Law Commons^™

Free Will Is No Bargain: How Misunderstanding Human Behavior Negatively Influences Our Criminal Justice System, Sean Daly

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Mindfulness, Emotions, And Ethics: The Right Stuff?, Ellen Waldman

Nevada Law Journal

This essay celebrates Leonard Riskin's call to arms while suggesting some limits to what mindfulness can achieve in the ethical realm. I discuss recent developments in neuroethics that imply a prominent role for emotions in establishing ethical restraint. The Article also surveys a growing body of evidence that suggests the directive power of our emotions remains largely hidden from and impervious to the control of our “reasoning” selves. Lastly, the author examines what Riskin has, in an earlier work, described as the ethical hard case in light of recent explorations into the emotional wellsprings of deontological versus consequentialist thinking. Although …

The Irrelevance Of Contemporary Academic Philosophy For Law: Recovering The Rhetorical Tradition, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This short paper appears in a volume of original essays, On Philosophy in American Law (Francis J. Mootz III ed., Cambridge Univ. Press 2009). I argue that the undeniable rift between philosophy and law is more than a simple dichotomy of theory and practice. Instead, the sharp distinction between philosophy and law occurred when both disciplines built insular guilds that employed distinctive vocabularies to distinguish themselves from rhetoric, and it is by returning to their roots in rhetoric that philosophy and law might find their common ground in the elucidation of rhetorical knowledge.

Hope And Misgiving About Lawyers, Consensus-Building, And Social Problem-Solving, Jennifer Gerarda Brown

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Not Interaction But Melding - The "Russian Dressing" Theory Of Emotions: An Explanation Of The Phenomenology Of Emotions And Rationality With Suggested Related Maxims For Judges And Other Legal Decision Makers, Peter Brandon Bayer

Scholarly Works

Even after centuries of contrary philosophy and psychology, many commentators, jurisprudes, and law makers insist that emotions have no legitimate place in most legal decision making. This recalcitrance, of course, is misplaced in light of the powerful body of theory explaining that without emotions, decisions, including matters of law and policy, simply cannot be made. Judges, along with all societal actors, must disabuse themselves of the fallacious belief that emotions obstruct or obscure reason in all endeavors, particularly morality, law, and justice.

The project of truly apprehending emotions, however, requires more than appreciating that they play a crucial role in …

Comparative Law: Its Purposes And Possibilities, Christopher L. Blakesley

Scholarly Works

Comparative law is much more than “matching laws.” Professor Grossfield’s short, lively book will certainly awaken its German reader to the value, indeed necessity, of comparative law and comparative insights in his or her own practice or scholarly work. This, he aims at the skeptic who may think of comparative law or foreign legal systems as arcane and useless fluff, too luxurious for the hard working “practical-minded” practitioner. Professor Grossfield throws the cold water of realization into this skeptic’s face. The message being that considering comparative approaches and theory about similar problems may indeed be as practical as one can …