Law Commons^™

Looking For Law In All The Wrong Places: Outlaw Texts And Early Women's Advocacy, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Recent Supreme Court decisions such as Atkins v. Virginia and Lawrence v. Texas specifically address the linkages between shifting cultural attitudes and the evolution of law. In this Article, I examine the mutually constitutive relationship between legal and cultural developments from a historical perspective and illustrate the necessity of looking to sources that I define as outlaw texts in order to access invaluable information about the process of legal change.

To demonstrate how a study of outlaw texts can enrich our understanding and critical consideration of law and legal history, this Article presents detailed analyses of specific examples of nineteenth-century …

Alice In Legal Wonderland: A Cross-Examination Of Gender, Race And Empire In Victorian Law And Literature, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Lewis Carroll's 1865 scene of a recalcitrant Alice in the courtroom, defying the court's authority as she grows (literally) into a large and threatening presence, dramatizes what was becoming an increasingly common Victorian spectacle: a woman questioning and critiquing the law and claiming a place for herself within its institutions. Women have played a significant (but much overlooked) role in legal history and, in this paper, I argue for the importance of examining various narratives of the past (including literary accounts) that explored women's relationship to the law.

Against the backdrop of several legal cases in which women sought entry …

"Our Real Need": Not Explanation, But Education, Thomas D. Eisele

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Wittgenstein wrote nothing on legal theory or law, so there is no obvious textual basis on which to draw possible connections between Wittgenstein and legal theory. And Wittgenstein abhorred theorizing in philosophy. So the odds are slim that Wittgenstein would have accommodated himself or his work to similar activity in the law. Where does this leave us?

At sea, which is where we normally are in life and, thus, where Wittgenstein wants us to recognize ourselves as being when doing philosophy too. But theory can disguise this fact from us, as it also can make us think that we have …

Wittgenstein's Instructive Narratives: Leaving The Lessons Latent, Thomas D. Eisele

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Philosophical Investigations is one of the great works about instruction, as Stanley Cavell says, because it is a great work of instruction. It dot::s not simply tell us about instruction; it shows us instruction in action-by instructing us. But it does this in a disconcerting way; it instructs us indirectly or latently. And often it uses stories to do this.

Wittgenstein rarely states a thesis or a conclusion that he then wants us simply to approve or accept. Rather, he directs our attention to some fact or phenomenon and invites our response to it, sometimes by giving us his response …