Law and Philosophy Commons^™

December 31, 2017: 2017, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “2017“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 25, 2017: The Christian Picks Him Up, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Christian Picks Him Up“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 20, 2017: America In Retreat, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “America in Retreat“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 13, 2017: Good News From Alabama, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Good News from Alabama“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 10, 2017: When Can Due Process Be Dispensed With?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “When Can Due Process Be Dispensed With?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 8, 2017: The Hypocrisy Of The Democratic Party, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Hypocrisy of the Democratic Party“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Nailing Jello To A Tree: A Christian Approach To Ethics In Intelligence, Melanie Scherpereel

Senior Honors Theses

This paper will discuss Christian involvement in the intelligence field in addition to the ethical issues inherent to intelligence, specifically deception, including lying and manipulation, and technology as a force multiplier. Many Christians believe that intelligence is fundamentally a field of extensive deception that should be avoided. Ethics and morality, what it means to tell the truth, and biblical examples of people who used deception and were commended, will be analyzed from a Christian worldview perspective. The arguments will be presented in order that Christians may be able to understand how to apply the two greatest commandments, to love our …

December 2, 2017: The Criticism Of Mark Lilla They Don't Want You To See, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Criticism of Mark Lilla They Don't Want You to See“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 29, 2017: The Acting Director And The Rule Of Law, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Acting Director and the Rule of Law“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 23, 2017: David Brooks Gets The Need For Hallowed Secularism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “David Brooks Gets the Need for Hallowed Secularism“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 21, 2017: The Revenge Of Ruth Ann Dailey, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Revenge of Ruth Ann Dailey“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 18, 2017: Resurrecting Truth At Duquesne University School Of Law, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Resurrecting Truth at Duquesne University School of Law“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 14, 2017: Going After A Defeated Political Opponent Is The End Of Democratic Life, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Going After a Defeated Political Opponent is the End of Democratic Life“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Possibility Of Naturalistic Jurisprudence: Legal Positivism And Natural Law Theory Revisited, Dan Priel

Articles & Book Chapters

Contemporary legal philosophy is predominantly anti-naturalistic. This is true of natural law theory, but also, more surprisingly, of legal positivism. Several prominent legal philosophers have in fact argued that the kind of questions that legal philosophers are interested in cannot be naturalized, such that a naturalistic legal philosophy is something of a contradiction in terms. Against the dominant view I argue that there are arguable naturalistic versions of both legal positivism and natural law. Much of the essay is dedicated to showing that such views are possible: I identify naturalistic versions of a “natural law” view, a “positivist” view, as …

Objective And Subjective Tests In The Law, R. George Wright

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Across many subject areas, the law commonly attempts to distinguish between objective and subjective tests, and to assess the merits of objective as opposed to subjective legal tests. This Article argues that all such efforts are fundamentally incoherent and ultimately futile in practice. As demonstrated below, what the law takes to be objective in the relevant sense is essentially constituted by what the law takes to be subjective, and vice versa. Judicial preoccupation with objective and subjective tests thus does no more than distract from more meaningful concerns. Judicial attention should be directed away from this hopeless distinction, and instead …

Alexis De Tocqueville And American Constitutional Law: On Democracy, The Majority Will, Individual Rights, Federalism, Religion, Civic Associations And Originalist Constitutional Theory, Philip C. Kissam

Maine Law Review

Count Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America has been said to be "at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America. " This praise should perhaps be tempered by consideration of Tocqueville' s purposes and the historical circumstances within which he worked and understood both democracy and America. Yet Tocqueville's insights into American democracy as of the 1830s undoubtedly constitute a rich source of constitutional thought-either as support for particular constitutional principles or as constitutional ideas that should be contested. In a recent notable instance, John McGinnis has argued that Tocqueville's ideas …

The Fragility Of Constitutional Democracy, Yasmin Dawood

Maryland Law Review

Is the survival of constitutional democracy in America at serious risk? Given the actions of the Trump administration, and given the decline of democracy and concomitant rise of authoritarianism the world over, there is genuine cause for alarm. In light of these fears, it is worth remembering that the authors of The Federalist Papers were notably pessimistic about the survival chances of republican government. To what extent have their constitutional design innovations contributed to present woes, and conversely, to what extent will the Constitution ensure the survival of democracy? This Essay argues that while the design of the Constitution is …

The Collapse Of The New Deal Conceptual Universe: The Schmooze Project, Mark A. Graber

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

How A Court Becomes Supreme: Defending The Constitution From Unconstitutional Amendments, Richard Albert

Maryland Law Review

High courts around the world have increasingly invalidated constitutional amendments in defense of their view of democracy, answering in the affirmative what was once a paradoxical question with no obvious answer: can a constitutional amendment be unconstitutional? In the United States, however, the Supreme Court has yet to articulate a theory or doctrine of unconstitutional constitutional amendment. Faced with a constitutional amendment that would challenge the liberal democratic values of American constitutionalism—for instance an amendment restricting political speech or establishing a national religion—the Court would be left without a strategy or vocabulary to protect the foundations of constitutional democracy. In …

Reflections On The Aftermath Of Election 2016, Maxwell L. Stearns

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Threats To Democratic Stability: Comparing The Elections Of 2016 And 1860, Stuart Chinn

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Crisis And Constitutional Rot, Jack M. Balkin

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trump, Trust, And The Future Of The Constitutional Order, Stephen M. Griffin

Maryland Law Review

Sometimes constitutions fail. The unprecedented election of Donald Trump, a populist insurgent who lacks the prior political experience or military service of all presidents before him, is such a sharp break in American historical experience that it raises questions as to whether something is deeply amiss with the constitutional order.

Constitutional failure is not uncommon. A path-breaking global study of national constitutions shows that on average, they last only nineteen years. The U.S. Constitution is an uncommon outlier and, as such, is accounted by many a long-running success story. But could a bell be tolling for American constitutionalism?

In this …

Alternatives To Liberal Constitutional Democracy, David S. Law

Maryland Law Review

The global appeal of liberal constitutional democracy—defined as a competitive multiparty system combined with governance within constitutional limits—cannot be taken for granted due to the existence of competing forms of government that appear successful along a number of practical dimensions and consequently enjoy high levels of public acceptance. Proponents of liberal constitutional democracy must be prepared to proactively explain and defend its capacity to satisfy first-order political needs. A system of government is unlikely to command popular acceptance unless it can plausibly claim to address the problems of oppression, tribalism, and physical and economic security.

Along these dimensions, the advantages …

Picking And Choosing Text: Lessons For Statutory Interpretation From The Philosophy Of Language, Victoria Frances Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Textualists claim that they follow statutory text. This Article argues that, in practice, textualists often create meaning rather than find it. Deploying the analytics of linguistic philosophy, this Article takes a deep dive into textualist methodology. The philosophy of language reveals what legal scholarship has left submerged: The very choice of text can put the thumb on the scales of any interpretation. When one pulls a term out of a statute and isolates it from the rest of the text (what I call “isolationist” method), this decontextualization offers the opportunity for adding and subtracting meaning from the statute by “pragmatic …

October 31, 2017: Is This Collusion?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Is This Collusion?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 24, 2017: Ross Douthat Tries To Get The Democrats To Take Back Congress, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Ross Douthat Tries to Get the Democrats to Take Back Congress“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Development And Nation Building: A Framework For Policy-Oriented Inquiry, W. Michael Reisman

Maine Law Review

We use the term “development” to refer to decision processes and decision outcomes which have been designed to induce the shaping and sharing of all values within and among territorial communities in ways and with consequences approximating the goal values of a world order of human dignity. The component of purposive direction toward these postulated goal values distinguishes development from social change more generally. Social change, it will be noted, is an ineluctable feature of social process, for all actors are constantly seeking to change parts of the social process with the aim of making it discriminate in their favor. …

October 17, 2017: A Communal Spiritual Wasteland, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “A Communal Spiritual Wasteland“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Euthanasia, The Gentle Death: A Legal And Ethical Prospectus On The Right To Die, Kirkland Alan Fulk

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.