Philanthropy's Function: A Neo-Classical Reconsideration, Robert E. Atkinson

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

This essay lays the groundwork for a “new unified field theory” of philanthropy. That theory must have two complementary parts, an account of philanthropy’s core function and a measure of its performance, a metric for comparing philanthropic organizations both among themselves and with their counterparts in the for-profit, governmental, and household sectors. The essay first explains the need for such a measure, in both theory and practice. It then considers the critical shortcomings of today’s standard theory of philanthropy, which accounts for the philanthropic sector as subordinate and supplementary to our capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity. Chief among …

Philanthropy's Future: Questioning Today’S Orthodoxies, Re-Affirming Yesterday’S Foundations, Robert E. Atkinson

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

This article maps a way beyond an impasse in today’s treatment of philanthropy in both theory and law by taking us back to philanthropy’s core function, helping the neediest among us and promoting the highest achievements of our best. The standard academic model of philanthropy sees it as subordinate and supplemental to our society’s other public sectors, the market and the state, and uses their metrics, aggregate consumer demand and majority voter preference, to measure philanthropy’s performance. The standard model gives us, as individuals and as a society, no single measure of philanthropy’s traditional goal, the public good, besides consumer …

Averting The Captain Vere “Veer”: Billy Budd As Melville’S Republican Response To Plato, Robert E. Atkinson

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

This article shows how Melville’s Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature’s most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato’s challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how “poets” create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic’s philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of “poetry” that Plato should willing allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law’s agents must be wise, even as their law must be philosophical, if …

Assessing The Foundations Of Neo-Classical Professionalism In Law And Business: Remodeling The Temple, Phase I, Robert E. Atkinson

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

Both the management of private enterprise and the practice of corporate law must be radically remodeled if they are properly to serve their correlate values: prosperity and justice. In that remodeling, the cornerstone of professional status would be appreciation of the deepest values of our common culture, gained through liberal education in the humanities and social sciences. Lawyers and managers need this appreciation because, under the best available institutional arrangements, they together must actively shape our public world, both in the law and in the market, for the common welfare.

The professional’s requisite cultural appreciation has two essential components, one …