Law and Philosophy Commons^™

The Liberal Future Of Relational Feminism: Robin West's Caring For Justice, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Robin West is one of the most prolific1 and creative members of the legal academy. Her distinctive voice, as expressed in several books and numerous scholarly articles, informs and shapes debates within such diverse areas as constitutional theory (West 1990b; West 1994), feminist jurisprudence (West 1987; West 1988), and law and literature (West 1993). Indeed, some of her early articles concerning feminist jurisprudence (West 1987, West 1988) are now "classics" in a relatively new field of inquiry and appear in virtually every anthology or textbook in the field (Bartlett and Kennedy 1991, 201; Becker, Bowman, and Torrey 1994, 90; Fineman …

Three Limitations Of Deliberative Democracy: Identity Politics, Bad Faith, And Indeterminancy, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

In Democracy and Disagreement, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson elaborate a liberal political style designed to complement the substantive liberalism they and others have developed in recent years. The style they portray is deliberative, and its essence is the appeal to principle.

Disenfranchisement As Punishment: Reflections On The Racial Uses Of Infamia, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The practice of disenfranchising felons, though decreasing, is still widespread. In this Article, Professor George Fletcher reflects on the use of disenfranchisement as punishment, the lack of a convincing theoretical justification for it, and its disproportionate impact on the African.American community. Fletcher presents a number of powerful arguments against the constitutionality of the practice, but he emphasizes that there is a deeper problem with disenfranchisement as punishment: It reinforces the branding of felons as an "untouchable" class and thus helps to prevent their effective reintegration into our society.

In Defense Of The Incorporation Strategy, Jody S. Kraus, Steven D. Walt

Faculty Scholarship

Contract law must provide rules for interpreting the meaning of express terms and default rules for filling contractual gaps. Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code provides the same response to both demands: It incorporates the norms of commercial practice. This "incorporation strategy" has recently come under attack. Although the incorporation strategy for gap-filling seems to have survived criticism, the incorporation strategy for interpretation remains heavily criticized. Critics charge that the expected rate of interpretive error under an incorporationist interpretive regime is so excessive that almost any plain meaning regime would be preferable.

The attack on the incorporation strategy for …

Virtuous Lying: A Critique Of Quasi-Categorical Moralism, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Popular and professional moralists have a tendency to over-condemn lying. This Article is a critique of that tendency and the more general outlook it exemplifies, which I call Quasi-Categorical Moralism. I begin with an illustration from my own experience of morally appropriate lying that is condemned by the legal profession's ethics norms. I proceed to a critical examination of the arguments against lying in what is perhaps the best known contemporary work on professional ethics – Sissela Bok's Lying. I then explore the more sympathetic treatment of lying in a broad range of literary and philosophical works typically ignored …

The Plausibility Of Legally Protecting Reasonable Expectations, Bailey Kuklin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Truth In Codification, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Some men think that the earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King's command make it round? And if it is round, will the King's command flatten it?

These are the words of Thomas More as interpreted by Robert Bolt in his play A Man for All Seasons. More invokes the issue of scientific truth to question Parliament's authority to determine whether King Henry VIII should be recognized as the head of the Church of England. The point is well taken. When the issue is scientific …

Toleration, Autonomy, And Governmental Promotion Of Good Lives: Beyond "Empty" Toleration To Toleration As Respect, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers discontent with liberal toleration as being both too empty, because it fails to secure respect and appreciation among citizens who tolerate each other, and too robust, because it precludes government from engaging in a formative project of helping citizens to live good, self-governing lives. To meet these criticisms, the Article advances a model of toleration as respect, as distinguished from a model of empty toleration, drawing on three rationales for toleration: the anti-compulsion rationale, the jurisdictional rationale, and the diversity rationale. It defends toleration as respect against some common criticisms-emanating from feminist, civic republican, and liberal perfectionist …

Continuing Classroom Conversation Beyond The Well-Placed "Whys?", Bailey Kuklin, Jeffery J. Stemple

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Law Is Like, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

It is not easy to do philosophy in the tradition of Wittgenstein and Malcolm. The human mind gravitates toward authority – the Bible, great teachers, poets, gurus, even judges. Lawyers, in particular, are captives of authoritive constitutions, statutes, cases, and ruling doctrines. We cannot make a move without citing a source as a backup.

Perhaps this is the way it should be, for as lawyers or legal theorists, we speak in a particular legal culture and tradition. We cultivate that tradition, even as we dissent and subject it to criticism. The tradition is defined by the authorities that have shaped …

Domination In Wrongdoing, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Blackstone had a point in identifying crimes as public wrongs and torts as private wrongs. Both crimes and torts claim victims, however, the victims' responses vary according to context. In criminal cases, the victim responds by hoping that the government will apprehend and successfully prosecute the offender. In tort disputes, the victim responds by demanding compensation.

It is unclear, however, what constitutes wrongdoing. Defining wrongdoing as the violation of rights is unhelpful, for that definition only raises other questions: Who has rights and what is their content? Therefore, to understand the nature of wrongdoing, we should seek a substantive theory …

Marlowe's Faustus: Contract As Metaphor?, Daniel B. Yeager

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rights And Politics, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

It is an honour to join you today in celebrating Professor Jerome Hall. Professor Hall's work was ahead of its time. I did not know him, but his independence of mind and his spirited devotion to scholarship were striking in all I heard and read. Professor Hall's fame was at its height when I was beginning my research into the philosophy of law. And his name stood out as among the most distinguished American jurisprudential scholars. It stood out for his good sense, balanced judgment, and strong-minded convictions. His Foundations of Jurisprudence is thoroughly resistant to fashion. It is an …

Inviolability And Privacy: The Castle, The Sanctuary, And The Body, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the idea and imagery of inviolability. I use a trilogy of terms-the castle, the sanctuary, and the body-to illuminate different loci of inviolability and to show how notions of sacredness and sanctity undergird the legal protection of inviolability. These images, familiar from privacy jurisprudence, provide a useful lens through which to examine the association between inviolability and gender. Familiar feminist critiques suggest that concepts such as privacy have served to deny, rather than to secure, inviolability for women and women's bodies. I explore the interplay of inviolability and privacy in some prominent feminist accounts of sexuality, and …

What Is Punishment Imposed For?, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The institution of punishment invites a number of philosophical queries. Sometimes the question is: How do we know that inflicting discomfort and disadvantage is indeed punishment? This is a critical question, for example, in cases of deportation or disbarment proceedings. Classifying the sanction as punishment triggers application of the Sixth Amendment and its procedural guarantees. In other situations the question might be: Why do we punish? What is the purpose of making people suffer? In this context, we encounter the familiar debates about the conflicting appeal of retribution, general deterrence, special deterrence, and rehabilitation.

In this article I wish to …

Gendering And Engendering Process, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cunning Stunts: From Hegemony To Desire A Review Of Madonna's Sex, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

What is sex? Is it an accidental or contingent property that every person can be said to have? I am brunette and female, but the Pope is bald and male. Or, is sex more constitutive, that is, an essential part of who we are? In this respect, the claim is often made that women experience the world ditfierently than men. Or, is sex something we do?

If we consider sex as an adjective, can we or should we be able to manipulate it like a new hair style? Or does the notion of sexual malleability trivialize the significance …

A Morality Fit For Humans, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

I believe that it was opposition to utilitarianism which first bred arguments claiming in one way or another that a view of morality according to which morality is very demanding is mistaken just be-cause morality cannot be so demanding. On first hearing, this type of argument is liable to seem suspect. Humans should be fit for morality, and unfortunately too often they are not – one is inclined to say. If we find morality too demanding the fault is with us and not with morality. The idea of human morality, in the sense of a morality fit for humans …

In The Wake Of Thoreau: Four Morden Legal Philosophers And The Theory Of Nonviolent Civil Disobedience, Stephen R. Alton

Faculty Scholarship

This Article opens with a discussion of Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience and then examines the ideas of four modem legal philosophers, Joseph Raz, Kent Greenawalt, John Rawls, and Ronald Dworkin, on the subject. Next, the Article compares the respective thinking of all five men regarding the circumstances that would justify the use of civil disobedience. To facilitate the comparison as well as to make it more relevant to the reader, the Article examines five related contemporary illustrations involving situations in which the use of civil disobedience might arguably be morally justified. This Article concludes with some general thoughts on …

Contradiction And Revision: Progressive Feminist Legal Scholars Respond To Mary Joe Frug, Elizabeth M. Schneider, Judi Greenberg, Martha Minow

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Self-Paternalism In The Marketplace, Bailey Kuklin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Gaps Between The Fingers Of The Invisible Hand, Bailey Kuklin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Relevance Of Coherence, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Coherence is in vogue. Coherence accounts of truth and of knowledge have been in contention for many years. Coherence explanations of morality and of law are a newer breed. I suspect that like so much else in practical philosophy today they owe much of their popularity to John Rawls. His writings on reflective equilibrium, while designed as part of a philosophical strategy which suspends inquiry into the fundamental questions of moral philosophy, had the opposite effect. They inspired much constructive reflection about these questions, largely veering toward coherence as the right interpretation both of reflective equilibrium and of moral philosophy. …

Morality As Interpretation, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

With the growing interest in interpretation as an activity essential in the study of the arts and of society it was inevitable that the question of the relation between morality and interpretation would attract considerable interest. Given that moral views and arguments are expressed in language, are essentially language bound, there is no doubt that the understanding of moral views and argument involves, at least at times, interpretation (of arguments and propositions, etc.). The same can be said of physics. The question is whether morality is interpretative in a way in which physics is not. Some writers have claimed that …

The Asymmetrical Conditions Of Legal Responsibility In The Marketplace, Bailey Kuklin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of Morality, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Many lawyers, both inside and outside the law schools, suffer from insecurity about our discipline. Instead of thinking of ourselves as the curators of a grand tradition in Western thought, many of us think of the law as a collection of doctrinal formulas and rules imposed on us by legislatures and the highest courts. We are always looking elsewhere to find a source of wisdom that will give the law coherence and meaning. At various times in this century we have looked to sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis and, of course, economics in an effort to ground our ideas in firmer soil. …

The Rule Of Recognition And The Constitution, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is about ultimate standards of law in the United States. Not surprisingly, our federal Constitution figures prominently in any account of our ultimate standards of law, and a discussion of its place is an apt jurisprudential endeavor for the bicentennial of the constitutional convention. Although in passing I offer some comments on constitutional principles, this essay is not about how the Constitution, or indeed other legal materials, should be understood and interpreted. Rather, it attempts to discern the jurisprudential implications of widespread practices involving the Constitution and other standards of law.

Holmes And Brandeis: Libertarian And Republican Justifications For Free Speech, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

Writing The Name of the Rose, observed Umberto Eco, made him aware of the "echoes of intertextuality." He discovered what "Homer, Rabelais and Cervantes have always known: . . .books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told."' The same applies to political and legal theories: they weave the past into the present. Thus, in articulating justifications for freedom of speech, one may look to modern works such as Milton or John Stuart Mill, or one may reach farther back to Aristotle, Plato or Pericles. The choice of intellectual sources as …

Law And Morality: A Kantian Perspective, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The relationship between law and morality has emerged as the central question in the jurisprudential reflection of our time. Those who call themselves positivists hold with H.L.A. Hart that calling a statute or a judicial decision "law" need not carry any implications about the morality of that statute or decision. Valid laws might be immoral or unjust. Those who resist this reduction of law to valid enactments sometimes argue, with Lon Fuller, that moral acceptability is a necessary condition for holding that a statute is law; or, with Ronald Dworkin, that moral principles supplement valid enactments as components of the …

Why Kant, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

These essays are the outgrowth of a conference on Kantian Legal Theory held at the the Arden Homestead in Harriman, New York, September 26-28, 1986. Some of them are versions of papers originally presented at the conference (Weinrib, Murphy, Finnis, Fletcher); others are a response to the three days of provocative discussion (Richards, Grey, Benson). The underlying premise of the conference was that although philosophers and academic lawyers have devoted considerable attention to Kant's moral theory, very few have written much about Kant's legal theory. I should add: written in English. The recent German literature overflows with books and articles …