Legal Theory Commons^™

Broadly Speaking - April Fools' Day, 1997, Nova Southeastern University

Broadly Speaking

No abstract provided.

Broadly Speaking - March 10, 1997, Nova Southeastern University

Broadly Speaking

No abstract provided.

Does Duncan Kennedy Wear Boxers Or Briefs? Does Richard Posner Ever Sleep? Writing About Jurisprudence, High Culture And The History Of Intellectuals (Review Essay), John Henry Schlegel

Book Reviews

Reviewing Neil Duxbury, Patterns of American Jurisprudence(1995).

Nature Of Rules And The Meaning Of Meaning, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This essay addresses two problems in legal theory. What is the nature of rules, especially legal rules? What is the meaning of a legal rule?

My main concern is the relation between these two questions. I inquire whether a sensible view of how rules work commits one to any particular approach to meaning. For this inquiry, I focus on Frederick Schauer's illuminating treatment of rules in Playing by the Rules, which he says is linked to a particular view of meaning. I assert that the linkage is much less tight than he supposes, and that competing theories about meaning are …

Judging Judgment: Assessing The Competence Of Mental Patients To Refuse Treatment, Grant H. Morris

San Diego Law Review

This Article concerns the due process requirements in determining a mental patient’s competency to make a decision refusing medical treatment. The Author discusses the California decision imposing a judicial hearing requirement and San Diego Superior Court rules for implementing this decision. The Author, a law-trained decision maker in hearings to determine mental patients’ competence to refuse medication, compiled a case report after each of his hearings. He presents and analyzes the data on the competency cases he decided and emphasizes the factors which may have influence his decisions. The Author argues that competency hearings should be conducted by law-trained decision …

Fuzzifying The Natural Law—Legal Positivist Debate, Edward S. Adams, Torben Spaak

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Substantive Due Process And Parental Corporal Punishment: Democracy And The Excluded Child, Mary Kate Kearney

San Diego Law Review

This Article questions whether parents have a right to corporally punish their children, and if they do, how this right should be defined. The author argues that parents should not receive the heightened constitutional protection conferred by a fundamental right. She argues that the political process already adequately protects the interests of parents in disciplining their children. To the extent that the political process chooses to permit parents to administer reasonable corporal punishment, this Article proposes a five-part test that courts can use to determine whether an act of corporal punishment fits within that reasonableness standard. This test is more …

Harris V. Forklift Systems, Inc. Victory Or Defeat?, Laura Hoffman Roppe

San Diego Law Review

This Casenote analyzes the significance and potential effects of the decision in Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., a Supreme Court case decided in November 1993. This case promulgates a framework for analysis of "hostile environment" sexual harassment claims arising under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The author sets forth the historical backdrop of the case, as well as exploring and comparing the effect of the decision in general with the decision's effect in the Ninth Circuit in particular. The author concludes that the Harris case potentially reduces women's chances of winning sexual harassment claims in the …

Legal Enforcement Of Morality, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In modern Western political and legal thought, the subject of legal enforcement of morality is narrower than the literal coverage of those terms. That is because much legal enforcement of morality is uncontroversial and rarely discussed. Disagreement arises only when the law enforces aspects of morality that do not involve protecting others from fairly direct harms. More precisely, people raise questions about legal requirements (1) to perform acts that benefit others, (2) to refrain from acts that cause indirect harms to others, (3) to refrain from acts that cause harm to themselves, ( 4) to refrain from acts that offend …

No-Fault Marital Dissolution: The Bitter Triumph Of Naked Divorce, J Herbie Difonzo

San Diego Law Review

In this Article, the author examines the origins of the no-fault divorce movement, concluding that the abandonment of fault grounds was conceived as a conservative measure intended to facilitate the reversal of the escalating divorce rate and to replace traditional marital dissolution with therapeutic divorce. This reform collapsed at mid-point, achieving only the jettisoning of divorce grounds. The author argues that an unintended consequence of the reform battle was the transformation from mutual consent divorce, the operating milieu for most of the twentieth century, into divorce on demand. The author concludes that this transformation has resulted in a significant loss …

Standing Firm, On Forbidden Grounds, Richard A. Epstein

San Diego Law Review

This introductory Article to the Title VII Symposium contained in this issue of the San Diego Law Review addresses the critiques leveled at the book Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws. Richard Epstein, the author of the book, recognizes the disagreement expressed in the Articles in the Symposium, and attempts to defend his thesis in this Article. He argued in Forbidden Grounds that the best set of overall social outcomes would come from eliminating antidiscrimination laws which prohibit employer discrimination on the grounds of race, creed, sex, age, handicap, or anything else. In this Article, he addresses several …

Alternative Grounds: Epstein's Discrimination Analysis In Other Market Settings, Ian Ayres

San Diego Law Review

This Article focuses on how Richard Epstein's discrimination analysis in his book Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws plays out in four other market contexts. The author analyzes historical labor markets (circa 1964), public accommodations, housing, and new car markets. He concludes that applying Epstein's theory to these different market settings exposes limitations of Epstein's analysis.

Licensing Laws: A Historical Example Of The Use Of Government Regulatory Power Against African Americans, David E. Bernstein

San Diego Law Review

This Article addresses how the legacy of government policy has been a large factor in the economic subjugation of black Americans between Reconstructionist and the modern Civil Rights era. Specifically, this Article displays how white interest groups used occupational licensing laws to stifle black economic progress, and how these laws were used to prevent blacks from competing with established white skilled workers. The author notes that Richard Epstein with his book Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws has done the legal community a great service by reminding it that the source of some of the economic disparity between …

Lonely Libertarian: One Man's View Of Antidiscrimination Law, Lea Brilmayer

San Diego Law Review

In his book Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws, Richard Epstein attacks antidiscrimination law from three different philosophical points of view: utilitarian, libertarian, and freedom of contract. The author of this Article addresses each of these philosophies, and argues that none of these arguments is compelling as applied to a legal regime as popular as Epstein admits core antidiscrimination law to be. This Article points out inconsistencies in Epstein's view of the public's acceptance of antidiscrimination laws as being silly.

Market Affirmative Action, Robert Cooter

San Diego Law Review

This Article applies the economic theory of regulation to laws forbidding discrimination or requiring affirmative action. It argues for using transferable rights in order to achieve diversity rather than quotas. Based on economic theories, the Article finds that the most efficient remedies for discrimination are the ones already developed by economists for other problems. The author suggests that discriminatory cartels can be prohibited or undermined, discriminatory signals can be overcome by supplementing market information, and external effects of prejudice can be internalized by tax subsidies. He concludes that perfect competition causes discriminators to pay for segregation, and some current antidiscrimination …

Reality, Drew S. Days, Iii

San Diego Law Review

This Article applies the economic theory of regulation to laws forbidding discrimination or requiring affirmative action. It argues for using transferable rights in order to achieve diversity rather than quotas. Based on economic theories, the Article finds that the most efficient remedies for discrimination are the ones already developed by economists for other problems. The author suggests that discriminatory cartels can be prohibited or undermined, discriminatory signals can be overcome by supplementing market information, and external effects of prejudice can be internalized by tax subsidies. He concludes that perfect competition causes discriminators to pay for segregation, and some current antidiscrimination …

The Discrimination Shibboleth, Andrew Kull

San Diego Law Review

This Article explores a more conservative viewpoint than Richard Epstein's view that all employment antidiscrimination laws should be repealed in his book Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination. This Article focuses on the distinctions between current antidiscrimination laws and those of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination on the basis of race and sex, current laws prohibit discrimination on many other grounds. The author argues that these new laws constitute new policy choices, and they impose more costs than the traditional laws.

Epstein On His Own Grounds, Richard H. Mcadams

San Diego Law Review

This Article criticizes Richard Epstein's thesis in his book Forbidden Grounds: The Case against Employment Discrimination. The Article argues that Epstein fails to follow through on his own terms. The author expresses disagreement with Epstein's invocation of Thomas Hobbes without considering the Hobbesian argument for Title VII. Mr. McAdams also notes that Epstein relies on economic analysis without disclosing its dependence on controversial empirical assumptions. The author uncovers Epstein's other inconsistencies: his empirical claims, particularly about social norms, where Epstein does not apply the standards of criticism to supporting evidence that he applies to contrary evidence.

Learning To Love Japan: Social Norms And Market Incentives, J. Mark Ramseyer

San Diego Law Review

This Article applies Japanese market behavior to Richard Epstein's theories in his book Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination. The author uses Japan to argue that economic incentives need not matter, and that whatever incentives markets and laws may provide, people may still ignore them. This Article suggests that if independent social norms can sustain systematically unprofitable behavior in Japan, then maybe they would have sustained Jim Crow policies in the American south. If Japanese routinely ignore economic incentives to perpetuate social norms, then whites might have ignored the market advantage to hiring African Americans and discriminated against their …

Epstein's Challenge To The Civil Rights Regime, W. B. Allen

San Diego Law Review

This Article takes a close look at the government's determination of the substantive meaning of nondiscrimination in order to better evaluate the relation between the current practice of the civil rights regime and the alternative suggested by Richard Epstein in his book Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws. It also analyzes the "limit condition view" of government, namely that the government may in no way discriminate, and everyone cannot be prevented from discriminating. The author concludes that defenders of the civil rights regime must engage Epstein's argument, because failing to do so will be to fail either to …

Epstein's Premises, Evan Tsen Lee

San Diego Law Review

This Article criticizes Richard Epstein's argument that Congress should repeal Title VII expressed in his book Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination. The author's criticisms of Epstein's argument are the product of disagreement with some of Epstein's premises, and disagreement with some of Epstein's choices about where to stop his analyses. The author disputes Epstein's premise that governmental intervention into otherwise accessible markets is justifiable only in cases of force or fraud. The author also notes some of Epstein's empirical suppositions that are inconsistent with one another.

Was The Corruption Of Civil Rights Law Inevitable, Christopher T. Wonnell

San Diego Law Review

This Article accepts Richard Epstein's premise that civil rights laws have become corrupt set forth in his book Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination. Once this corruption is recognized, this Article asks two questions about the change in focus of the antidiscrimination laws: (1) Was it inevitable that the antidiscrimination laws would follow this course?; and (2) If it was inevitable, should we live with the resulting costs, or bite the bullet and repeal antidiscrimination laws in the private economy? This Article discusses considerations pertinent to such answers.

Against Marriage, Steven K. Homer

Faculty Scholarship

What is marriage? In the debate surrounding same-sex marriage, the central term has gone undefined. Using the Hawaii Supreme Court's decision in Baehr v. Lewin as a starting point, this Note argues that marriage lacks legal as well as experiential coherence. A series of legal and social moves intended, on the one hand, to preserve the dominance of heterosexuality over gays and lesbians and, on the other, to allow, heterosexuals to escape the dominance of heterosexuality over themselves, has left little conceptual space for marriage. That is, to speak of "extending marriage" to same-sex couples creates the illusion that marriage …

...And Contractual Consent, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Part I, the author contends that when economists persistently ignore the importance of contractual consent, they are missing the crucial problem of legitimacy. In Parts II and IV, he responds to the criticisms of his consent theory of contract advanced by Jay Feinman and Dennis Patterson. Both Feinman and Patterson object to the enterprise in which the author and others are engaging, and he explains why each is wrong to dismiss the current debate over default rules. Finally, in contrast, in Part III the author shows how Steven Burton's theory of default rules, which he finds most congenial, is …

Grounds For Political Judgment: The Status Of Personal Experience And The Autonomy And Generality Of Principles Of Restraint, Kent Greenawalt

San Diego Law Review

This Article addresses three perplexing problems about proposed principles of self-restraint for political decision and advocacy within liberal democracies. It considers the nature of convictions that are based on highly personal experiences and asks what their political status should be. It explores the subtle relationship between proposed principles of restraint and overarching religious and other comprehensive views. It argues that a plausible principle of restraint must appeal to people with various religious and other comprehensive views and must be suited to the particular conditions of a given society.

The Place Of Religious Argument In A Free And Democratic Society, Robert Audi

San Diego Law Review

This Article provides an account of the notion of a religious argument, distinguishes several roles of religious arguments in a liberal democracy, and defends a set of principles for their proper use in such a society. The author argues that it is appropriate that citizens apply a kind of separation of church and state in their public use of religious arguments, especially in advocating laws or public policies that restrict liberty. More specifically, the author contends that whatever religious arguments one may have in such cases, one should also be willing to offer, and be to a certain extent motivated …

Religious Morality And Political Choice: Further Thoughts--And Second Thoughts--On Love And Power, Michael J. Perry

San Diego Law Review

This is an Article written by the author of the book Love and Power: The Role of Religion and Morality in American Politics. In this Article, he returns to an inquiry already addressed in Love and Power. He asks the question: should Americans accept an ideal of political choice according to which a citizen ought not make a controversial political choice if the choice cannot be defended without relying on a religious belief that at least some opponents of the choice reject? The author responds with a resounding no, arguing that we should not accept such a political ideal. He …

Constructing An Ideal Of Public Reason, Lawrence B. Solum

San Diego Law Review

In deciding to what ideal citizens should aspire in political debate, some people contend that an ideal of political morality should mirror the freedom of expression. This Article undertakes the construction of an ideal of public reason. It begins with an investigation of the term "public reason." The author considers various possibilities for an ideal or normative standard of public reason. As each option is considered, some possible formulations are discarded and additional specifications are added. He concludes with the ideal that is constructed through this process of elaboration, evaluation, and elimination.

Beyond Religion And Enlightenment, Charles Larmore

San Diego Law Review

This Article addresses the theory that modern society is beyond religion. The author reasons that secularization is the result of Judeo-Christian monotheism. God's transcendence has led to his withdrawal from the world and thus to the autonomy of the world. The author analyzes such views and addresses the reasons for morality in modern society; whether it stems from belief in God, or a modern view that God is not necessary in order to have morality.

Religious Contributions In Public Deliberation, Jeremy Waldron

San Diego Law Review

This Article commences with an excerpt from a "Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy" published in 1986 by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Through this letter, the author leads us to the question, "What part should doctrines and arguments rooted in religious beliefs play in public debate?" The author views such religious contributions as relevant to secular politics. He recommends that people value rethinking the structure of their premises, and see the value of an open, challenging, and indeterminate form of public deliberation in which nothing is taken for granted. He concludes that we can …