Law and Politics Commons^™

How And Understanding Of The Second Personal Standpoint Can Change Our Understanding Of The Law: Hart's Unpublished Response To Exclusive Legal Positivism, Robin B. Kar

ExpressO

This Article describes recent developments in moral philosophy on the “second personal standpoint,” and argues that they will have important ramifications for legal thought. Moral, legal and political thinkers have, for some time now, understood important distinctions between the first personal perspective (of deliberation) and the third personal perspective (of observation, cause and effect), and have plumbed these distinctions to great effect in their thought. This distinction is, in fact, implicit the law and economics movement’s “rational actor” model of decision, which currently dominates much legal academic thought. Recent developments in value theory due to philosopher Stephen Darwall suggest, however, …

The Chief Prosecutor, Sai Prakash

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

Since Watergate, legal scholars have participated in a larger debate about the President’s constitutional relationship to prosecutions. In particular, many legal scholars sought to debunk the received wisdom that prosecution was an executive function subject to presidential control. Revisionist scholars cited early statutes and practices meant to demonstrate that early presidents lacked control over prosecution. Among other things, scholars asserted that early presidents could not control either the federal district attorneys or the popular prosecutors who brought qui tam suits to enforce federal law. In fact, many of the revisionist claims are wrong and others are beside the point. Despite …

What Is Legal Doctrine, Emerson Tiller, Frank B. Cross

Public Law and Legal Theory Papers

Legal doctrine is the currency of the law. In many respects, doctrine is the law, at least as it comes from courts. Judicial opinions create the rules or standards that comprise legal doctrine. Yet the nature and effect of legal doctrine has been woefully understudied. Researchers from the legal academy and from political science departments have conducted extensive research on the law, but they have largely ignored the others’ efforts. Part of the reason for this unfortunate disconnect is that neither has effectively come to grips with the descriptive meaning of legal doctrine. In this article, we attempt to describe …

Water Justice In South Africa: Natural Resources Policy At The Intersection Of Human Rights, Economics, & Political Power, Rose Francis

ExpressO

This paper analyzes water as a social justice issue in South Africa, a nation that has undergone tremendous political and legal transformations over the last fifteen years, but whose population nonetheless continues to suffer from severe inequities in access to freshwater resources. In light of growing water scarcity worldwide, this paper highlights that legal treatment of water resources has significant socioeconomic and distributive justice impacts, even in progressive constitutional democracies that have embraced principles of human rights and international legal norms. The paper explores historical changes in South African water law and evaluates the current political and legal status of …

Law School Enters The Matrix: Teaching Critical Legal Studies, Jerry L. Anderson

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Overview Of Legal Systems In The Asia-Pacific Region: India, Navoneel Dayanand

Overview of Legal Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region (2004)

This article provides a general description of the legal system of India. It further discusses aspects of legal education and legal practice in that country.

Something Fishy, Tamara R. Piety

ExpressO

The story of how one law professor encountered "Moby-Dick" and found therein a reading that offered an opportunity to introduce students to several general themes that resound in the study of law including the question of the function of law, the role of interpretation by analogy, formalism and many others.

On Aristotelian Criminal Law: A Reply To Duff, Kyron J. Huigens

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Perils Of "Consensus": Hans Kelsen And The Legal Philosophy Of The United Nations, J. Peter Pham

ExpressO

Recently the United States and a number of its traditional allies have clashed over a variety of foreign policy issues that are profoundly juridical: the authority for war and peace, the International Criminal Court, etc. The source of these recent tensions is to be located at a level deeper than that of narrow national interests and specific policies. Rather, they arise from significant differences concerning the nature of "consensus" and, ultimately, legal philosophy. While the United Nations and many other international organizations derive their legal visions from the philosophy of law of Hans Kelsen (1881-1973), one of the most important …

Law And Judicial Duty, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Two hundred years ago, in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall delivered an opinion that has come to dominate modern discussions of constitutional law. Faced with a conflict between an act of Congress and the U.S. Constitution, he explained what today is known as "judicial review." Marshall described judicial review in terms of a particular type of "superior law" and a particular type of "judicial duty." Rather than speak generally about the hierarchy within law, he focused on "written constitutions."

He declared that the U.S. Constitution is "a superior, paramount law" and that if "the constitution is superior to any …

A Reply--The Missing Portion, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Justice White And Judicial Review, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

Our Supermajoritarian Constitution, John O. Mcginnis, Michael B. Rappaport

Articles

No abstract provided.

Reviving Tocqueville's America: The Rehnquist Court's Jurisprudence Of Social Discovery, John O. Mcginnis

Articles

This Article offers a retrospective on the Rehnquist Court. It argues that the Rehnquist Court has been pursuing a coherent jurisprudence that invigorates decentralization and the private ordering of social norms that Alexis De Tocqueville celebrated in Democracy in America as being the essence of the social order generated by our original Constitution. In four disparate areas-federalism, freedom of association, the religion clauses, and the balance of power between juries and judges-the Court is helping sustain a civil order that bubbles up from state governments or from citizens voluntarily gathered together or randomly selected. The Article is the first to …

Law And Prudence In The Law Of Justiciability: The Transformation And Disappearance Of The Political Question Doctrine, Mark V. Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Essay develops the foregoing argument by examining, in Section I, the transformation of the political question doctrine from Baker v. Carr through Walter Nixon v. United States. Section II charts a similar, perhaps even more dramatic transformation of the law of standing. Section I then examines Bush v. Gore, explaining how older doctrines of standing and political questions might have been thought relevant there. It argues as well that the very fact that those doctrines went unmentioned by the Court shows why we must take a historically grounded view of justiciability doctrines. Section IV sketches the historical settings in …

Fear And Loathing Of Politics In The Legal Academy, William H. Simon

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Politics And Denial, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Law, Ethics, And Religion In The Public Square: Principles Of Restraint And Withdrawal, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

In recent years, scholars have begun to recognize and discuss the profound questions that arise in attempting to determine the place of religion in the law and the legal profession. This discussion has emerged on at least two separate yet related levels. On one level, scholars have debated the place of religion in various segments of the public sphere, including law and politics. On a second level, lawyers have expressed the aim to place their professional values and obligations in the context of their overriding religious obligations. This article explores, from both an ethical and jurisprudential perspective, the question of …

The Empty Circles Of Liberal Justification, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Forty Years In The Desert, Paul F. Campos

Publications

The author uses Brown v. Board of Education and the volumes of commentary it has provoked to illustrate that coherent constitutional interpretation is a useless exercise. He argues that the decision should be accepted as political reality and moral necessity and that we should cease debating its merit as constitutional interpretation.

How To Do Things With The First Amendment, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Law, Order And Democracy: An Analysis Of The Judiciary In A Progressive State--The Saskatchewan Experience, David S. Cohen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Current legal debates on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada have focused on the apparent shift in the location of power from elected representatives to the judiciary since 1982. In this paper, I take an historical perspective on that issue. I will explore the relationship of political power, as exercised by the judiciary through the interpretation of legislation, with concepts of parliamentary supremacy in Saskatchewan during the fist half of this century.

The paper first describes the political character of the judiciary in Saskatchewan from 1905 until 1941, and then describes the political movements which gave rise to …

Rights, Communities, And Tradition, Brian Slattery

Articles & Book Chapters

This paper argues that there is a close connection between basic human rights and communal bonds. It criticizes the philosophical views of Alan Gewirth and Alasdair MacIntyre, which in differing ways deny this connection.

Foreword: Postmodernism And Law, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

"Le Hors De Texte, C'Est Moi" - The Politics Of Form And The Domestication Of Deconstruction, Pierre Schlag

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deconstruction And The Impossibility Of Justice, Thomas Keenan

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of Equality And The Interpretive Turn, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The turn to hermeneutics and interpretation in contemporary legal theory has contributed at least two central ideas to modern jurisprudential thought: first, that the "meaning" of a text is invariably indeterminate -- what might be called the indeterminacy claim -- and second, that the unavoidably malleable essence of texts -- their essential inessentiality -- entails that interpreting a text is a necessary part of the process of creating the text's meaning. These insights have generated both considerable angst, and considerable excitement among traditional constitutional scholars, primarily because at least on first blush these two claims seem to inescapably imply a …

Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

During the 1980s a handful of state judges either held or opined in dicta what must be incontrovertible to the feminist community, as well as to most progressive legal advocates and academics: the so-called marital rape exemption, whether statutory or common law in origin, constitutes a denial of a married woman's constitutional right to equal protection under the law. Indeed, a more obvious denial of equal protection is difficult to imagine: the marital rape exemption denies married women protection against violent crime solely on the basis of gender and marital status. What possibly could be less rational than a statute …

Meeting The Enemy, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Hegel And Postmodernity, Dennis M. Patterson

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.