Law and Philosophy Commons^™

The Implicit Teaching Of Utopian Speculations: Rousseau's Contribution To The Natural Law Tradition, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the evolution of natural law theory and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's contribution to it. The thesis that emerges from that examination asserts that the tension between law in its natural and positive forms is endemic to the human condition. If any common ground is to be found between theories of positivistic and natural law, it lies in the realization that natural law doctrine is not gratuitous and subjective optimism nor idealism pure and simple. The fact that natural law doctrine can serve but a role of general guidance, that it is alien to the concrete, positivistic manifestations of law, …

A Utilitarian Theory Of Judicial Decision, Thomas Morawetz

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Balzacian Legality, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

The study of law and literature is an area of growing interest to legal scholars in the United States. Honore de Balzac incorporated in his works a panoramic view of the social reality of nineteenth century France. In this context, the fidelity of Balzac's plots and characters to their external models has been well-documented in a number of fields, including sociology, commerce, and finance. In addition to this penchant for realism, however, Balzac laced his novels with an equally evident moral content. This commitment to accuracy and morality also influenced Balzac's novelistic treatment of the law and lawyers.

Balzac's work …

The Repudiation Of Plato: A Lawyer's Guide To The Educational Rights Of Handicapped Children, Robert E. Shepherd Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

Plato's solution for the handicapped children of Athens advanced some 2400 years ago was rejected by the Supreme Court of the United States in famous dictum in Meyer v. Nebraska as being "ideas. . . wholly different from those upon which our institutions rest .... " However, it took about half a century for the ultimate repudiation of the ideas espoused by the great philosopher as the Supreme Court's 1923 dictum finally bore fruit in federal court decisions establishing a constitutional right to education for handicapped children and in a congressional definition of such a right in the Education for …

On The Relevance Of Philosophy To Law: Reflections On Ackerman's Private Property And The Constitution, Philip E. Soper

Articles

To turn to moral philosophy these days for help in trying to decide "what to do" is a bit like turning to recipe books for help in a famine. One soon discovers that most philosophers avoid ultimate questions about actual choices in actual cases, preferring to concentrate instead on a preliminary problem: how to go about thinking about what to do. One also discovers that philosophers who have written about this preliminary problem of the structure of moral inquiry are neatly divided, as logically they must be, into precisely two camps: those who do and those who do not think …

The Professionalization Of Philosophy, Edward A. Purcell Jr.

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Glosses On Dworkin: Rights, Principles, And Policies, Donald H. Regan

Articles

A great many people have attempted to explain what is wrong with the views of Ronald Dworkin. So many, indeed, that one who read only the critics might wonder why views so widely rejected have received so much attention. One reason is that, whatever may be wrong in Dworkin's theories, there is a good deal that is right in them. But what is right is not always clear. Important passages in Dworkin can be distressingly obscure, or tantalizingly incomplete. This essay is a set of loosely connected observations on themes from Dworkin. While I shall add some criticisms of my …

Philosophy In Legal Education, Vincent Luizzi

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Taking Rights Seriously, Alan Made

Florida State University Law Review

By Ronald Dworkin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977. Pp. xv, 293. $12.00.

Remarks On Probability In Law: Mostly, A Casenote And A Book Review, Robert Birmingham

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Principles, Positivism, And Legal Theory, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

A complete theory of law, writes Ronald Dworkin, tells us what law is and what it ought to be. The current "ruling" theory of law combines legal positivism with utilitarianism: it holds, first, that law is a set of explicitly adopted rules and, second, that law ought to maximize the general welfare. Dworkin rejects both branches of that theory. He argues that law contains "principles" as well as rules and that these principles cannot be traced to any explicit adoption or enactment. Dworkin argues further that the ruling theory neglects moral rights, which must be respected, he claims, even if …

Knowledge And Politics, Phillip Soper

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Knowledge and Politics by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Legal Theory And The Obligation Of A Judge: The Hart/Dworkin Dispute, E. Philip Soper

Michigan Law Review

This article offers a review of the Hart-Dworkin dispute and a qualified defense of the positivist's model against Dworkin's attack. The defense is cast primarily in the form of the second possible response to a descriptive theory: Dworkin's attack fails, I suggest, because it involves descriptive claims that can be accommodated to the positivist's conceptual theory regardless of one's view about the plausibility of those claims.

The Relativity Of Injury, Jethro K. Lieberman

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Jus Non Scriptum And The Reliance Principle, Stanley L. Paulson

Michigan Law Review

On the Continent, a general theory of customary law has been developed-what I term the Continental theory; it identifies formation and validity as the central issues in the analysis of custom and customary law. Yet the Continental theory, notwithstanding its longevity and continuing favorable reception among international lawyers, is ridden with problems. In particular, as I argue in the following section, the theory fails for want of a coherent position on the formation issue. In the course of my argument, I suggest a classification of the norms of customary law in terms of a generic category broader in scope than …

Dworkin's "Rights Thesis", Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that the rights thesis is untenable. It shows that Dworkin's distinction between arguments of principle and arguments of policy, upon which the rights thesis is based, cannot withstand close scrutiny. The Note questions whether it is sensible to speak of an objectively soundest theory of law, and argues that, even if such a theory is feasible, Dworkin has failed to prove that it will always dictate a unique result (or, put in different words, that the rights thesis is part of the putative soundest theory). If Dworkin's idea of a soundest theory is oppugned, or if the …

Autonomy And The Legal Control Of Self-Regarding Conduct, William C. Powers, Jr.

Washington Law Review

My purpose in this essay is to criticize Mill's principle of liberty as a limit on the legitimate scope of legal coercion. I shall do so not by focusing on previously examined justifications for frustrating individually chosen lifestyles, but rather by examining the arguments in favor of the principle of liberty itself. I shall argue that at least two of its principal bases do not support its conclusion that communally determined elements of lifestyle cannot be legitimately imposed on unwilling individuals except to prevent harm to others. Indeed, these bases are fully consistent with the imposition of communally rather than …

Anarchy, State, And Utopia, Alan R. Mabe

Florida State University Law Review

By Robert Nozick. 1 New York, New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1974. Pp. xvi, 367. $12.95.

On What A Rule Is, Robert Birmingham

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

H. L. A. Hart On Legal And Moral Obligation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

One of the central problems in both moral and legal philosophy has been to offer a satisfactory analysis of the concept of obligation. In ordinary language the word "obligation" is used in several different contexts. It may refer to moral obligation (e.g., "I am morally obligated to keep my promise to help my uncle with his knitting"), legal obligation (e.g., "I am legally obligated to report as income on my tax return whatever funds I embezzle from my employer"), political obligation (e.g., "I am politically obligated to vote"), or social obligation (e.g., …

The Nexus Between Philosophy And Law, Frederic L. Bor

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Imprisonment: Toward A Punitive Philosophy, Norval Morris

Michigan Law Review

Proper use of imprisonment as a penal sanction is of primary philosophical and practical importance to the future of society. With the increasing vulnerability of our social organization and the growing complexity and interdependence of governmental structures, reassessment of appropriate limits on the power that society should exercise over its members becomes increasingly important. Perhaps if the "prison problem" is solved, many of the uneasy tensions between freedom and power in postindustrial society will diminish. The effort made here will, I hope, contribute to the solution of the "prison problem" by offering a new model of imprisonment that recognizes fundamental …

Justifications For Paternalism, Donald H. Regan

Book Chapters

One of the most troublesome problems concerning the appropriate extent of government interference with individuals' activity is the problem of paternalism-that is, the problem of when, if ever, the state may compel an individual to do or to refrain from some act or activity "for his own good." One would hardly know this was a troublesome problem just from looking at the literature on political and legal philosophy. It is hard to think of an influential philosophical discussion of the matter more recent than John Stuart Mill's. But paternalism is a problem which keeps coming up in discussions among philosophers …

The Individualization Of Excusing Conditions, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The excusing conditions of the criminal law are variations of the theme "I couldn't help myself' or "I didn't mean to do it." In this respect the defenses known as necessity, duress, insanity and mistake of law are but extensions of homely, routine apologies for causing harm and violating the rules of social and family life. While we use the plea "I couldn't help myself" to cover the full range of excusing circumstances, each of the formal excuses of the criminal law has a limited sphere. As a general matter, these spheres are dictated by the type of circumstances rendering …

Commentary: The Rules Of Law And The Point Of Law, Thomas Morawetz

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Purpose Of Law--A Trial Judge's View, Robert M. Worrell

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rostow: Is Law Dead?, Francis A. Allen

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Is Law Dead? by Eugene V. Rostow

Indiana University Seminar In Jurimetrics, Robert Birmingham

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Fairness And Utility In Tort Theory, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Fletcher challenges the traditional account of the development of tort doctrine as a shift from an unmoral standard of strict liability for directly causing harm to a moral standard based on fault. He then sets out two paradigms of liability to serve as constructs for understanding competing ideological viewpoints about the proper role of tort sanctions. He asserts that the paradigm of reciprocity, which looks only to the degree of risk imposed by the parties to a lawsuit on each other, and to the existence of possible excusing conditions, provides greater protection of individual interests than the paradigm of …

Legal Principles And The Limits Of Law, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Most people tend unreflectively to assume that laws belong to legal systems. "Most educated people," writes H. L. A. Hart, "have the idea that the laws in England form some sort of system, and that in France or the United States or Soviet Russia and, indeed, in almost every part of the world which is thought of as a separate 'country' there are legal systems which are broadly similar in structure in spite of important differences." This includes for most people the assumption that laws differ from non-legal rules and principles. There are, for example, moral rules and principles, social …