Law and Philosophy Commons^™

Could A Robot Be District Attorney?, Stephen Henderson

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

June 23, 2019: All The Justices Get Religion Wrong Again, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “All the Justices Get Religion Wrong Again“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

June 22, 2019: What The Supreme Court Should Have Said, But Didn't, In The Maryland Cross Case, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What the Supreme Court Should Have Said, But Didn't, in the Maryland Cross Case“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Transparency Trade-Offs Priority Setting, Scarcity, And Health Fairness, Govind Persad

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This chapter argues that rather than viewing transparency as a right, we should regard it as a finite resource whose allocation involves tradeoffs. It then argues that those tradeoffs should be resolved by using a multi-principle approach to distributive justice. The relevant principles include maximizing welfare, maximizing autonomy, and giving priority to the worst off. Finally, it examines some of the implications for law of recognizing the tradeoffs presented by transparency proposals.

The Semantics And Pragmatics Of Legal Statements, Michael S. Green

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

June 15, 2019: The Age Of Pessimism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

June 8, 2019: The No-Prosecution Pledge, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The No-Prosecution Pledge“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Brief Of Amicus Curiae 290 Criminal Law And Mental Health Law Professors In Support Of Petitioner's Request For Reversal And Remand, Kahler V. Kansas, 18-6135 (U.S. June 6, 2019), Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Amici curiae are a group of philosophically and politically diverse law school professors and scholars in the fields of criminal law and mental health from a variety of disciplines who have been teaching and writing about the insanity defense and related issues throughout their careers. They include the authors of leading criminal law and mental health law treatises and casebooks and numerous important scholarly books and articles.

Amici believe this case raises important questions about principles of criminal responsibility, the integral role of the insanity defense in Anglo-American law, and the inadequacy of the “mens rea alternative” to the traditional …

June 5, 2019: Babbling Barr, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

June 1, 2019: King Trump, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

May 19, 2019: The Universe Doesn’T Care About Your Purpose, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Universe Doesn’t Care About Your Purpose“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

May 15, 2019: What Impeachment And Court-Packing Have In Common, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What Impeachment and Court-packing Have in Common“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

May 4, 2019: Why Study Talmud?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

Lest Law Forget: Locke's Toleration And Religious Freedom, Stephen Holt

LLM Theses

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees every person in Canada freedom of conscience and religion. I contend that the concept of religious freedom was born out of a history of religious suffering and originally took the form of John Locke’s toleration of religious differences. In Big M, the first Supreme Court of Canada case that interpreted s. 2(a), Chief Justice Dickson recognized the historical context of religious freedom but also tied it to human autonomy, equality, and dignity. An examination of the cases since Big M suggests that when courts think in terms of tolerance, they accord greater …

April 29, 2019: Building Cosmopolis, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

April 21, 2019: More Religious Violence, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

April 19, 2019: God: The Bait And Switch, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

The Peacemakers: Navigating The Intersection Of Biblical Justice And Contemporary Policing, Nathan Brown

Senior Honors Theses

For Christians seeking to enter the field of policing, the question of justice is answered by two separate sources. Conceptions of justice are presented by both the contemporary justice system and the Bible. The history and current state of American policing reveal a sense of justice that is concerned with fighting crime and defending the rights of the vulnerable. There are, however, inherent limitations when operating within a system made by man. Biblical justice goes further by prioritizing restoration and redeemed relationships within its conception of justice. Reconciling these two perspectives equips Christian police officers with a framework with which …

April 14, 2019: Two Cases Of Independence--The Court And The Fed--And What They Tell Us About American Nihilism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ Two Cases of Independence--the Court and the Fed--and What They Tell Us About American Nihilism“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

April 7, 2019: The Universal Christ, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

No Arbitrary Power: An Originalist Theory Of The Due Process Of Law, Randy E. Barnett, Evan Bernick

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

“Due process of law” is arguably the most controversial and frequently-litigated phrase in the American Constitution. Although the dominant originalist view has long been that Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process of Law Clauses are solely “process” guarantees and don’t constrain the “substance” of legislation at all, originalist scholars have in recent years made fresh inquiries into the historical evidence and concluded that there’s a weighty case for some form of substantive due process. In this Article, we review and critique these findings employing our theory of good-faith originalist interpretation and construction.

We begin by investigating the “letter” of the …

Exoatmospheric Plowshares: Using A Nuclear Explosive Device For Planetary Defense Against An Incoming Asteroid, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What should be done if we suddenly discover a large asteroid on a collision course with Earth? The consequences of an impact could be enormous—scientists believe that such a strike 60 million years ago led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, and something of similar magnitude could happen again. Although no such extraterrestrial threat now looms on the horizon, astronomers concede that they cannot detect all the potentially hazardous “near-Earth objects,” and even more striking, they acknowledge that if such a danger were discerned, there is currently no proven capability for diverting or destroying it.

One possible response to this …

International Law And Political Philosophy: Uncovering New Linkages, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

The legal regime regulating cross-border investment gives key rights to foreign investors and places significant duties on states hosting that investment. It also raises distinctive moral questions due to its potential to constrain a state’s ability to manage its economy and protect its people. Yet international investment law remains virtually untouched as a subject of philosophical inquiry. The questions of international political morality surrounding investment rules can be mapped through the lens of two critiques of the law – that it systemically takes advantage of the global South and that it constrains the policy choices of states hosting investment. Each …

March 31, 2019: When Cynicism Came To The West, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

The Roots And Fruits Of Good Faith In Domestic Court Practice, Thomas Neumann

Pace International Law Review

Good faith—most lawyers have an opinion on these two words. While the notion of good faith may play specific roles at domestic and regional levels, it remains an elusive siren at the international level. The concept was subject to controversy at the birth of the 1980 United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and has been debated by scholars ever since. Considering that the Convention has now been in force for over thirty years, it is agreed that time is ripe for “a call to arms for further research into a uniform standard of good …

Responsibility In Building Rule Of Law: Kosovo Challenges, Avdullah Robaj, Sabiha Shala

International Journal on Responsibility

The principle of the rule of law is one of the most important and essential principles for any state and for democratic society. Its fullest realization in everyday life is the best guarantee for development of democracy and recognition and enforcement of citizens' fundamental rights and freedoms. To this end, the general principles of the rule of law today occupy a special place and are fixed explicitly in contemporary constitutions and democratic legislation. The well-known countries of Western democracies have long established a rich and valuable legacy in this regard. When exploring the contours and details about establishing the rule …

March 24, 2019: The Two Party Lies That Fuel Political Alienation In America, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Two Party Lies that Fuel Political Alienation in America“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Supreme Court Will Preserve The Bladensburg Cross, But It Matters How, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

March 17, 2019: The Response To My Anti-Court-Packing Message, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Response to My anti-Court-Packing Message“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Law's Enterprise: Argumentation Schemes & Legal Analogy, Brian N. Larson

Faculty Scholarship

Reasoning by legal analogy has been described as mystical, reframed by skeptics using the deductive syllogism, and called “no kind of reasoning at all” by Judge Posner. Arguments by legal analogy happen every day in courtrooms, law offices, and law-school classrooms, and they are the essence of what we mean when we talk of thinking like a lawyer. But we have no productive and normative theory for creating and evaluating them. Entries in the debate over the last 25 years by Professors Sunstein, Schauer, Brewer, Weinreb, and others leave us at an impasse: The ‘skeptics’ are too focused on the …