Jurisprudence Commons^™

Lo Stato Di Diritto E La Legittimità Della Democrazia Costituzionale, Michel Rosenfeld

Articles

No abstract provided.

Different Roads To The Rule Of Law: Their Importance For Law Reform In Taiwan, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Talk of law reform is in the air throughout East Asia. Whether in Beijing or Tokyo or here, law reform is spoken of in terms of strengthening the Rule of Law. But what is the Rule of Law? Different legal systems have different roads to reach the Rule of Law. These different roads are noticeable mainly in the different emphases different systems place on two critical elements in the realization of the Rule of Law State, namely rules and the machinery for implementing the rules, i.e., courts and administrative agencies. The Rule of Law makes demands on both the legal …

Exonerations Change Judicial Views On Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel, Adele Bernhard

Articles & Chapters

Law evolves more slowly than pop culture or public attitude. Because most exonerations have not resulted in written legal opinions, their impact is slowly seeping into case law. However, courts are influenced by the same news that sways the rest of us. Even without explicitly referring to innocence or wrongful convictions, modern trial courts are undoubtedly more likely to admit expert testimony on the question of eyewitness identification because they are painfully aware of just how easily such witnesses - no matter how honest or passionate - can be wrong. They are certainly more inclined to view confessions suspiciously, especially …

Judicial Independence And The Ambiguity Of Article Iii Protections, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Is the federal judiciary truly an independent body? A quick glance at the Constitution would suggest the answer is yes. The Constitution provides for life tenure and a difficult removal process for federal judges that together, as the common wisdom goes, shield federal judges from the shifting winds of the more political branches and the public at large. The author of this essay argues, however, that on a closer examination of the protections provided for by the Constitution, judicial independence might be more mirage than truism. Threats to judicial independence arise not only externally through the actions of the other …

Appellate Courts Inside And Out, Maxwell L. Stearns

Michigan Law Review

While the United States Supreme Court has been the object of seemingly endless scholarly commentary, the United States Courts of Appeals are just now coming into their own as a subject of independent academic inquiry. This is an important development when one considers that the vast bulk of relevant precedents governing most federal court litigation comes not from the Supreme Court, but rather from the United States Courts of Appeals. Because relatively few courts of appeals decisions are reviewed in the Supreme Court, with rare exception, the federal circuit courts provide the functional equivalent of that Court's proverbial "last word." …

Introduction To The Conference On Fundamentalisms, Equalities, And The Challenge To Tolerance In A Post-9/11 Environment, Richard H. Weisberg

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pierre The Anomalist: An Epistemology Of The Legal Closet, Peter Goodrich

Articles

The article examines Pierre Schlag's radical critique of legal reason and the legal academy, which challenges the profession's reliance on abstract norms and universal truths. Schlag's work, often met with hostility, exposes the material and emotional underpinnings of legal discourse, particularly the fear of losing control and status tied to the academy's faith in reason. His critique is situated within broader philosophical traditions that question the limits of reason and the importance of creativity in legal thought. The article also explores how Schlag's ideas intersect with other scholars' work, such as Reginald Leamon Robinson's analysis of legal narrative and identity, …

Interpretation And Institutions, Cass R. Sunstein, Adrian Vermeule

Michigan Law Review

Suppose that a statute, enacted several decades ago, bans the introduction of any color additive in food if that additive "causes cancer" in human beings or animals. Suppose that new technologies, able to detect low-level carcinogens, have shown that many potential additives cause cancer, even though the statistical risk is often tiny - akin to the risk of eating two peanuts with governmentally-permitted levels of aflatoxins. Suppose, finally, that a company seeks to introduce a certain color additive into food, acknowledging that the additive causes cancer, but urging that the risk is infinitesimal, and that if the statutory barrier were …

Reply: The Institutional Dimension Of Statutory And Constitutional Interpretation, Richard A. Posner

Michigan Law Review

Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule argue in Interpretation and lnstitutions that judicial interpretation of statutes and constitutions should take account both of the institutional framework within which interpretation takes place and of the consequences of different styles of interpretation; they further argue that this point has been neglected by previous scholars. The first half of the thesis is correct but obvious; the second half, which the authors state in terms emphatic to the point of being immodest, is incorrect. Moreover, the authors offer no feasible suggestions for how the relation between interpretation and the institutional framework might be studied better …

Interpretive Theory In Its Infancy: A Reply To Posner, Cass R. Sunstein, Adrien Vermeule

Michigan Law Review

In law, problems of interpretation can be explored at different levels of generality. At the most specific level, people might urge that the Equal Protection Clause forbids affirmative action, or that the Food and Drug Act applies to tobacco products. At a higher level of generality, people might argue that the Equal Protection Clause should be interpreted in accordance with the original understanding of its ratifiers, or that the meaning of the Food and Drug Act should be settled with careful attention to its legislative history. At a still higher level of generality, people might identify the considerations that bear …

Holmes, Common Law Theory, And Judicial Restraint, 36 J. Marshall L. Rev. 457 (2003), Frederic R. Kellogg

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

John Noonan On Marriage And The Family: Continuity And Change In Doctrine, William J. Wagner

Scholarly Articles

In support of its critique, this article first analyzes Judge Noonan's general methodological vantage and shows how he proceeds, within that vantage, to formulate general moral norms. Next, it compares Judge Noonan's work with trends in the reasoning of the United States Supreme Court between 1965 and the present to suggest that some of Noonan's assumptions about the longer-term consequences of his own methodology for stability and continuity in moral theology may be unwarranted. Finally, it argues that Noonan is not justified in assuming that adjudicative reasoning, without more, suffices for the formulation of general moral norms, or that transcendent …

Foreword, Sam Hanson

William Mitchell Law Review

Introduction to issue of Recent Decisions of the Minnesota Supreme Court (from 2002-03 term).

Unexplainable On Grounds Other Than Race: The Inversion Of Privilege And Subordination In Equal Protection Jurisprudence, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

In this article, Professor Darren Hutchinson contributes to the debate over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by arguing that the Supreme Court has inverted its purpose and effect. Professor Hutchinson contends that the Court, in its judicial capacity, provides protection and judicial solicitude for privileged and powerful groups in our country, while at the same time requires traditionally subordinated and oppressed groups to utilize the political process to seek redress for acts of oppression. According to Professor Hutchinson, this process allows social structures of oppression and subordination to remain intact.

First, Professor Hutchinson examines the various …

Hercules, Omniscience, Omnipotence, And The Right Answer Thesis, Michael B. W. Sinclair

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Virtue Jurisprudence: A Virtue-Centered Theory Of Judging, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

"Virtue jurisprudence" is a normative and explanatory theory of law that utilizes the resources of virtue ethics to answer the central questions of legal theory. The main focus of the essay is the development of a virtue-centered theory of judging. The exposition of the theory begins with exploration of defects in judicial character such as corruption and incompetence. Next, an account of judicial virtue is introduced. This includes judicial wisdom, a form of phronesis, or sound practical judgment. A virtue-centered account of justice is defended against the argument that theories of fairness are prior to theories of justice. The …

Dialectic And Revolution: Confronting Kelsen And Gadamer On Legal Interpretation, Hans Lindahl

Cardozo Law Review

This paper examines the general structure and conditions of legal interpretation that arise from confronting Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics with a determinate conception of legal interpretation suggested by Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law. The Gadamerian question, "What defines legal interpretation as interpretation?", suggests that Kelsen's reference to legal norms as "schemes of interpretation" must be radicalized: a hermeneutic circularity or dialectic is at work in the law, such that the legal interpretation of reality also changes, to a lesser or greater extent, the principle of interpretation - the legal norm. The Kelsenian question, "What defines interpretation as legal interpretation?", suggests …

A Reply--The Missing Portion, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Few Thoughts On The Importance Of An Independent Judiciary, Robert E. Hirshon

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

How Is Constitutional Law Made?, Tracey E. George, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Bismarck famously remarked: "Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made." This witticism applies with peculiar force to constitutional law. Judges and commentators examine the sausage (the Supreme Court's doctrine), but ignore the messy details of its production. Maxwell Stearns has demonstrated, with brilliant originality, that the Court fashions constitutional law through process-based rules of decision such as outcome voting, stare decisis, and justiciability. Employing "social choice" economic theory, Professor Stearns argues that the Court, like all multimember decisionmaking bodies, strives to formulate rules that promote both rationality and fairness (p. 4). Viewed through the lens …

Taking Its Toll: Partisan Judging And Judicial Review, Jeff Broadwater

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Judiciary School: A Proposal For A Pre-Judicial Ll.M. Degree, Marc T. Amy

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Judges As Altruistic Hierarchs, Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reviving Tocqueville's America: The Rehnquist Court's Jurisprudence Of Social Discovery, John O. Mcginnis

Articles

This Article offers a retrospective on the Rehnquist Court. It argues that the Rehnquist Court has been pursuing a coherent jurisprudence that invigorates decentralization and the private ordering of social norms that Alexis De Tocqueville celebrated in Democracy in America as being the essence of the social order generated by our original Constitution. In four disparate areas-federalism, freedom of association, the religion clauses, and the balance of power between juries and judges-the Court is helping sustain a civil order that bubbles up from state governments or from citizens voluntarily gathered together or randomly selected. The Article is the first to …

Beyond Interpretation, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Europe In America: Grammatology, Legal Studies, And The Politics Of Transmission, Peter Goodrich

Articles

This Essay begins by analyzing the way American legal theory has failed to adequately address the challenges and insights of grammatology, the philological critique of the language of law initiated with Jacques Derrida's work Of Grammatology. Professor Goodrich traces the form that this failed confrontation took and then outlines how this philological critique ought to inform a study of law. Importantly for Professor Goodrich, the grammatological approach to law provides ways of analyzing not just the written legal text, but also the effects of new media technologies on the law more broadly. The changes in the law brought about by …

Why Judges Don't Like Petitions For Rehearing, Richard S. Arnold

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

Petitions for en banc rehearings are rarely granted. A Senior Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit provides a history and reasoning of the rehearing process and his personal observations on those petitions and processes in today's court.

A Critique Of Adjudication: Fin De Siècle: Confession Without Avoidance, Tamara R. Piety

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lilies Of The Field: A Critique Of Adjudication, Anthony Paul Farley

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Do Judges Deploy Policy?, Mitchel De S.-O.-L'E. Lasser

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.