Legal History Commons^™

Changing Public Policy And The Evolution Of Roman Civil And Criminal Law On Gambling, Suzanne B. Faris

UNLV Gaming Law Journal

In Ancient Rome, gambling, at least in the form of dice games, was generally considered a vice, yet the only known criminal statutes prohibiting it were only sporadically and selectively enforced. Otherwise, aside from a legal prohibition on the enforceability of gambling debts and some limited private rights of action, the Roman state as a whole displayed what can only be described as a “laissez faire” policy toward all forms of gambling. What we would now call “sports betting” was exempted from the statutory prohibition altogether. This remained the case well into the Christian period, when a general crackdown might …

Dean’S Column: Collaborations With Professional Associations, Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

This co-authored article documents the cooperation and synergies between the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association (LVNBA). The LVNBA is the local affiliate of the National Bar Association, which is the nation’s oldest minority bar and largest national association of over 44,000 predominately African-American lawyers, judges, professors, and law students. The article is part of a special Black History Month issue of the Nevada Lawyer, the official publication of the State Bar of Nevada. That issue highlights the achievements and contributions of African-American …

Timeline Of African-American Legal History In Nevada (1861-2011), Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

For the first time in Nevada history, this timeline depicts selected events in the history of African-American lawyers, civil rights, and diversity in Nevada's bar and bench. It includes many historically significant pictures and is part of a special Black History Month issue of the Nevada Lawyer, the official publication of the State Bar of Nevada. That issue highlights the achievements and contributions of African-American lawyers in Nevada in honor of the 51st anniversary of the first African American (Charles L. Kellar) passing the Nevada state bar examination, the 48th anniversary of the first two African Americans admitted to the …

Preserving The Past In The Present For The Future: Las Vegas Chapter Of The National Bar Association Archive At The Wiener-Rogers Law Library, Jeanne Price, Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

This co-authored article documents the establishment of the Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association (LVNBA) Archive in 2011 at the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law, which may be the first of its kind in the nation. The LVNBA archive was established in cooperation with the LVNBA, the local affiliate of the National Bar Association, which is the nation’s oldest minority bar and largest national association of over 44,000 predominately African-American lawyers, judges, professors, and law students. Materials donated by the LVNBA and its members document the role …

Still Too Close To Call? Rethinking Stampp's "The Concept Of A Perpetual Union", Daniel W. Hamilton

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The “Ethical” Surplus Of The War On Illegal Immigration, Francis J. Mootz Iii, Leticia M. Saucedo

Scholarly Works

The Aristotelian philosopher, Gene Garver, suggests that rhetorical claims have an "ethical surplus" that extends beyond the specific claim being advanced at the moment. This follows from the fact that rhetoric includes not only logos, but also pathos and ethos. We adopt the thesis of "ethical surplus," but in a negative context. The "war on illegal immigration" has generated an ethical surplus that leads its promoters beyond the specific claim of securing borders against unlawful entry. After demonstrating that there is an express rhetoric of "war" used in connection with Arizona's adoption of recent anti-immigrant legislation, we explore …

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act And The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy The First Decade: Looking Back And Adapting Forward, Tenesa S. Scaturro

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Conference Bibliography: Selected Books And Other Publications By Conference Participants And New Scholarly Books Related To Law And The Humanities, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School Of Law

Association for the Study of Law, Culture, & the Humanities 14th Annual Conference

A selected bibliography was prepared in connection with the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities 14th Annual Conference held at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on March 11-12, 2011.

Conference Program -- Association For The Study Of Law, Culture, & The Humanities 14th Annual Conference, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School Of Law

Association for the Study of Law, Culture, & the Humanities 14th Annual Conference

The UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law hosted the Association for the Study of Law, Culture & the Humanities 14th Annual Conference from March 11-12, 2011. The Association brings together more than 275 interdisciplinary scholars from around the world each year to discuss law and legal issues from a broad perspective. Scholars attended the meeting at UNLV from Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand and Sweden. The theme of the conference, drawing on the work of Nan Seuffert of the University of Waikato, was "Boundaries and Enemies."

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities …

Dean's Column: Kay Kindred, A Nevada "First", Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

This article documents selected aspects of the life of Professor Kay Kindred, the first female African-American law professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The Jurisprudential Turn In Legal Ethics, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

When legal ethics developed as an academic discipline in the mid-1970s, its theoretical roots were in moral philosophy. The early theorists in legal ethics were moral philosophers by training, and they explored legal ethics as a branch of moral philosophy. From the vantage point of moral philosophy, lawyers’ professional duties comprised a system of moral duties that governed lawyers in their professional lives, a “role-morality” for lawyers that competed with ordinary moral duties. In defining this “role-morality,” the moral philosophers accepted the premise that “good lawyers” are professionally obligated to pursue the interests of their clients all the way to …

The Hermeneutical And Rhetorical Nature Of Law, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

In its most venal manifestation, scholarly writing betrays the anxiety of influence by claiming to offer a radically new solution to age-old conundrums. The goal is to make a clean break from a traditional path of thought that has become trapped in a cul-de-sac, to make progress by finding a new way forward. Not so with Jean Porter’s work, and particularly her most recent book. Professor Porter demonstrates that thinking through an established tradition – one that has responded to numerous challenges within very different contexts over several millennia – can sometimes offer the most productive response to contemporary dilemmas. …

Philosophical Legal Ethics: Ethics, Morals, And Jurisprudence, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

The authors and moderator David Luban participated in a plenary session of the International Legal Ethics Conference IV, held at Stanford. Each author answered and discussed questions arising from short papers they had written about the principal concern of legal ethics was the morality of lawyers, the morality of clients, or the morality of laws.

Sacrifice And Sacred Honor: Why The Constitution Is A "Suicide Pact", Peter Brandon Bayer

Scholarly Works

Most legal scholars and elected officials embrace the popular clich6 that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." Typically, those commentators extol the "Constitution of necessity," the supposition that Government, essentially the Executive, may take any action-may abridge or deny any fundamental right-to alleviate a sufficiently serious national security threat. The "Constitution of necessity" is wrong. This Article explains that strict devotion to the "fundamental fairness" principles of the Constitution's Due Process Clauses is America's utmost legal and moral duty, surpassing all other considerations, even safety, security and survival.

The analysis begins with the most basic premises: the definition of …

Abraham Lincoln As A Legal Writer, Judith D. Fischer

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Exposing The Contradiction: An Originalist's Approach To Understanding Why Substantive Due Process Is A Constitutional Misinterpretation, Jason A. Crook

Nevada Law Journal

Few phrases in American jurisprudence have created more of a stir or inspired greater controversy than the seventeen words that comprise the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Drafted by the Reconstruction Congress in the aftermath of the Civil War, these words have been used to strike down maximum-hours legislation, permit the instruction of foreign languages in schools, and even establish the right of minors to purchase contraceptives. In light of its linguistic incongruity and the versatility of its judicial precedents, one could fairly state that the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause has been the subject …

Ugly American Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Nevada Law Journal

This article will appear in a Symposium on comparative legal hermeneutics that includes four articles by American scholars and four articles by Brazilian scholars. I argue that the "ugly American" hermeneutics exemplified in Justice Scalia's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller is unfortunate, even if we supplement Justice Scalia's hermeneutical fantasy with the much more careful and balanced philosophical work by Larry Solum, Keith Whittington and other scholars. Nevertheless, the pragmatic work of interpretation by lawyers and judges in the day-to-day world of legal practice shows a plain-faced integrity of which we Americans can be proud.

As Time Goes By: Hermeneutics And Originalism, John T. Valauri

Nevada Law Journal

What is the continuing relevance of hermeneutics to legal theory in general and to constitutional theory in particular if we are all originalists now? Both seem to be vital despite the decline of interest in hermeneutics recently. This article argues for the continuing relevance of hermeneutics to both fields because of the centrality of issues of application and practical reasoning in both. Law seeks for find the meaning of texts applied over time; legal texts are truly letters of transit. That we are all originalists, yet still have the same sort of interpretive debates we have always had, only indicates …

The Existential Subject Of Rights And Private Law: The Example Of The Indian Issue In Brazil, Jose Carlos Moreira Da Silva Filho

Nevada Law Journal

The issue of the juridical subject has been a topic of discussion as part of the rethinking of the classical jurisprudential concepts in Brazil. In particular, some authors have written about the “repersonalization of private law.” This has opened a promising path of inquiry regarding the legal subject for at least four major reasons. First, continental private law is the classical field to discuss the subject of rights. Second, the focus of private law remains the concept of the person, opening an important space to recover the moral philosophy in law. Third, the repersonalization of private law demonstrates the necessity …

The Empty Tomb: Post-Critical Legal Hermeneutics, Peter Goodrich

Nevada Law Journal

There is nothing more refreshing than a successful failure. A momentary flaring of flamboyance. A near miss. Fifteen weeks as media monarchs; a good part—a small part—of a decade as a political threat to the order of the academy, if not the stability of the system. The affective bonds and the institutional disruption of youthful and latterly not-so-young dissidents and socialist sympathizers within the law schools definitely had their excitements, their impetus and novelties, and then they grew old, got rejected, disappeared into the shadows, backrooms, and faculty lounges. The various histories assign different figures to the failure of critical …

Constitution, Human Rights And Republic: A Necessary Dialogue Between Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics And Boaventura De Sousa Santos's Diatopic Heremeneutics, Jania Maria Lopes Saldanha, Jose Luis Bolzan De Morais

Nevada Law Journal

When we think about the concept of human rights—including all the possible ways of its realization, and considering the complementarities and also the unity of different dimensions of the concept—we confront several difficult questions. In particular, in an age when constitutions and constitutional doctrine have already incorporated a substantive body of human rights law, we must address how some of the constitutional promises regarding individual rights have not been fulfilled. Additionally, we must consider how rights that foster solidarity in the economic, social, and cultural spheres have not been recognized.

This article operates on two levels. On one level, we …

Deconstructing The Models Of Judges: Legal Hermeneutics And Beyond The Subject-Object Paradigm, Lenio Luiz Streck

Nevada Law Journal

The linguistic-ontological turn has brought uncountable consequences to the interpretation of Law. However, dogmatic-legal knowledge remains hostage to a judicial protagonism, a philosophy of consciousness that, together with legal discretion, represent two sides of the same coin. The criticism of judicial discretion is a matter of democracy: decisions must be coherent, assuring the integrity of Law by reinforcing the normative power of the Constitution from which arises the need for correct answers in Law.

Legal Interpretation: The Window Of The Text As Transparent, Opaque, Or Translucent, George H. Taylor

Nevada Law Journal

It is a common metaphor that the text is a window onto the world that it depicts. I want to explore this metaphor and the insights it may offer us for better understanding legal interpretation. As in the opening epigraph from James Boyd White, I shall develop the metaphor of the text as window in three ways: the text may be transparent, opaque, or translucent. My goal will be to argue that the best way to understand legal interpretation is to conceive of the legal text as translucent, but along the way I will compare the merits also of considering …

Ugly American Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This article will appear in a Symposium on comparative legal hermeneutics that includes four articles by American scholars and four articles by Brazilian scholars. I argue that the "ugly American" hermeneutics exemplified in Justice Scalia's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller is unfortunate, even if we supplement Justice Scalia's hermeneutical fantasy with the much more careful and balanced philosophical work by Larry Solum, Keith Whittington and other scholars. Nevertheless, the pragmatic work of interpretation by lawyers and judges in the day-to-day world of legal practice shows a plain-faced integrity of which we Americans can be proud.

Hermeneutics- The Path Of The Hermeneutic-Ontological Shift And The Decolonial Shift, Celso Luiz Ludwig

Nevada Law Journal

The purpose of the reflections that follow is to highlight the meaning and importance of the hermeneutic shift produced by the work of Gadamer, to consider some of his themes and categories, and to extend the meaning of this hermeneutic rationality to the legal field in terms of a new conception of interpretation. A second objective is to catch sight of new theoretical perspectives, having as a starting point the unfolding of practical philosophy into hermeneutic philosophy carried out by Gadamer. This article aims at recuperating, among other things, the fundamental hermeneutic problem, so as to obtain a glimpse into …

Perelman's Theory Of Argumentation And Natural Law, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Chaim Perelman resuscitated the rhetorical tradition by developing an elegant and detailed theory of argumentation. Rejecting the single-minded Cartesian focus on rational truth, Perelman recovered the ancient wisdom that we can argue reasonably about matters that admit only of probability. From this one would conclude that Perelman’s argumentation theory is inalterably opposed to natural law, and therefore that I would have done better to have written an article titled “Perelman’s Th eory of Argumentation as a Rejection of Natural Law.”

However, my thesis is precisely that Perelman’s theory of argumentation connects to the natural law tradition in interesting and productive …

Getting Right Without Lincoln, Daniel W. Hamilton

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Agents Of (Incremental) Change: From Myra Bradwell To Hillary Clinton, Gwen Hoerr Jordan

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Vico And Imagination: An Ingenious Approach To Educating Lawyers With Semiotic Sensibility, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Law is a specialized semiotic realm, but lawyers generally are ignorant of this fact. Lawyers may manage meaning, but they also are managed by meaning. Seemingly trapped by the weight of pre-existing signs, their attempts to manage these meanings generally are limited to technical interventions and instrumentalist strategies. Signs have power over lawyers because they are embedded in narratives, a semiotic economy that confronts the lawyer as ‘‘given’’ even though it is dynamic and constantly under construction. Most lawyers do not make meaning through legal narratives; rather, they parrot bits of the controlling narratives in response to certain problems. Because …

100 Years Strong: Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services And The On-Going Pursuit For Equal Rights And Equal Justice, Tom I. Romero Ii, Bruce A. Beneke

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.