Natural Law Commons^™

The Case Of Natural Obligations, David V. Snyder

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of Terrorism--Jurisprudential And Definitional Clarifications, Louis R. Beres

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article examines contemporary definitions of terrorism and determines that they are inadequate. The author describes five specific types of problems with current definitions and offers an appropriate scholarly remedy. This Article concludes, inter alia, that the United States should reject narrow, geopolitical definitions of terrorism. Instead, it should articulate and apply a single unambiguous standard that incorporates the requirements of just cause and just means. Absent evidence of these two elements, the insurgent use of force should be regarded as terrorism. This clearer and more objective definition will enable the United States to approach and address adversarial uses of …

Rights Talk: The Impoverishment Of Political Discourse And A Nation Under Lawyers (Book Review), Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

In these two lively, elegant, and lucid books, Mary Ann Glendon points to an increasing bloody-mindedness in our society, and argues persuasively that law and lawyers are in great part to blame for it. It seems that we are constantly pelting each other with non-negotiable demands backed by the threat of litigation, and that our legal profession has become too venal or too lacking in moral fiber to tell us to lighten up. The first part of the argument is presented in Rights Talk, the second in A Nation Under Lawyers. Both parts are presented with passion, charity, and a …

Some Problems With Public Reason In John Rawls's Political Liberalism, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Political Liberalism is a major addition to the political theory of John Rawls. In many respects, it develops or alters views expressed in his famous A Theory of Justice. For changes that appeared in various articles Rawls published after the earlier book, Political Liberalism tends to offer nuances of difference. The most original chapter is about public reason, and my comments are directed to that subject, which has now become a centerpiece of Rawls's theory. I draw in Rawls's other views only as they bear on public reason.

My aim is to present some problems I see with his …

Law's Birth And Antigone's Death: On Ontological And Psychoanalytical Ethics, Costas Douzinas

Cardozo Law Review

Where is the site of law's emergence? What opens the field of ethicity? Where does the law come from? Is there a ground of emergence of ethics and of obligation, rather is there a being obligated that arises before any obligation, a duty bound that precedes any particular duty? Our inquiry will attempt to trace the "question of law"-of law's origins and of its value, of law's validity and of its force. Does the law come from the burial ground of the primordial Father? Or from the places of the double murder of the Son and the Daughter? Or, finally, …

On The Efficiency Of Secured Lending, David G. Carlson

Articles

The article challenges the Law and Economics movement's assertion that secured lending is inefficient, arguing instead that it can be efficient by reducing risk and lowering the cost of credit. Carlson contests the movement's reliance on outdated theories like the Modigliani-Miller model, which he believes fails to account for real-world factors such as time and risk. He posits that secured lending can prevent debtor misbehavior, thereby making credit more accessible and reducing risks for creditors.

Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties And Public Morality, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality. By Robert P. George. Oxford University Press. 247 pages. $42.

Robert George's brilliant new book rescues the topic of legal enforcement of moral obligations from both liberals and conservatives. Against Devlin he maintains that "the genuine immorality" of an act is a necessary (but not alone sufficient) condition for the legitimacy of a morals law. Against the liberals he maintains that no principle of justice precludes morals legislation as such. George persuasively argues that morals laws - prohibitions of so-called victimless immoralities like sodomy, prostitution, drug use, suicide - may be enacted. …

Foundations Of The Duty To Rescue, Steven J. Heyman

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1908, James Barr Ames concluded his classic lecture on Law and Morals by posing the problem of a duty to rescue., Suppose, he said, that you are walking over a bridge when a man falls into the water and cries out for help. Do you have an obligation to save him from drowning by throwing a nearby rope? As the law then stood, the answer clearly was no. "The law does not compel active benevolence between man and man. It is left to one's conscience whether he shall be the good Samaritan or not." Nevertheless, Ames asserted, it was …

A Jewish Voice In The Public Square, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

David Novak: Jewish Social Ethics. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xii, 252. $45.00.)

Jewish participation in American public life has been either genuinely or constructively de-Judaized. (Admittedly, many orthodox Jews - the Hasidim among them - have steered clear altogether of the public square.) "Genuinely" de-Judaized Jews are simply those like Frankfurter who have a thoroughly secular outlook. "Constructively" de-Judaized Jews include the orthodox, observant Pfeffer. For them religious conviction (and practice) are private matters, checked at the entrance to the "naked public square." Quite obviously, Jews had good reason, especially in 1947, to prefer a secular …

Liberalism And Natural Law Theory, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

I shall argue, in the course of this lecture, that the title I gave myself is a bad one, one that sets a bad example. "Liberalism," like "conservatism" and "socialism," is too local, contingent and shifting a term to deserve a place in a general theory of society, politics, government and law. So I had better say at once which proposition or set of propositions I, on this occasion, was gesturing towards with the word "liberalism," out of all the many propositions, often conflicting, which have been called "liberal." What I had in mind was the thesis that government and …

Response To Hittnger, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Law, Morality, And "Sexual Orientation", John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

During the past thirty years there has emerged in Europe a standard form of legal regulation of sexual conduct. This standard form or scheme, which I shall call the "standard modem [European] position," is accepted by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission of Human Rights (the two supra-national judicial and quasijudicial institutions of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), to which almost all European states are party, whether or not they are also party to the European [Economic] Community now known as the European Union). The standard modem European …

Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision And Truth, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision and Truth. By John Finnis.
Catholic University of America Press. 113 pages. $9.95.

Receipts for what the producers had the decency to call Indecent Proposal approach $100 million. The couple's earnest deliberations evidently engage. The moviegoer, I suppose, wonders with Demi and Woody: Are there some things that, no matter what, it is never right to do? Are there, in other words, absolute moral prohibitions? Is adultery one of them?

In this formidable volume, Oxford philosopher John Finnis cogently defends the common answer (for millennia, until just a few decades ago) of Jews and Christians: There …

The Institutional Imperative: Resolving Transboundary Water Conflict In Arid Agricultire Regions Of The United States And The Commmon Wealth Of Independent States, Susan J. Buck, Gregory W. Gleason, Mitchel S. Jofuku

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Carlos Nagel

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Keith A. Henry

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Michael J. Donahue

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Frank Quinn

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Chad Day

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Ulises Canchola

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Chad Day

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

The International Joint Commission And Public Participation: Past Experiences, Present Challenges, Future Tasks, Mimi Larsen Becker

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

The Matter Of Public Participation, Robert D. Hayton

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Mary E. Kelly

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Gerardo Ceballos

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

'Posterity' In The Preamble And A Positivist Pro-Life Position, Raymond B. Marcin

Scholarly Articles

Arguments for the overturning of the Roe decision can be grouped into two categories: (1) the positivist argument that, contrary to the assertions in the Roe decision, nothing in the Constitution protects the right to privacy in the abortion decision (thus leaving legislatures free to regulate the matter), and (2) the natural law argument that a fetus or unborn child has a fundamental and inalienable right to life (thus preventing legislatures from regulating the matter, except for compelling governmental reasons). The right-to-life movement is grounded upon the latter, natural law position. The difficulty for the pro-life movement is that, if …

Nature And Powers Of The Ijc And The Ibwc, The, Lucio Cabrera

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, John E. Carroll

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Joaquin R. Bustamante

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary - Does The Past Record Of Action Provide A Guide To The Future, Joseph F. Friedkin

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.