Jurisprudence Commons^™

Jurgen Habermas’S Theory Of Legal Discourse, Robert Alexy

Cardozo Law Review

Jurgen Habermas's discourse theory of law attempts to show that the ideal contents of the discourse principle can be realized within the institutional frame of a legal system. The result is a theory of the democratic constitutional state whose basic idea is the association and self-determination of free and equal consociates under the law. This theory is far more than a mere application of discourse theory to the law. Discourse theory, on the one hand, demands the institutionalization of a legal system for reasons internal to the theory. On the other hand, the positive law remains dependent on discourse theory …

Jurisprudence And Validity, David M. Rasmussen

Cardozo Law Review

The relationship between law and philosophy and their respective discourses has never been harmonious. Just as Plato wanted to throw the poets out of his Republic on the basis of their tendency to corrupt, the law as a discipline has not been overwhelmed by those whose Platonic fervor would purify their enterprise and set them straight. The difference between legal procedure and philosophical-political reflection has not been easy to reconcile. Hobbes argued for the virtues of sovereignty against the self-regulating legal discipline that Lord Coke represented as having confidence in the practical orientation of "Juris prudentia," Blackstone tried …

Family Quarrel, Frank I. Michelman

Cardozo Law Review

In Chapter 6 of Between Facts and Norms, Jurgen Habermas examines what he calls the republican conception of lawmaking. He draws this conception, which he also styles "communitarian," partly from writings of this author that have in turn been much inspired by the works of Professor Habermas.

The Dynamics Of Constitutional Adjudication, Bernhard Schlink

Cardozo Law Review

Habermas determines the role and legitimacy of constitutional adjudication through three confrontations. First, he confronts both the liberal and the welfare-state paradigms of law, seeing constitutional adjudication move from the former to the latter. Habermas wants this move to arrive at a procedural paradigm of law. Second, he confronts a norm- and a value-oriented understanding of the constitution. Habermas indicates the dangers of the former and the merits of the latter, and attempts to show that principles, understood as norms, should guide constitutional adjudication. Third, he confronts the liberal and the republican views of the political and constitutional process, developing …

Law And Political Culture, Dick Howard

Cardozo Law Review

A decade ago Habermas announced a project in his The Theory of Communicative Action. Those who slipped into the habit of talking about this project as his Rechtsphilosophie may be surprised by the sobriety of Habermas's choice for the book's title. The foreword to Faktizitat und Geltung rejects any comparison with Hegel's systematic Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Habermas contrasts his "methodical-pluralistic" proposals to the idealistic concepts of Geist and Sittlichkeit, which are unable to account for complex modern societies. The apparent modesty of Habermas's claims is underlined by his subtitle, Contributions to a Discourse Theory of …

Law And Philosophy: Some Consequences For The Law Deriving From The Sociological Reconstruction Of Philosophical Theory, Mark Gould

Cardozo Law Review

Jurgen Habermas wants to provide a (quasi) transcendental grounding for democracy. He believes that the constituent attribute of Homo Sapiens is ordinary speech and that embedded in speech is a set of "validity claims" that are redeemable-asymptotically-only in an ideal speech situation. This ideal serves as a regulative fiction for our everyday world of social institutions. While it may not actually be present in institutional form, it serves as a ground for the normative critique of the actual social world in which we live.

Replik Auf Beitrage Zu Einem Symposion Der Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law, Jürgen Habermas

Cardozo Law Review

Jeder Autor steht in der Schuld seiner Leser; das gilt erst recht ftr einen anspruchsvollen Autor, der eine umfangreiche und komplexe Untersuchung vorlegt und daftir-noch vor der Publikation des Buches in deutscher Sprache an einer amerikanischen Universitat-die kritische Aufmerksamkeit hervorragender Kollegen findet. Aus den sorgfaltigen Kommentaren habe ich grossen Gewinn gezogen. Diese Behauptung wird sich anhand meiner Antwort nachpriifen lassen, mit der ich zugleich meinen Dank abstatten mochte.

Communicative Power And The Concept Of Law, Ulrich K. Preub

Cardozo Law Review

The idea that the law was founded on the self-interest and the will of rational individuals was first developed and proven in the social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. These theorists reacted-admittedly, in extremely different ways-to the problem of finding a collective basis in a world which had lost its common religious fundaments and the economic basis of feudal communal life. The European world of the seventeenth century had fallen apart. The universalism of the catholic world had been replaced by a plurality of subjective worldviews championed by individuals, groups, sects, and new social entities. How could one …

The Retrieval Of The Democratic Ethos, Richard J. Bernstein

Cardozo Law Review

For over thirty years I have been a sympathetic although critical reader of Habermas. Initially, I was struck by his nuanced insight into the American pragmatic tradition and his appropriation of the radical democratic ethos of the pragmatic movement. I felt then, and still believe, that Habermas has a more profound and subtle understanding of what is best and most enduring in pragmatism-especially in the thought of Peirce, Dewey, and Mead-than many of my American colleagues. I was also attracted to Habermas for other reasons. He is a dialectical thinker who has the courage to buck fashionable trends-who refuses to …

Why Care? The Trouble With Social Rights, Günter Frankenberg

Cardozo Law Review

While not everybody will agree that social rights are good in general, the ranks of the "not-everybody" will fill when one wants to decide who needs which particular social rights. Even those who claim to be philosophically and practically supportive of the idea and the benefits of social rights find it difficult to come up with a strong argument for them and usually invoke vague or weak obligations to support the victims of capitalism or, if you will, the market society or the mere necessity to preserve social peace by a minimally redistributive social policy. Social scientists have plausibly claimed …

Against Market Rationality: Moral Critiques Of Economic Analysis In Legal Theory, Jane B. Baron, Jeffrey L. Dunoff

Cardozo Law Review

Sometimes, apparently unrelated bodies of thought turn out to contain and express common themes. To our surprise, we found a set of common themes and concerns running through three bodies of theory that might otherwise appear unconnected: environmental ethics, civic republicanism, and commodification. In very different contexts, authors in all three areas seemed to ask some very similar questions. Collected together, these questions comprise a novel critique of the economic analysis of law-a "moral" critique that is quite different from technical and distributional critiques that have been offered in the past.

Schrodinger’S Cat, Eugenics, And The Compulsory Sterilization Of Welfare Mothers: Deconstructing An Old/New Rhetoric And Constructing The Reproductive Right To Natality For Low-Income Women Of Color, Beverly Horsburgh

Cardozo Law Review

In Part I of this Article, I briefly trace the history of racism, sexism, and class bias in western scientific thought as well as the legal consequences that ensued in this country from scientific prejudice. In Part II, I turn to eugenics in our own time and explore the sterilization abuse of poor women of color as a disguised form of eugenics. I argue that the lack of popular sympathy for the reproductive problems of these women, due to their negative dehumanizing stereotyping and the pervasive influence of sociobiology, facilitates public acceptance of harsher measures in the future. I refer, …

“A One Way Ticket To Palookaville”: Supreme Court Takings Jurisprudence After Dolan And Its Implication For New York City’S Waterfront Zoning Resolution, Jill Illan Berger Inbar

Cardozo Law Review

This Note will use the Waterfront Ordinance as a vehicle for examining the new heightened scrutiny standard introduced in Dolan. Part I provides an overview of takings jurisprudence and the traditional pre-Nollan and pre-Dolan standards, which were applied to determine whether an exercise of police power oversteps its bounds and interferes with private property rights guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment. Part II reviews the new standards espoused by the Supreme Court in Nollan and Dolan. Part III describes the purpose of New York City's 1993. Waterfront Zoning Ordinance and discusses its history, objectives, and provisions. Part …

William Gardiner Hammond And The Lieber Revival, Paul D. Carrington

Cardozo Law Review

Francis Lieber's Legal and Political Hermeneutics was first published in serial form in 1837. Jacksonian populism was then at high water and American judges and lawyers were acknowledged as politicians. Interpretation of legal texts was seen as a political activity. His work was so well received that a hard cover edition was published in 1839.

The edition presented in this issue was prepared by William Gardiner Hammond in 1880. Jacksonian politics were then in retreat before a rising tide of technocratic professionalism. Many lawyers and judges were disowning the political mission of American law and aspiring to be technocrats. To …

Back To The Parent: Holding Company Liability For Subsidiary Banks - A Discussion Of The Net Worth Maintenance Agreement, The Source Of Stength Doctrine, And The Prompt Corrective Action Provision, Cassandra Jones Havard

Cardozo Law Review

The unprecedented number of bank failures in the past several years has spawned a crisis in the industry and fueled an extensive debate about how federal regulators can effectively make banks more responsible for guaranteeing the soundness of their operations. For the federal regulators most involved-the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ("FDIC"), Office of Thrift Supervision ("OTS"), and the Federal Reserve Board ("FRB") -Congress is directing the effort to enhance the banks' guarantees of self-policing. Congress's basic response to the crisis has been to heighten the minimum capital levels the banks must maintain to avoid direct corrective intervention by the federal …

The Limits Of Lieber, Lawrence Lessig

Cardozo Law Review

Texts are transportable. They move. Because written, they are carried. Because carried, they are read-in different places and at different times. Nothing (save the loss of the original language or the original text) can stop this semiotic peripateticism. If you write it, it will roam.

Benjamin Nathan Cardozo The Teacher, Joseph W. Bellacosa

Cardozo Law Review

The forty-seventh Cardozo Memorial Lecture, delivered in memory of Benjamin N. Cardozo at the House of the Association on November 9, 1994.

The Deconstruction Of Kantian Ethics And The Question Of Pleasure, Henry J. Staten

Cardozo Law Review

This Essay is primarily about the recent work of Bernard Williams, who is in my opinion the most radical thinker on the question of ethics in the analytic philosophy camp. In fact, Williams's work tests the limits of what we know as analytic philosophy. His project is rigorously deconstructive, yet it has been developed out of the materials of analytic philosophy itself quite independently of Derridean deconstruction. Thus, this project is extraordinarily rich in its resonance, and regardless of whether one comes at it from an analytic or deconstructive background, one is equally likely to find it surprising in its …

Critiquing The Legal Order In The Name Of “Critical Morality”, Julius Cohen

Cardozo Law Review

The moral criticism of the legal order has been a longtime sport (serious), if not an industry, for law teachers, theorists, judges, and other legal functionaries. In the process, they often reach for criteria beyond those utilized in conventional morality. Sometimes the reach "beyond" is ad hoc; sometimes it is accompanied by an awareness that it is toward a pattern of a higher-level, critical morality. The reach beyond is often triggered by a need to resolve conflicts within conventional morality. Or it is a function of the distrust of some of the sources of conventional morality, such as prejudice, unrefined …

Uncertainty In The Empire State: A Reevaluation Of New York’S Takings Jurisprudence After Dolan V. City Of Tigard, Clifford B. Olshaker

Cardozo Law Review

A hallmark of American property law is the acknowledgment of the government's ability to regulate the use of private parcels of land through the zoning laws. One of the chief goals of zoning law is to prevent overdevelopment and the accompanying strain on municipal resources. A landowner seeking to make significant changes to his property must obtain a permit from the local governing body. Denial of a building permit or certificate of occupancy is the chief means for enforcing zoning regulations. If a potential developer wishes to alter his property in a way that conflicts with applicable zoning laws, he …

The Alleged Unaccountability Of The Academic: A Biographical Sketch Of Carl Schmitt, Manfred H. Wiegandt

Cardozo Law Review

In recent years, especially after the breakdown of the Soviet bloc, we have witnessed numerous attempts to establish viable democratic structures in states formerly in the tight grip of dictatorially ruling elites, be it in the countries of the former Communist bloc, at the African Cape, or in Latin America. The questions that concern people in these regions above all are how their systems can be made strong enough to survive the economic crises that go along with establishing democratic frameworks and how the states can ensure the necessary coherence to survive on the background of a lingering challenge by …

Freud As Law Professor: An Alternative History, Charles Yablon

Cardozo Law Review

We are gathered here today to pay tribute to one of the great legal minds of the twentieth century. In his long and fruitful career as lawyer, law professor, and legal theorist, Sigmund Freud literally revolutionized both the theory and practice of the legal profession. His contributions are to be found everywhere; from his early work on alternative dispute resolution, to his fundamental reconceptualization of the lawyer-client relationship, to his trenchant critiques of the law and economics movement, even the standard fifty-minute billable hour are all reflections of his vast influence on law and legal theory.

A Unique And Different Subject Of Law, Alain Pottage

Cardozo Law Review

Might an idiom of love be instituted in law? This question is posed by Luce Irigaray's ethics of sexual difference, which, in the guise of a critique of law, depicts the semantic or symbolic structure of a law that articulates an ethical relation of love-not love as caritatis, but love as eros. This implausible association of love and law seeks to institute an immediate and idiomatic relation within the axiopoietic order of law. Irigaray's J'aime d toi prescribes a set of basic rights which law-in its role as cultural tutor-might institute as the coordinates of a new model …

Anti-Intellectualism, Pierre Schlag

Cardozo Law Review

There is a recurrent sameness to American legal thought. It is the sameness that comes from saying over and over again what the law is and saying it, of course, in a way that conforms with the law itself.

The Other Dimension Of Law, Pierre Legendre

Cardozo Law Review

What kind of a questioning would make it possible for psychoanalysis to become theoretically useful for jurists? How could such a questioning have an effect on the practice of law? In the same measure, is it theoretically plausible for psychoanalysts, attached as they are to their own casuistry, to interrogate the law? What must be recognized from the start, if this questioning is to be more than superficial, is that the intellectual and social dogmas of today are obstacles to the liberty of thought [esprit].

Power Without Parents: Juvenile Justice In A Postmodern Society, Jonathan Simon

Cardozo Law Review

It is tempting at times to speak of a general crisis of childhood in America. We hear and read of record numbers of children living in poverty and unprecedented levels of violence against children and adolescents. With astounding frequency, stories emerge of child abuse in the nation's churches, schools, and day-care centers. But this characterization of a general crisis leaps over the specific contexts in which these disturbing images are arising and mistakes the democracy of the daily news for a common fate in America. Such a discussion also risks ignoring the specific technologies of power that are in play, …

For The Love Of Lacan, Jacques Derrida

Cardozo Law Review

What wouldn't Lacan have said!

What won't he have said!

This is not a question, it is an exclamation: to get my voice right, to find the appropriate tone, before beginning to try out this idiomatic conjunction of negation, denial [denegation], conditional and future in the past, my hypothesis being that these grammars, now in succession, now simultaneously, play the role of a screen and of a mirror in the modalities of the with, as they do in the modalities of the since [depuis] that will have determined Lacan's relationship to the philosophers-to certain philosophers. These few reflections on temporal …

Sons Of Writ, Sons Of Wrath: Pierre Legendre’S Critique Of Rational Law-Giving, Anton Schutz

Cardozo Law Review

By nature we have been sons of wrath, according to a thoroughly explored passage of Pauline theology. I should like to put this text to a test. My purpose in this article is to view the work of a twentieth-century Sorbonne Professor of Law through the lens of this Pauline text. Clearly, such a procedure assumes some sort of extraordinary similarity of preoccupation as between these two thinkers. It assumes that the semantic components, filius and ira, and the question of their relationship, are equally crucial to both figures: to the fervent apostle and epistolographer who happened to have …

Making Sense Of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality, And The Reconfiguration Of American Legal Discourse, Bernard J. Hibbitts

Cardozo Law Review

While American legal discourse has embraced a range of figurative expressions evoking all sorts of sensory experience, it has long favored visual metaphors. We frequently consider law as a matter of looking: we "observe" it; we evaluate claims "in the eye of the law"; our high courts "review" the decisions of inferior tribunals. Alternatively, we speak of law as something one would usually look at: it is a "body," a "text," a "structure," a "bulwark of freedom," a "seamless web,'' and even a "magic mirror." We identify particular legal concepts with striking visual images: property rights are a "bundle of …

Revisiting The Corporatist And Contractualist Models Of Labor Law Regimes: A Review Of The Brazilian And American Systems, Stanley A. Gacek

Cardozo Law Review

During the late 1970s, Brazilian workers captured world attention by mobilizing gigantic strikes in the auto industry of Greater São Paulo. Defying the intervention of the labor courts, they directly confronted the transnational automakers and negotiated impressive wage gains. They also established the celebrated comissões de fábrica, or factory commissions, which served as new vehicles for the negotiation of agreements and the resolution of labor disputes.