Jurisprudence Commons^™

Legitimacy And Diversity: Dialectical Reflections On Analytical Distinctions, Thomas Mccarthy

Cardozo Law Review

Jurgen Habermas's discourse theory of democracy has repeatedly been criticized for placing too much emphasis on consensus and not enough on conflict. He wants, it seems, to defend a discourse-theoretical version of the "general will" as the key to democratic legitimacy, whatever the cost. The costs are usually reckoned in terms of the theory's tenuous relation to the hurly-burly of democratic practice, where disagreement is the rule and unanimity is in short supply. Many of these criticisms miss their target, for they are often based on superficial readings and serious misunderstandings. But enough of them hit the mark to indicate …

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.

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 The universalism of the catholic world had been replaced by a plurality of subjective worldviews championed by individuals, groups, sects, and new social entities.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 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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

Preface, Michel Rosenfeld

Cardozo Law Review

This symposium issue of the Cardozo Law Review which coincides with the English publication of Jurgen Habermas's Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, represents the culmination of an extraordinary interdisciplinary and intercontinental intellectual journey. The papers published in this issue were first presented at a conference held at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law on September 20 and 21, 1992, in which Jurgen Habermas and thirty-two scholars from the United States, Germany, and many other countries, representing the fields of law, philosophy, sociology, and political science engaged in two days of …

Changing America: Three Arguments About Asian Americans And The Law , Frank H. Wu

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Corporate Fiduciary Principles For The Post-Contractarian Era, Rutheford B. Campbell Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The impact of the law and economics movement on legal scholarship, legal analysis, and, ultimately, on the rules under which our society operates is substantial. The proponents of this movement ("Contractarians") articulate their positions skillfully and apply their principles broadly across the entire spectrum of our laws, including, of course, the area of corporate law.

The purpose of this Article is to propose, explain, and defend broad and unifying principles to guide the development of fiduciary duties of corporate managers in the post-Contractarian period. These principles are based on Pareto criteria, which are demonstrably appealing to society and provide workable …

The Antinomy Of Coherence And Determinacy, William A. Edmundson

Faculty Publications By Year

Coherence and determinacy are both apparent desiderata for bodies of law and legal systems. Unfortunately, in legal systems of any complexity, increasing the degree of one invariably brings about a lessening of the other. For theories of law - such as Ronald Dworkin's - that emphasize the importance of coherence in judicial reasoning, while requiring as a condition of legitimacy that legal rights pre-exist judicial decisions, this must be an unwelcome fact.

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 …

The Constitutionality Of Legislative Supermajority Requirements: A Defense, John O. Mcginnis, Michael B. Rappaport

Articles

No abstract provided.

Judgment, Philippe Nonet

Vanderbilt Law Review

To judge, in Latin judicare, is to say the law, jus dicere, whence juris-dictio.

The above sentence is a possible answer to the question: what is judging? It spells out what the word "to judge" says, by recalling the history from which the word originates. Why would anyone ask this question? How helpful is such an answer?

Everyone knows what it is to judge. Only on the ground of such self-evidence could there be that unabating debate on the ' justification" of particular judgments, which is the day to day business of lawyering. Only because the question can be passed …

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 Idea Of A Public Basis Of Justification For Contract, Peter Benson

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The essay has two main objects. The first is to take up and to develop certain of the difficulties that Professor Trebilcock finds with autonomy and welfare-based theories of contract law. The essay reaches the conclusion that efficiency, autonomy, and welfare approaches suffer from fundamental and yet qualitatively different kinds of defects. Moreover, in the course of its critical examination of these theories, the essay introduces and makes explicit an ideal of justification which The Limits of Freedom of Contract only implicitly assumes-an ideal of justification which the essay, following the recent work of Rawls, calls a "public basis of …

Critiques Of The Limits Of Freedom Of Contract: A Rejoinder, Michael J. Trebilcock

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This rejoinder to the foregoing critiques of the author's book, The Limits of Freedom of Contract, focuses on several themes: a) what range of contractually-related issues do courts possess the requisite institutional competence to address? b) whether problematic normative issues in contract law are amenable to rational analysis and at least provisional resolution, or are inherently indeterminate, contingent, and political? c) what the value of individual autonomy implies in terms of the type of transactions parties should be permitted to engage in? d) whether an "internal" rather than consequentialist theory of contract law is conceivable? and e) whether autonomy values …

Institutions And Linguistic Conventions: The Pragmatism Of Lieber's Legal Hermeneutics, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

This article presents Francis Lieber’s 1839 treatise “Legal and Political Hermeneutics” as a surprisingly modern and pragmatic account of interpretation. It first explicates the two most important influences on Liber’s thought, the romantic philology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, and the institutional positivism of Whig jurists Story and Kent. It shows that both of these sources frankly acknowledged that interpretation is an institutional practice, organized by the evolving aims and customs of the institutions within which it took place. Both tended to view the writing and reading of texts as the deployment of linguistic conventions. Both movements thereby viewed meaning for all …

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 …

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.

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 …

D.M. Gray Co, Inc., V. Deroche D/B/A Starr Construction, 94-Ap-25 (Blkft. Tr. Ct. App., March 6, 1995), Blackfeet Appellate Court

Court Decisions

In the Blackfeet Tribal Court of Appeals the Court reversed and remanded case for improper service when service was improperly made to a minor. Ch. 9, Rule 12: Service of Process, states that service may be made “upon an individual other than a minor under the age of sixteen, or an incompetent person, by delivering a copy of the summons or notice of action, and give the complaint to him personally, or by leaving copies thereof where he lives with an adult living there, or by delivering a copy of the summons or notice of action and of the complaint …

Impossible Comparisons And Rational Choice Theory, Richard Warner

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Excluding Reasons: Impossible Comparisons And The Law, Richard Warner

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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 …