Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 28 of 28
Full-Text Articles in Law
Of Law And Other Artificial Normative Systems, Mitchell N. Berman
Of Law And Other Artificial Normative Systems, Mitchell N. Berman
All Faculty Scholarship
Different theories of law are situated within different pictures of our normative landscape. This essay aims to make more visible and attractive one picture that reflects basic positivist sensibilities yet is oddly marginalized in the current jurisprudential literature. The picture that I have in mind tries to vindicate surface appearances. It maintains that the social world is densely populated by countless normative systems of human construction (“artificial normative systems”) whose core functions are to generate and maintain norms (oughts, obligations, powers, rights, prohibitions, and the like). The norms that these systems output are conceptually independent from each other, and may …
The Tragedy Of Justice Scalia, Mitchell N. Berman
The Tragedy Of Justice Scalia, Mitchell N. Berman
All Faculty Scholarship
Justice Antonin Scalia was, by the time of his death last February, the Supreme Court’s best known and most influential member. He was also its most polarizing, a jurist whom most students of American law either love or hate. This essay, styled as a twenty-year retrospective on A Matter of Interpretation, Scalia’s Tanner lectures on statutory and constitutional interpretation, aims to prod partisans on both sides of our central legal and political divisions to better appreciate at least some of what their opponents see—the other side of Scalia’s legacy. Along the way, it critically assesses Scalia’s particular brand of …
Natural Law, Slavery, And The Right To Privacy Tort, Anita L. Allen
Natural Law, Slavery, And The Right To Privacy Tort, Anita L. Allen
All Faculty Scholarship
In 1905 the Supreme Court of Georgia became the first state high court to recognize a freestanding “right to privacy” tort in the common law. The landmark case was Pavesich v. New England Life Insurance Co. Must it be a cause for deep jurisprudential concern that the common law right to privacy in wide currency today originated in Pavesich’s explicit judicial interpretation of the requirements of natural law? Must it be an additional worry that the court which originated the common law privacy right asserted that a free white man whose photograph is published without his consent in …
What Must We Hide: The Ethics Of Privacy And The Ethos Of Disclosure, Anita L. Allen
What Must We Hide: The Ethics Of Privacy And The Ethos Of Disclosure, Anita L. Allen
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Mental Disorders And The "System Of Judgmental Responsibility", Anita L. Allen
Mental Disorders And The "System Of Judgmental Responsibility", Anita L. Allen
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Role Of Moral Philosophers In The Competition Between Deontological And Empirical Desert, Paul H. Robinson
The Role Of Moral Philosophers In The Competition Between Deontological And Empirical Desert, Paul H. Robinson
All Faculty Scholarship
Desert appears to be in ascendence as a distributive principle for criminal liability and punishment but there is confusion as to whether it is a deontological or an empirical conception of desert that is or should be promoted. Each offers a distinct advantage over the other. Deontological desert can transcend community, situation, and time to give a conception of justice that can be relied upon to reveal errors in popular notions of justice. On the other hand, empirical desert can be more easily operationalized than can deontological desert because, contrary to common wisdom, there is a good deal of agreement …
The Rhetoric Of Anti-Relativism In A Culture Of Certainty, Howard Lesnick
The Rhetoric Of Anti-Relativism In A Culture Of Certainty, Howard Lesnick
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
A Contractarian Argument Against The Death Penalty, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
A Contractarian Argument Against The Death Penalty, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
All Faculty Scholarship
Opponents of the death penalty typically base their opposition on contingent features of its administration, arguing that the death penalty is applied discriminatory, that the innocent are sometimes executed, or that there is insufficient evidence of the death penalty’s deterrent efficacy. Implicit in these arguments is the suggestion that if these contingencies did not obtain, serious moral objections to the death penalty would be misplaced. In this Article, Professor Finkelstein argues that there are grounds for opposing the death penalty even in the absence of such contingent factors. She proceeds by arguing that neither of the two prevailing theories of …
Hobbes And The Internal Point Of View, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
Hobbes And The Internal Point Of View, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Popular Constitutionalism And The Rule Of Recognition: Whose Practices Ground U.S. Law?, Matthew D. Adler
Popular Constitutionalism And The Rule Of Recognition: Whose Practices Ground U.S. Law?, Matthew D. Adler
All Faculty Scholarship
The law within each legal system is a function of the practices of some social group. In short, law is a kind of socially grounded norm. H.L.A Hart famously developed this view in his book, The Concept of Law, by arguing that law derives from a social rule, the so-called “rule of recognition.” But the proposition that social facts play a foundational role in producing law is a point of consensus for all modern jurisprudents in the Anglo-American tradition: not just Hart and his followers in the positivist school, most prominently Joseph Raz and Jules Coleman, but also the anti-positivist …
Moralizing In Public, Anita L. Allen
What Personal Rules Can Teach Us About Basic Institutions, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
What Personal Rules Can Teach Us About Basic Institutions, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Harm, History, And Counterfactuals, Stephen R. Perry
Harm, History, And Counterfactuals, Stephen R. Perry
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Method And Principle In Legal Theory, Stephen R. Perry
Method And Principle In Legal Theory, Stephen R. Perry
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Excuses And Dispositions In Criminal Law, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
Excuses And Dispositions In Criminal Law, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Two Men On A Plank, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
Two Men On A Plank, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
All Faculty Scholarship
Can two individuals, each of whom needs a certain resource for his survival, have equal and conflicting rights to that resource? If so, is each entitled to try to exclude the other from its use? An old chestnut of moral and legal philosophy raises the problem. Following a shipwreck, two men converge simultaneously on a plank floating in the sea. There is no other plank available and no immediate hope of rescue. Unfortunately the plank can support only one; it sinks if two try to cling to it. Is it permissible for each to attempt to secure his own survival …
Positivism And The Notion Of An Offense, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
Positivism And The Notion Of An Offense, Claire Oakes Finkelstein
All Faculty Scholarship
While the United States Supreme Court has developed an elaborate constitutional jurisprudence of criminal procedure, it has articulated few constitutional doctrines of the substantive criminal law. The asymmetry between substance and procedure seems natural given the demise of Lochner and the minimalist stance towards due process outside the area of fundamental rights. This Article, however, argues that the "positivistic" approach to defining criminal offenses stands in some tension with other basic principles, both constitutional and moral. In particular, two important constitutional guarantees depend on the notion of an offense: the presumption of innocence and the ban on double jeopardy. Under …
Privacy And The Public Official: Talking About Sex As A Dilemma For Democracy, Anita L. Allen
Privacy And The Public Official: Talking About Sex As A Dilemma For Democracy, Anita L. Allen
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Preempting Oneself: The Right And The Duty To Forestall One's Own Wrongdoing, Leo Katz
Preempting Oneself: The Right And The Duty To Forestall One's Own Wrongdoing, Leo Katz
All Faculty Scholarship
Economists and philosophers working on problems of rational choice have for some time been concerned with various puzzles raised by so-called "Ullysean" configurations: actors who rationally cause themselves to act irrationally. (e.g., the person who swallows Thomas Schelling's famous irrationality pill to preempt an attempted robbery). What has attracted less attention is that these configurations present fascinating problems for morality, most especially for non-consequentialist morality. This article undertakes the exploration of some of these problems and the implications they hold for the morality of preemptive detention, preemptive self-defense, the creation of prophylactic crimes (like our drug laws) and a variety …
Hart's Methodological Positivism, Stephen R. Perry
Hart's Methodological Positivism, Stephen R. Perry
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Genetic Testing, Nature, And Trust, Anita L. Allen
Genetic Testing, Nature, And Trust, Anita L. Allen
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Hobbes, Formalism, And Corrective Justice, Anita L. Allen, Maria H. Morales
Hobbes, Formalism, And Corrective Justice, Anita L. Allen, Maria H. Morales
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Wellsprings Of Legal Responses To Inequality: A Perspective On Perspectives, Howard Lesnick
The Wellsprings Of Legal Responses To Inequality: A Perspective On Perspectives, Howard Lesnick
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Alive And Well: Religious Freedom In The Welfare State, Anita L. Allen
Alive And Well: Religious Freedom In The Welfare State, Anita L. Allen
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Look Before You Leap: Some Cautionary Notes On Civic Republicanism, Michael A. Fitts
Look Before You Leap: Some Cautionary Notes On Civic Republicanism, Michael A. Fitts
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Reply To Cornel West, William Ewald
Unger's Philosophy: A Critical Legal Study, William Ewald
Unger's Philosophy: A Critical Legal Study, William Ewald
All Faculty Scholarship
Of all the scholars associated with the Critical Legal Studies movement, none has garnered greater attention or higher praise than Roberto Unger of Harvard Law School. In this Article, William Ewald argues that Professor Unger's reputation as a brilliant philosopher of law is undeserved. Despite the seeming erudition of his books, Professor Unger's work displays little familiarity with the basic philosophical literature, and the philosophical, legal, and political analysis in those works-in particular, the celebrated critique of liberalism in Knowledge and Politics-is so riddled with logical and historical errors as to be unworthy of serious scholarly attention.
Manners, Metaprinciples, Metapolitics And Kennedy's Form And Substance, William W. Bratton
Manners, Metaprinciples, Metapolitics And Kennedy's Form And Substance, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.