Jurisprudence Commons^™

Acknowledgments, Jeremy Paul, Pierre Schlag

Publications

CLS 2001 Symposium - Critical Legal Studies (Debut de Siecle): A Symposium on Duncan Kennedy's A Critique of Adjudication: Fin de Siècle (1997).

When The Wall Has Fallen: Decades Of Failure In The Supervision Of Capital Juries, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

Since the return of capital punishment after Furman v. Georgia nearly three decades ago, the Supreme Court of the United States has struggled to control the administration of capital punishment when those decisions are made or recommended by a citizen jury. Although there is no constitutional requirement that a jury participate in the death penalty process, most states do provide, through their capital punishment statutes, that a jury will participate in the decision. The preference for jury sentencing in these circumstances reflects a reluctance to leave power over life solely in the hands of one judge. Still, some scholars have …

Much Ado About Spam: Unsolicited Advertising, The Internet, And You., Scot M. Graydon

St. Mary's Law Journal

Internet users need protection from unsolicited commercial emails (UCEs), and this protection should come from federal legislation. Despite seventeen states having passed some sort of legislation regulating UCEs, this is insufficient to protect Internet users from UCEs. State laws are not uniformed and UCEs frequently cross state lines. Internet advertisers prefer commercial emails because of the ability to market to millions of consumers at a low cost. Consumers, however, suffer delays to their Internet access because of the amount of data UCEs accumulate, and in some cases may have to pay additional fees if they exceed the data limits of …

A Holy Mess: School Prayer, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act Of Texas, And The First Amendment., David S. Stolle

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, the U.S. Supreme Court held the traditional compelling state interest standard for Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence should be replaced by a new test requiring a statute or government action to be facially neutral and generally applicable. In response to Smith, Congress, relying on its Enforcement Clause powers under the Fourteenth Amendment, attempted to resurrect the compelling state interest standard by passing the Religious Freedom of Restoration Act (RFRA). In June 1999, the Texas legislature passed the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act (TRFRA). This Comment argues the TRFRA is unnecessary …

Adr: An Eclectic Array Of Processes, Rather Than One Eclectic Process, Lela P. Love, Kimberlee K. Kovach

Articles

When mediators try to resolve a controversy by providing their analysis of the legal – or other – merits, they are providing the service that judges, arbitrators and neutral experts provide. In essence, such endeavors use the neutral’s judgment, award or opinion to determine or jump-start a resolution. This article urges that this add-on activity to mediation should be called by its proper name. The essay highlights the advantages of calling "mediation plus evaluation" a mixed process and discusses the advantages of having an eclectic and diverse mix of processes from which parties and counsel can choose to promote party …

Amatory Jurisprudence And The Querelle Des Lois, Peter Goodrich

Articles

It is my view, and here, no doubt, I am pre-empting my conclusion, that what literary and feminist historicism recognizes as the querelle des femmes, the debate as to the status and political role of women, is in fact underpinned and motivated by a much less explicit, yet nonetheless portentous, querelle des lois. The querelle des femmes, in other words, was always a polemic as to the legal status of women, as to their definition and role in theology and jurisprudence, canon and civil law. More than that, however, what the recovery of amatory jurisprudence can help to show is …

The Doctrine Of Certainty In The Islamic Methods Of Inference, Soualhi Yunus

Student Works (2000-2009)

This thesis is an articulate study on the modes of inference in the legal field. Observing the huge legacy left by early and modem jurists on Usul al-Fiqh, one would find that the rules promulgated to regulate the operation of Ijtihad appears vacillating between certainty and uncertainty. A thorough examination of the criteria set by jurists to determine the accuracy of the legal proofs suggests that every thing appears to have been comprehensively tackled except "Certainty". A lack of an adequate theorization for certainty in the legal field is exactly what has prompted us to venture into this thesis. This …

Jihad Politik : Suatu Analisis Pemikiran Sa`Id Hawwa, Muhammad Pisol Mat Isa

Student Works (2000-2009)

Kajian ini adalah berbentuk Library research. Tujuan utama adalah untuk melihat proses perjalanan politik mengikut kaca mata Islam dan juga menjelaskan beberapa kekeliruan umat Islam dalam isu politik. Kajian ini juga cuba mengulaskan beberapa isu pokok seperti isu pengundian, pembinaan parti Islam, membina negara Islam, menyertai pilihan raya, berbilangan jemaah, bekerja dalam kerajaan bukan Islam, proses penurunan pemimpin melalui kaedah demokrasi dan lain-lain. Kajian ini mengambil Said Hawwa sebagai asas kajian pemikiran. ini kerana penulis mendapati beliau adalah antara tokoh yang terlibat secara langsung dalam politik dan banyak menulis buku-buku yang berkaitan dengannya. Hal ini memudahkan penulis mendapat maklumat dan …

Introduction, Emily Sherwin

San Diego Law Review

Recent debate about theory in legal scholarship' has raised more questions about theory and law than it has answered. For example, just what is meant by "theory" in the context of law? Is there a form of theory that is uniquely "legal" theory, or is legal theory merely moral theory applied to law? If there is such a thing as legal theory, does the body of positive law, and particularly the decisions of judges, inform legal theory, or does theory inform law? What, if any, are the justifications for constructing theories of law?

Two Aspects Of Law And Theory, Ronald J. Allen

San Diego Law Review

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, there was much ado about law and theory, or the relationship between law and theory, or legal theory, phrases that I take to be synonymous, two aspects of which I want to discuss briefly today. With an introductory sentence like that, the normal expectation would be that the next sentence would somehow work in the phrase "about nothing," and, not wanting to be unpredictable, thus casting doubt on somebody's behavioral theory, I will fulfill this expectation by saying that a fair amount of the ado about legal theory was indeed about nothing. …

Retribution In Criminal Theory, Douglas N. Husak

San Diego Law Review

I will focus on three separate but intimately related dimensions of what I have identified as Moore's central theme. In Part H, I examine his views

about the data from which a theory of the criminal law is to be constructed. In Part I, I discuss his account of the rationale of punishment. In Part IV, I scrutinize his defense of legal moralism as a theory of legislative aim. I express general misgivings about the extraordinarily central place Moore affords retribution in his account of the criminal law as it exists today. I want to stress at the outset, however, …

The Brandeis Legacy, Mary Murphy Schroeder

San Diego Law Review

Louis Brandeis was the greatest lawyer of the early twentieth century, and perhaps of the entire century. He was brilliant, driven, charismatic, and absolutely devoted to improving the lives of the common people of the United States. Put in more contemporary terms, he was committed to the notion that technological and economic advances should not widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. His causes were the environment, citizenship, freedom of expression, quality of life in the workplace, protection against increasing power wielded by large corporations, and protection of individual privacy. All were issues that emerged at the beginning …

Theories Of Areas Of Law, Michael Moore

San Diego Law Review

The topic of this symposium is "theories and the law." Since this is such an enormously broad topic, the first thing to do is to narrow it a bit. As I shall discuss it, the topic is not on the central topic of jurisprudence, which is the theory of law. My topic is theories within our law, rather than theories about the nature of law in general. Often we call such theorizing internal to the law we have, "internal jurisprudence," to be contrasted with an "external jurisprudence" that is about law as such. Within internal jurisprudence, there is still considerable …

Theory's A What Comes Natcherly, Larry Alexander

San Diego Law Review

So what kind of theorizing do we do in law? First, we do empirical, predictive theorizing. We form hypotheses about how the world will be affected by various rules of law, because of their content and form, and by the design of our legal institutions. These hypotheses can be confirmed or falsified. We also form hypotheses about how particular judges will decide future cases, or how legislatures and agencies will react to various proposals. When we do legal history, we reason backwards from effects and form hypotheses about their causes. The second type of theorizing we do is normative. In …

Cultivating The Genetic Commons: Imperfect Patent Protection And The Network Model Of Innovation, Jonathan M. Barnett

San Diego Law Review

This Article enters this debate and argues the following position. Assuming that antitrust authorities persist in certain strategies to impede patent consolidation, the recent introduction of patent rights for certain biotechnological innovations is likely to encourage private investment in the genetic commons and reduce (or, at least, not enhance) the accessibility costs that could stunt technological advance. To reach this conclusion, this Article shows that the two leading theories of patent protection, the "incentive" theory7 and the "prospect" theory,8 do not explain private industry's willingness to sink significant investment capital into highly uncertain biopharmaceutical projects. These theories offer insufficient explanations …

Dropping Slugs In The Celestial Jukebox: Congressional Enabling Of Digital Music Piracy Short-Changes Copyright Holders

San Diego Law Review

In response to the myriad new methods of copying that are emerging from the ongoing digital revolution, Congress has enacted several amendments to copyright law.' These statutes have sought to protect copyright holders in the digital age without chilling the development of new technologies or interfering with consumer access to copyrighted works. Specifically, the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 ("AHRA") recognized the tremendous potential for piracy created by consumer access to digital audio recording devices. The purpose of the AHRA is not only to prevent infringing acts, but also to compensate copyright holders for the inevitable instances of illicit …

Psychotherapeutic Practice As A Model For Postmodern Legal Theory, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Critical legal theory is in need of reconstruction and rehabilitation. By most accounts, the goal of critical legal theory is to reveal the deep structure of the legal system that remains unrecognized in, and even obscured by, the self-understanding of legal actors. Scholars traditionally moved beyond the superficial level of legal doctrine either by adopting a rationalistic orientation and analyzing legal concepts or by adopting an empiricist orientation and analyzing the economic and sociological features of legal institutions. However, during the past thirty years there has been a tremendous diversification in these critical approaches. For example, the critical legal studies …

The Quest To Reprogram Cultural Software: A Hermeneutical Response To Jack Balkin's Theory Of Ideology And Critique, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Critical theory has lost the self-assurance that defined the heady days of Marxist economics and Freudian psychoanalysis. In his famous debate with Hans-Georg Gadamer thirty years ago, Jürgen Habermas argued that critical theory was a necessary corrective to the quiescence and conventionalism that followed from Gadamer's hermeneutic perspective. As the 1960s unfolded, the second generation of the Frankfurt School appeared poised to bring sophisticated techniques of social criticism to bear on the emerging postindustrialist system of global capitalism. But the promise of critical theory failed to materialize. Today, Habermas plays the role of the aging lion who refuses to accept …

Foreward, Symposium: Philosophical Hermeneutics And Critical Legal Theory, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This Symposium brings the considerable talents of a diverse group of scholars to bear on a pressing problem in legal theory: Whether critical theory is possible after the hermeneutical turn. All too often, this problem is framed to invite an “either-or” response. Either we reject the hermeneutical turn and hew to a traditional account of critique anchored by an unimpeachable standard (whether economic, historical, conceptual, cognitive, or otherwise), or we take the hermeneutical turn by embracing radical historical contingency and fluidity, thereby forsaking the possibility of critique and surrendering to conservative conventionalism or inviting postmodern chaos. This Symposium challenges this …

Resolving Tensions Between Copyright And The Internet, Walter Effross

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Making Room For Critical Race Theory In International Law: Some Practical Pointers, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

In addition to assessing the pertinence of critical race theory in unmasking international law's colonial, racist and patriarchal underpinnings, this paper attempts to suggest practical ways in which a critical race theoryapproach can enrich the international legal system, by giving a voice to the voiceless and by addressing the conditions of marginality in which much of the developing world is trapped.

This paper will do three things. First, it will peruse the contemporary global situation with respect to international law and human rights. Second, it will assess the contribution of critical race theory in advancing an understanding of, and solution …

Rape: A Survey Of Current International Jurisprudence, Christine Strumpen-Darrie

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Imagining Justice, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As we approach the new century and the new millennium, those of us who are legal professionals in liberal capitalist democracies need to drastically improve our practices of law if we are to bring those practices in line with our professed ideals. The commodification and marketing of legal services, for example, combined with a nearly blind commitment to overly combative advocacy, puts legal assistance beyond the means of large segments of the public, severely undercutting our commitment to equality before the law. A different and perhaps harder question, however, is whether the ideals against which we judge our practices are …

Impeachment As Congressional Constitutional Interpretation, Neal K. Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Constitutionalists have assumed, too quickly in my view, that symmetry should exist between the interpretive styles of the courts and Congress. This assumption, which I shall call the myth of interpretive symmetry, slights the many reasons why an interpretive method may work well in one area and not work as well in another. Instead of mapping out all these possible divergences, I illustrate the point with three examples: the roles of history, precedent, and moral philosophy. I show how, in each instance, arguments can be made to suggest that divergent institutional roles should be taken into account in formulating a …

Are There Nothing But Texts In This Class? Interpreting The Interpretive Turns In Legal Thought, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Allan Hutchinson remarks at the beginning of his interesting article that Gadamer's writings have had only a peripheral influence on legal scholarship -- only occasionally cited, and then begrudgingly so, and never given the serious attention they deserve or require. Nevertheless, Hutchinson acknowledges, Gadamerian influences can be noted -- particularly in the now widely shared understanding that adjudication is, fundamentally, an interpretive exercise. Even with this qualification, though, I think Hutchinson understates Gadamer's impact. Whatever may be true of Gadamer's influence in other disciplines, his influence in law has been unambiguously both broad and deep -- although it has come …

Eleventh Amendment Schizophrenia, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article argues that conflicting analytical strains run through the Supreme Court's recent majority opinions in the area of state sovereign immunity. The "supremacy" strain stresses that, despite the Eleventh Amendment, the states remain obligated to comply with federal law, and that the Constitution envisions the "necessary judicial means" to enforce these obligations against the state. These means include suits by the federal government, private suits for injunctive relief, and suits seeking damages from state officials in their individual capacities. Thus, according to the supremacy strain, state sovereign immunity is unimportant because it merely bars unnecessary means of enforcing the …

Afterword And Response: What Digging Does And Does Not Do, Patricia D. White

Articles

No abstract provided.

Escaping The Expression-Equality Conundrum: Toward Anti-Orthodoxy And Inclusion, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article, Professor Hunter questions the naturalness and inevitability of the dichotomy in constitutional law between freedom of expression and the right to equality. She places the origin of this doctrinal divergence in the history of American social protest movements in the first half of the twentieth century, which began with ideologically-based claims and shifted to a primary emphasis on identity-based equality claims. During the interim period between World War I and World War I, the wave of seminal First Amendment cases was ebbing and the wave of equality claims was beginning to swell. Close examination of the constitutional …

Restoring What’S Environmental About Environmental Law In The Supreme Court, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article, Professor Richard Lazarus examines the votes of the individual Justices who have decided environmental law cases before the United States Supreme Court during the past three decades. The Article reports on a number of interesting statistics regarding the identity of those Justices who have most influenced the Court's environmental law jurisprudence and the sometimes curious patterns in voting exhibited by individual Justices. Lazarus's thesis is that the Supreme Court's apparent apathy or even antipathy towards environmental law during that time results from the Justices' failure to appreciate environmental law as a distinct area of law. The Justices …

Personal Rights And Rule Dependence: Can The Two Co-Exist?, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutional doctrine is typically "rule-dependent." Typically, a constitutional litigant will not prevail unless she can show that a particular kind of legal rule is in force, e.g., a rule that discriminates against "suspect classes" in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, or that targets speech in violation of the First Amendment, or that is motivated by a religious purpose in violation of the Establishment Clause. Further, the litigant must typically establish a violation of her "personal rights." The Supreme Court has consistently stated that a reviewing court should not invalidate an unconstitutional governmental action at the instance of a claimant …