Law and Philosophy Commons^™

Paradoxes Of Fair Division, Paul H. Edelman, Steven J. Brams, Peter C. Fishburn

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Paradoxes, if they do not define a field, render its problems intriguing and often perplexing, especially insofar as the paradoxes remain unresolved. Voting theory, for example, has been greatly stimulated by the Condorcet paradox, which is the discovery by the Marquis de Condorcet that there may be no alternative that is preferred by a majority to every other alternative, producing so-called cyclical majorities. Its modern extension and generalization is Arrow's theorem, which says, roughly speaking, that a certain set of reasonable conditions for aggregating individuals' preferences into some social choice are inconsistent. In the last fifty years, hundreds of books …

The Liberal Commons, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller

Articles

Following the Civil War, black Americans began acquiring land in earnest; by 1920 almost one million black families owned farms. Since then, black rural landownership has dropped by more than 98% and continues in rapid decline-there are now fewer than 19,000 black-operated farms left in America. By contrast, white-operated farms dropped only by half, from about 5.5 million to 2.4 million. Commentators have offered as partial explanations the consolidation of inefficient small farms and intense racial discrimination in farm lending. However, even absent these factors, the unintended effects of old-fashioned American property law might have led to the same outcome. …

The Liberal Commons, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

Following the Civil War, black Americans began acquiring land in earnest; by 1920 almost one million black families owned farms. Since then, black rural landownership has dropped by more than 98% and continues in rapid decline – there are now fewer than 19,000 black-operated farms left in America. By contrast, white-operated farms dropped only by half, from about 5.5 million to 2.4 million. Commentators have offered as partial explanations the consolidation of inefficient small farms and intense racial discrimination in farm lending. However, even absent these factors, the unintended effects of old-fashioned American property law might have led to the …

Reasoning With Rules, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

What is special about legal reasoning? In what way is it distinctive? How does it differ from reasoning in medicine, or engineering, physics, or everyday life? The answers range from the very ambitious to the modest. The ambitious claim that there is a special and distinctive legal logic, or legal ways of reasoning, modes of reasoning which set the law apart from all other disciplines. Opposing them are the modest, who claim that there is nothing special to legal reasoning, that reason is the same in all domains. According to them, only the contents of the law differentiate it from …

The Methodological Commitments Of Contemporary Contract Theory, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

Autonomy and economic theories of contract seem to provide incompatible accounts of contract law. In this Chapter, I argue that what appear to be first-order disagreements over particular contract doctrines are really implicit second-order disagreements reflecting the divergent methodological commitments of autonomy and economic theories. I argue that autonomy theories accord priority to the normative project of justifying existing contract doctrine, treat contract law as consisting in the plain meaning of doctrine, require contract theory to explain the distinctive character of contract law, and take the ex post perspective in adjudication. In contrast, economic theories accord priority to the positive …

Nihilism Need Not Apply: Law And Literature In Barth's The Floating Opera, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Reformed Welfare State As The Radical Humanist Republic: An Enthusiasticc (If Qualified) Endorsement Of Matthew Adler's Beyond Efficiency And Procedure, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Outcomes, Reasons, And Equality, Christopher J. Peters

All Faculty Scholarship

In this article, Christopher Peters responds to arguments made by Kenneth Simons in The Logic of Egalitarian Norms, 80 B.U. L. REV. 693 (2000), in which Professor Simons defends the normative value of equal treatment against Peters’s earlier critiques. Peters first explains and justifies his attack on deontological rather than consequentialist motivations for equal treatment. He then articulates a difference between two distinct conceptions of “treatment”: an outcome-focused and an holistic conception. Peters argues that the holistic conception must be accepted by anyone who defends a deontological theory of equality. Peters then explains how certain of Simons’s arguments in defense …

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

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Latindia Ii — Latinas/Os, Natives, And Mestizajes — A Latcrit Navigation Of Nuevos Mundos, Nuevas Fronteras, And Nuevas Teorias, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Essay is a journey that will elucidate a personal exploration of LatCrit's trinitarian goals of engagement of identity interrogations, community building, and self-critical analysis. It will reflect personal travels and travails, bumps in the road and epiphanies, theory and practice. The plot for these musings is a cultural voyage in which this viajera embarks to live and comprehend the meaning of mestizaje in a personal quest for identity location; the stage is LatCrit IV.

My interrelated trips are chartered in three parts. Part I, Nuevos Mundos. Traveling LatCrit Community, presents the historical background of, contexts for, and evolutions …

Trends. The Double Edged Sword Of Transparency In Criminal And Civil Law: The Case Of Euthanasia, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses the decriminalization of euthanasia in The Netherlands, and the issue of transparency.

Foreword: The Question Of Process, J. Harvie Wilkinson Iii

Michigan Law Review

Many in the legal profession have abandoned the great questions of legal process. This is too bad. How a decision is reached can be as important as what the decision is. In an increasingly diverse country with many competing visions of the good, it is critical for law to aspire to agreement on process - a task both more achievable than agreement on substance and more suited to our profession than waving the banners of ideological truth. By process, I mean the institutional routes by which we in America reach our most crucial decisions. In other words, process is our …

Rejoinder: Twailing International Law, James Thuo Gathii

Michigan Law Review

Brad Roth's response to my Review of his book seeks to privilege his approach to international law as the most defensible. His response does not engage one of the central claims of my Review - that present within international legal scholarship and praxis is a simultaneous and dialectical coexistence of the dominant conservative/liberal approach with alternative or Third World approaches to thinking and writing international law. Roth calls these alternative approaches critical and does not consider them insightful for purposes of dealing with issues such as anticolonialism. Roth's characterization of my Review as falling within critical approaches to international law …

Neoliberalism, Colonialism, And International Governance: Decentering The International Law Of Government Legitimacy, James Thuo Gathii

Michigan Law Review

Brad R. Roth's Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law is a neoconservative realist response to liberal internationalists (or universalists). As a critique, the book unsurprisingly legitimizes the subject of its attack: liberal internationalism. That is so since in their opposition to each other, liberal internationalists and neoconservative realists fall within the same discursive formation - a Euro-American hegemony of thinking, writing, critiquing, engaging, producing, and practicing international law. This Review is an antihegemonic critique. It seeks to decenter this Euro-American opposition between liberal internationalism and neoconservative realism that has characterized the study of international law, especially in the post-Cold War period. …

Governmental Illegitimacy And Neocolonialism: Response To Review By James Thuo Gathii, Brad R. Roth

Michigan Law Review

The essence of James Thuo Gathii's criticism of Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law is that my study seeks to answer a doctrinal question rather than to challenge the "Eurocentric" assumptions that pervade doctrinal thinking. Although I (inevitably) take exception to some of Professor Gathii's characterizations of the book's details, an elaborate clarification and defense of these finer points would amount to an uninteresting response to an interesting essay. Indeed, since Gathii characterizes the book as "well written, well-argued, and well-researched," and since I am in sympathy with the considerations that prompt him to go beyond the scope of what I …

On The Nature Of Norms: Biology, Morality, And The Disruption Of Order, Owen D. Jones

Michigan Law Review

For a long time - and through the now-quaint division of disciplines - morals and norms have been set apart from other behaviorbiasing phenomena. They have also been set apart from each other. Morals are generally ceded in full to philosophers. Norms have been ceded to sociologists. In retrospect, it is not clear why this should be so. Reality is notoriously impervious to taxonomy, and the axis supposedly distinguishing morals from other norms is, after all, arbitrary. Moreover, behavior-biasing phenomena interact in important ways, making the study of parts - without more - just the study of parts. But one …

The Postmodern Infiltration Of Legal Scholarship, Arthur Austin

Michigan Law Review

For legal scholars it is the best of times. We are inundated by an eclectic range of writing that pushes the envelope from analysis and synthesis to the upper reaches of theory. Mainstream topics face fierce competition from fresh ideological visions, a variety of genres, and spirited criticism of the status quo. Young professors have access to a burgeoning variety of journals to circulate their ideas and advice while the mass media covets them as public intellectuals. There is a less sanguine mood; an increasingly vocal group of scholars complain that it is the worst of times and refer to …

Disneyworld Is Not Enough, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

Review of The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the end of innocence, by Henry A. Giroux. Rowman and Littlefield, 12 Hid's Copse Road, Cumnor Hill, Oxford This essay reviews a book of cultural criticism directed against what the author, Henry Giroux, regards as the corporate manipulation of culture, particularly the culture of children, by corporate interests, particularly the Disney company. The review argues that, contrary to Giroux's argument, Disney and such corporations relentlessly press the message of American left-liberal politically correct piety.

You Should Have Known Better, Bailey Kuklin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Parens Patriae And A Modest Proposal For The Twenty-First Century: Legal Philosophy And A New Look At Children's Welfare, Natalie Loder Clark

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This paper will turn to philosophy to seek material for limiting the exercise of parens patriae power. A significant reduction of the government's role will better serve the modern concern for child rearing which is this century's re-definition of best interests.

Perceiving Imperceptible Harms (With Other Thoughts On Transitivity, Cumulative Effects, And Consequentialism), Donald H. Regan

Book Chapters

Many writers believe there can be cases which satisfy the following description: starting from an initial state of affairs, it is possible to make a series of changes, none of which alters the value of the state of affairs in any way, but such that the final state of affairs that results from the series of changes is worse than the initial state of affairs. I shall call the claim that there can be such cases the "ex nihilo" claim, since in a sense it asserts that the bad effects of the complete series of changes arise ex nihilo. Proponents …

Toleration, Autonomy And Respect, Colin J. Harvey

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of On Toleration by Michael Walzer

Language Matters, 34 J. Marshall L. Rev. 163 (2000), Jane B. Baron

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Folk Psychology And Legal Understanding, Robert Birmingham

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Trade And Inequality: Economic Justice And The Developing World, Frank J. Garcia

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article attempts to lay the foundation for such a framework in the area of international trade law. More specifically, this Article develops the argument that the principle of special and differential treatment, a key element of the developing world's trade agenda, plays a central role in satisfying the moral obligations that wealthier states owe poorer states as a matter of distributive justice. Seen in this light, the principle of special and differential treatment is more than just a political accommodation: it reflects a moral obligation stemming from the economic inequality among states.

Agenda Setting In The Courts Of Appeals: The Effect Of Ideology On En Banc Rehearings, Phil Zarone

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

Intermediate appellate courts hear whatever case is brought before them on appeal. Therefore, the courts are unable to set an agenda through selecting which cases to hear. Appellate courts may be able to set an agenda, though, through en banc rehearings. This article discusses how courts of appeals decide when to grant en banc proceedings and the effect of ideological use of en banc rehearings.

Conscience, Judging, And Conscientious Judging, Gene E. Franchini

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

Judging requires applying the law instead of personal morals, philosophy, or policy of the community. Doing so requires a respect for the separation of powers between branches of government. Justice Franchini of the New Mexico Supreme Court reflects on this challenge for judges through a personal anecdote.

Corrective Justice And The Revival Of Judicial Virtue, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

Judges must be wise. Sound judicial reasoning requires moral virtue. These sentiments about judging have been lost. They apparently belong to a bygone era. While many advocate self-restraint or prudence as judicial virtues, moral virtue has been conspicuously absent from the list. Except for avoiding obvious vices such as bribery, favoritism, prejudice, sloth, and arbitrariness, conventional wisdom maintains that being a good judge does not require being a good person. Even theorists sympathetic to a relationship between law and morality balk at making moral virtue a prerequisite of judicial decision making. Rather, many contend that judicial decision making is a …

Reading Texts, Reading Traditions: African Masks And American Law, James Boyd White

Articles

My subject in this Essay is the relation between a text or other artifact and the tradition against which it acts. I want to begin by borrowing from a book that seems to me to represent a model-not the only model, of course, but a very good one-of a certain kind of cultural investigation. The book is Inventing Masks by Z.S. Strother, an art historian at Columbia University who specializes in African art. Its material subject is a set of face masks made by the Central Pende, an African people in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Introduction: Fifteenth Anniversary Of The Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Law Fellowship Program, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.