Law and Philosophy Commons^™

The Rhetoric Of The Anti-Progressive Income Tax Movement: A Typical Male Reaction, Marjorie E. Kornhauser

Michigan Law Review

This article examines the arguments against progressivity and the supporting philosophic premises behind the mask of rhetoric. It neither treats exhaustively nor demolishes the legitimacy of the arguments or the underlying philosophy. Part I briefly summarizes the major arguments against progressivity. Part II examines the economic argument, its underlying assumptions, and its limitations. Part III examines the neoconservative philosophy which underlies the justification for a flat tax and contrasts it with an alternative feminist vision of people and society, which provides strong justification for progressive taxation.

Part IV concludes that there is a strong case for progressive taxation based not …

Law And Enchantment: The Place Of Belief, Joseph Vining

Articles

The question I wish to raise is whether one must believe what one says when one makes a statement of law. The language of belief that we know, and from which moral discourse and the moral never stray far: do judges, lawyers, law participate in it? Any such question is but an aspect of a larger question, indeed issue, of what we may call the objectivity of legal language. It is raised perhaps most acutely by the broad claims now being made for artificial intelligence and in particular for the computer programming of legal advice (as a species of what …

Challenge To The First Amendment, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Problems In The Application Of Political Philosophy To Law, Christopher T. Wonnell

Michigan Law Review

There are at least four reasons why one might expect differences between the philosophies one would want to serve the pure normative philosophy function and the applied political philosophy function. The problems of rationalization and limited knowledge suggest that sincere commitment to and successful application of a philosophy cannot be equated; the problems of attraction of the insincere and the lack of institutional checks on the abuse of philosophical concepts suggest that even a sincere commitment may not remain stable.

The remainder of this article seeks to substantiate the thesis that modern political philosophies suffer from insufficient attention to the …

The Debate Over Bork Nomination Misses The Point, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

A Conversation Between A Judge And His Friend Concerning Whether The Judge Should Sentence A Defendant To Death, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

Law And Social Science, Richard D. Schwartz

Michigan Law Review

A Review of An Invitation to Law and Social Science: Desert, Disputes, and Distribution by Richard Lempert and Joseph Sanders

Law. Liberalism And Free Speech, M. Sean Laane

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law, Liberalism and Free Speech by D.F.B. Tucker

The Jurisprudence Of Reasons, Frederick Schauer

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law's Empire by Ronald Dworkin

Arguing About Rights, Charles M. Yablon

Michigan Law Review

A Review of by Rex Martin

Law And Rhetoric, Richard H. Weisberg

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Heracles' Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of the Law by James Boyd White

Legal Theory And Common Law, Robert R. Morse Jr.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Legal Theory and Common Law edited by William Twining

The Moral Dimensions Of Politics, Steven G. Bradbury

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Moral Dimensions of Politics by Richard J. Regan

Legal Realism At Yale, 1927-1960, Karin M. Wentz

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Legal Realism at Yale, 1927-1960 by Laura Kalman

Efficiency, Morality, And Rights: The Significance Of Cleaning Up, Thomas Morawetz

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Rule Of Recognition And The Constitution, Kent Greenawalt

Michigan Law Review

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.

Judicial Conscience And Natural Rights: A Reply To Professor Jaffa, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

The New Role Of Statutory Aggravating Circumstances In American Death Penalty Law, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

Adolescent Confidentiality And Family Privacy, 20 J. Marshall L. Rev. 641 (1987), Ferdinand Schoeman

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Autonomy Of Law: Two Visions Compared, Richard O. Lempert

Book Chapters

During the past decade the effort to understand the place of the legal system in society has, in England and America, given rise to a renewed interest in the possibility of legal autonomy (Thompson, 1975; Balbus, 1973; 1977; Trubek, 1977). More recently, on the continent of Europe, especially in Germany, scholars have focused on an apparently radical form of autonomy — embodied in the idea of an autopoietic system — in an effort to understand how law functions (Luhmann, 1985 d; Teubner, 1984). These two approaches to understanding the legal system paint pictures that have much in common, but they …

Wrongful Life And The Problem Of Euthanasia, 23 Gonz. L. Rev. 573 (1987), Joel R. Cornwell

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Concept Of Brain Life: Shifting The Abortion Standard Without Imposing Religious Values, 25 Duq. L. Rev. 471 (1987), Joel R. Cornwell

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In A Manner Of Speaking: Towards A Reconstitution Of Property In Mid-Nineteenth Century Quebec, Tom Johnson

Articles & Book Chapters

The author studies the Report of the 1843 Commission appointed to inquire into seigniorial tenure. The contrast with a previous report written in 1836 is striking and the author investigates the rupture in contemporary discourse which in less than a decade led to an official recommendation to abandon the seigniorial system. Of particular interest to the author is the way in which the 1843 Commission interpreted the answers to questionnaires it had sent to seigniors, censitaires, entrepreneurs and other interested parties. The author demonstrates how the information received by the Commission, especially from the censitaires, was recategorized with a view …

The Use Of Evolution Theory In Law, M. B. W. Sinclair

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Ordinary Religion, Roger C. Cramton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Universal And The Particular In Legal Discourses, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

My target in this article is a set of views that I shall call the functionalist perspective of comparative law. Of course, the word "functionalist" stands for a number of different theories. In order to be precise about the view that I oppose, I shall set my sights on the arguments developed in Otto Kahn-Freund's inaugural lecture Comparative Law as an Academic Subject, published two decades ago.

Review Essay: Liberalism And The Supreme Court, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

In Liberalism and American Constitutional Law, Rogers M. Smith of Yale University takes stock of the American liberal tradition and its impact on the Supreme Court's constitutional jurisprudence. It argues that the tradition's political vision lacks philosophical coherence and that our constitutional law, by reflecting this incoherence, has failed to provide the legal community with a public philosophy suited to the needs of American society in the late twentieth century.His goal is to demonstrate the superiority of "rational liberty," both as a philosophical theory and practical guide to constitutional policymaking, over three major competing versions of liberal constitutionalism. To wit: …