Law and Philosophy Commons^™

December 21, 2013: Donald Rumsfeld And The Banality Of Evil, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Donald Rumsfeld and the Banality of Evil“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 15, 2013: Self Actualization Is Sin, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Self Actualization Is Sin“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 8, 2013: President Obama In The Sweet Spo, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “President Obama in the Sweet Spo“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 4, 2013: God Again, Or, Am I An Atheist?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “God Again, Or, Am I an Atheist?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Actmissions, Luis E. Chiesa

West Virginia Law Review

Most observers agree that it is morally worse to cause harm by engaging in an act than to contribute to producing the same harm by an omission. As a result, American criminal law punishes harmful omissions less than similarly harmful acts, unless there are exceptional circumstances that warrant punishing them equally. Yet there are many cases in which actors cause harm by engaging in conduct that can be reasonably described as either an act or an omission. Think of a doctor who flips a switch that discontinues life support to a patient. If the patient dies as a result, did …

The Paradoxes Of Restitution, Mark A. Edwards

West Virginia Law Review

Restitution following mass dispossession is often considered both ideal and impossible. Why? This Article identifies two previously unnamed paradoxes that undermine the possibility of restitution: the time-unworthiness paradox and the collective responsibility paradox. After developing these ideas, the Article examines them in the context of a particularly difficult and intractable case of dispossession and restitution. The Article draws upon interviews with restitution claimants whose stories reveal the paradoxes of restitution.

Communicative Content And Legal Content, Lawrence B. Solum

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay investigates a familiar set of questions about the relationship between legal texts (e.g., constitutions, statutes, opinions, orders, and contracts) and the content of the law (e.g., norms, rules, standards, doctrines, and mandates). Is the original meaning of the constitutional text binding on the Supreme Court when it develops doctrines of constitutional law? Should statutes be given their plain meaning or should judges devise statutory constructions that depart from the text to serve a purpose? What role should default rules play in the interpretation and construction of contracts? This Essay makes two moves that can help lawyers and legal …

November 28, 2013: The Theology Of The Disappearance Of Thanksgiving, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Theology of the Disappearance of Thanksgiving“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Stretching Religious Liberty, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

November 20, 2013: God Is Not A Supernatural Thing, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “God is not a Supernatural Thing“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 16, 2013: The Mythical Elements Of The Bible, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Mythical Elements of the Bible“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 13, 2013: Huffington Post Blog Entry On Legislative Prayer, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Huffington Post Blog Entry on Legislative Prayer“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 8, 2013: Legislative Prayer, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Legislative Prayer“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Fuller And Godel: Prophets Against The Evils Of Positivism: How The Natural Law Is Necessary To Provide Legal Meaning And Consistency, Henry James Garon

LLM Theses

Gödel showed that formal systems which discuss natural numbers cannot be complete or prove their own consistency. Incompleteness in this sense is limited to formal systems, and so is not applicable to law by it own terms.

Looking to the philosophy behind the Incompleteness Theorem, Gödel intended to show that positivism was a bankrupt world-view, and this resonates strongly with Lon Fuller. Fuller is analogous to Gödel in his condemnation of the positivist philosophy because he showed that a system of rules, by itself, was not capable of rendering judgments. A legal system is dependent upon an external morality, but …

November 3, 2013: Ronald Dworkin's Confusion, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Ronald Dworkin's Confusion“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Meaning And Belief In Constitutional Interpretation, Andrei Marmor

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The distinction between a concept and its different conceptions plays a prominent role in debates about constitutional interpretation. Proponents of a dynamic reading of the Constitution-espousing interpretation of constitutional concepts according to their contemporary understandings typically rely on the idea that the Constitution entrenches only the general concepts it deploys, without authoritatively favoring any particular conception of them-specifically, without favoring the particular conception of the relevant concept that the framers of the Constitution may have had in mind. Originalists argue, to the contrary, that fidelity to the Constitution requires an understanding of its provisions according to the particular conception of …

Originalism And Constitutional Construction, Lawrence B. Solum

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutional interpretation is the activity that discovers the communicative content or linguistic meaning of the constitutional text. Constitutional construction is the activity that determines the legal effect given the text, including doctrines of constitutional law and decisions of constitutional cases or issues by judges and other officials. The interpretation-construction distinction, frequently invoked by contemporary constitutional theorists and rooted in American legal theory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, marks the difference between these two activities.

This Article advances two central claims about constitutional construction. First, constitutional construction is ubiquitous in constitutional practice. The central warrant for this claim is conceptual: …

October 31, 2013: Hypocrisy Over Turkey, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Hypocrisy over Turkey“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 26, 2013: In God We Trust In The Public Schools, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “In God We Trust in the Public Schools“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 18, 2013: One Cheer For John Boehner, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “One Cheer for John Boehner“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.