Law Commons^™

The Good, The Law, And The Municipal Ideal - An Integrative Developmental View Of The Case Of The Speluncean Explorers And The Crisis Of Meaning In Western Jurisprudence, Sean S. Yang

Sean S Yang

For centuries, law had been understood as something sacred, transcendent, a set of righteous directives emanating from a divine authority. Less than three hundred years ago, something strange happened. A handful of humans began to think a new type of thought: they conceived the law as a self-contained system understandable on its own terms, its merit determined only by its consistency with "reason," the correctness and supremacy of which was self-evident. Less than one hundred years ago, something even stranger occurred: another handful of humans directed their attention to thought itself and began creating knowledge about knowledge, writing language about …

Indecisive Reasons For Action: Socrates, Not Hercules, As Judicial Ideal, Eric J. Miller

Eric J. Miller

Ronald Dworkin famously introduces the idealized judge, Hercules, to demonstrate how to identify one right answer for any legal problem. Since judicial disagreement makes sense, according to Dworkin, against the background of plural theories of the good, Hercules solves a particular political problem: how to avoid apathy or indecisiveness in choosing among competing theories. Dworkin's judge is supposed to stand by his or her political convictions in the face of competing, plural points of view. Choosing the one right answer is thus a method of political commitment.

My claim is that Dworkin is caught between a rock and a hard …

An Inquiry Into The Possibility Of An Ethical Politics, Louis E. Wolcher

Louis E Wolcher

Politics is about struggle against others, and it results in the use of law (and hence the threat of coercion) as its primary means for accomplishing its ends. Ethics is about care for others beyond all calculations of individual or collective self-interest. Can politics and ethics be reconciled? In particular, is an ethical politics possible for the twenty-first century? This essay traces the history of grounds and grounding in Western thought with respect to the problem of providing a foundation for any imaginable regime of "ethical" politics in something that would be more solid than mere individual preferences. The investigation …

Filosofia Antropológica?, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Muito do que se passa nas nossas sociedades, actualmente, depende de termos ou não termos um olhar filosófico, e de termos ou não termos a capacidade perspectivista do antropólogo. O presente artigo chama a atenção para a necessidade de a Filosofia, tentando furtar-se à tirania do Logos na versão dos ares "grão senhores", de que falava Kant, procure o olhar de "terceiro", e o despojamento de recursos da Antropologia cultural.

Just War And International Law: An Argument For A Deontological Approach To Humanitarian Law, Ryan Dreveskracht

Ryan Dreveskracht

No abstract provided.

Lessons Of Disloyalty In The World Of Criminal Informants, Michael L. Rich

Michael L Rich

Without informants, policing would grind to a halt. The majority of drug and organized crime prosecutions hinge on the assistance of confidential informants, and white collar prosecutions and anti-terrorism investigations increasingly depend on them. Yet society by and large hates informants. The epithets used to describe them – “snitch,” “rat,” and “weasel,” among others – suggest the reason: the informant, by assisting the police, is guilty of betrayal. And betrayal is, in the words of George Fletcher, “one of the basic sins of our civilization.” But identifying disloyalty as the reason for society’s disdain raises more questions than it answers. …