Law and Philosophy Commons^™

Beliefs And Probabilities: The Errors That Remain Are Mine Alone, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Imagine that the preface to a professor’s book implicitly asserts that all the propositions in the rest of his or her book are true, but explicitly acknowledges that experience would suggest some errors remain among those propositions. The prof thereby seems paradoxically to believe inconsistent statements. But in fact this famous preface paradox is an illusion. The first statement is a belief reflecting epistemic uncertainty, while the second is a probabilistic statement about aleatory uncertainty. If one were to convert the probability into a belief, one would see that the author rationally holds perfectly consistent beliefs.

Likewise the lottery paradox …

Community Land Trusts: Institutionalizing The Human Flourishing Theory Of Property, John A. Lovett

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

Greg Alexander has made a powerful case that an owner of property in a free and democratic society will be required from time to time to provide resources, in ways appropriate to that owner, to support the development of other persons' human capabilities. In this essay, I focus attention on legal relationships epitomizing Alexander's human flourishing theory that owe their genesis in the collaborative work of community activists, who often began their efforts from positions of devout religious conviction, and public-spirited transactional lawyers. The product of that work is the property law institution known as the Community Land Trust (CLT).

Liberalism And The Commons, Hanoch Dagan

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

It is a real privilege for me to participate in the celebration of Greg Alexander's enormous contribution to the scholarship and jurisprudence on property, which has enhanced our understanding of property in numerous ways. Alexander utilized almost every tool in a legal theorist's kit-notably: history, comparative law, and philosophical investigation-to study property and developed an innovative and nuanced theory of property. Property, for Alexander, has a core role in fostering human flourishing. A proper conception of property, he claims, must acknowledge that obligations and not just rights, and communities and not only individuals, take center stage.

The Rationality Of Promising, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

Binding promises yield a number of practical benefits, if in fact they are binding. One benefit is coordination. Knowing that she must perform, the promisor can allocate her time and resources more effectively. The promisee, meanwhile, can make plans on the assumption that the promised act will occur.

Markets for future exchange rely on the coordinating power of binding promises. For this purpose, it may be possible in theory to support coordination by designing and enforcing an ideal set of legal rules governing contractual obligation. Almost certainly, however, markets will function more effectively if promises also impose obligations to perform …

The Dignity Canon, Noah B. Lindell

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

Human dignity is not a freestanding constitutional right, but it is a strongly held constitutional value. To this point, however, human dignity has had no place in statutory interpretation. This Article argues that courts should create a dignity canon of interpretation, which would operate as a clear statement rule. If laws are to be construed to limit individual dignity, the legislature must expressly this plainly. By conducting re-dos of three Supreme Court cases in the areas of civil rights, criminal procedure, and personal health, the Article shows the promise of the dignity canon.

The Importance Of 'The Gap', Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

One of the central dilemmas of law is what Larry Alexander has called "the gap:" general, determinate rules have significant benefits from the forward-looking perspective of a lawmaker, but generate outcomes that appear wrong from the perspective of individual actors. In this 25-year retrospective of Alexander's initial article on the gap, I examine a possible way out of the dilemma of the gap, and conclude that it does not work.

Philosophy Of Law: Reply To Critics, Andrei Marmor

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The author addresses issues raised by commentators on his book, Philosophy of Law (2011).

Meaning And Belief In Constitutional Interpretation, Andrei Marmor

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The distinction between a concept and its different conceptions plays a prominent role in debates about constitutional interpretation. Proponents of a dynamic reading of the Constitution-espousing interpretation of constitutional concepts according to their contemporary understandings typically rely on the idea that the Constitution entrenches only the general concepts it deploys, without authoritatively favoring any particular conception of them-specifically, without favoring the particular conception of the relevant concept that the framers of the Constitution may have had in mind. Originalists argue, to the contrary, that fidelity to the Constitution requires an understanding of its provisions according to the particular conception of …

Legal Positivism: Still Descriptive And Morally Neutral, Andrei Marmor

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

It has become increasingly popular to argue that legal positivism is actually a normative theory, and that it cannot be purely descriptive and morally neutral as H.L.A. Hart has suggested. This article purports to disprove this line of thought. It argues that legal positivism is best understood as a descriptive, morally neutral, theory about the nature of law. The article distinguishes between five possible views about the relations between normative claims and legal positivism, arguing that some of them are not at odds with Hart’s thesis about the nature of jurisprudence, while the others are wrong, both as expositions of …

The Immorality Of Textualism, Andrei Marmor

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

On Giving Legal Form Its Due. A Study In Legal Theory, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The four theses of this paper are: (1) that an appropriate organizational form is used to design, define, and organize a functional unit of a legal system, (2) that the functional units of a legal system, contrary to the emphasis in Hart and Kelsen, consist of far more than rules, and include institutions, interpretive and other methodologies, sanctions and remedies, and more, (3) that frontal and systematic study of the forms of these units is a major avenue for advancing understanding of them as duly organized wholes, and, (4) that such study reveals that much credit is due these forms, …

Do We Have A Right To Common Goods?, Andrei Marmor

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Individuals have rights. I will assume that this means that individuals have interests which are important enough to justify the imposition of duties on others in order to secure those interests. Groups of individuals, such as nations or ethnic minorities, plausibly have rights as well. Groups of individuals may have group interests appropriately protected by the imposition of duties on others, typically, on governments, or on other larger political entities. My concern in this essay is with the question of what individuals or groups may have a right to. In particular I want to explore the question of whether people …

Legal Institutions In Professor H.L.A. Hart's Concept Of Law, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Ordinary Religion, Roger C. Cramton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Liberalism, Radicalism, And Legal Scholarship, Steven H. Shiffrin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

On Identifying And Reconstructing A General Legal Theory – Some Thoughts Prompted By Professor Moore’S Critique, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pragmatic Instrumentalism In Twentieth Century American Legal Thought—A Synthesis And Critique Of Our Dominant General Theory About Law And Its Use, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"Is" And "Ought" In Legal Philosophy, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Logic In The Law, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

H.L.A. Hart On Justice, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Note On Symbolic Logic And The Law, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.