Law and Philosophy Commons^™

March 29, 2020: Thinking Of The Virus And The Earth In A Different Way, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Thinking of the Virus and the Earth in a Different Way“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

March 28, 2020: Foreboding About The Stimulus Bill, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ Foreboding About the Stimulus Bill“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Abraham Lincoln And The Cardinal Virtue Of Practical Reason, Brett G. Scharffs

Pepperdine Law Review

Practical wisdom is an elusive concept. This Article focuses on a case in which Abraham Lincoln, prior to his election as President, participated (or more accurately did not participate) to frame a discussion of what practical wisdom means and how it makes a difference for lawyers.

March 21, 2020: The Age Of Evasion, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

Evidence-Based Jurisprudence: An Essay For Oxford, Dan Priel

Articles & Book Chapters

This essay is part of a broader attempt to put some flesh on the bones of naturalistic jurisprudence. My general aim in this essay is to show that much contemporary jurisprudence takes a very narrow understanding of its subject matter, and gives priority, to the point of exclusivity, to one methodological approach – analytic philosophy – over all others. Unlike naturalistic analytic philosophy that welcomes ideas and data from other disciplines, the approach that dominates jurisprudence sees legal philosophy as concerned with certain questions that are uniquely philosophical and to which other disciplines have little to contribute. Some have challenged …

March 17, 2020: Still No Community Transmission, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ Still No Community Transmission“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

March 11, 2020: Krugman's One-Sided Book: Arguing With Zombies., Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Krugman's One-Sided Book: Arguing With Zombies.“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The 'Authority' Of Law: Joseph Raz Reconsidered, Andrew Stumpff Morrison

Law & Economics Working Papers

The article presents a critical reassessment of the legal philosophical writings of Joseph Raz. The critique develops from the author’s previous argument that law is – contra recent near-consensus – best understood as “the command of the sovereign, backed by force.” Given that this is the distinctly defining feature of law, Raz’s extended preoccupation with “reasons for obeying law” is misplaced and even nonsensical.

March 4, 2020: Proud To Be A Democrat, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Proud to be a Democrat“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

February 27, 2020: A Few Thoughts On Ezra Klein’S New Book. This Is The Real Reason We’Re Polarized, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ A few thoughts on Ezra Klein’s new book. This is the real reason we’re polarized“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

February 26, 2020: The Crisis Over Recusal, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Crisis Over Recusal“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

February 22, 2020: David Brooks Channels Ishmael, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “David Brooks Channels Ishmael“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

February 15, 2020: The Age Of The Decadent Thinker, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Age of the Decadent Thinker“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Right To Access To Justice: Its Conceptual Architecture, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The aim of this article is descriptive and analytical, rather than normative. This article aims to contribute to the current understanding of the ways in which modern legal consciousness builds, and is built by, the concept of access to justice. This concept, as part of the web of meanings that structures modern legal culture, provides the context in which modern subjects make sense of who they are and how they should interact with the world around them. This article examines the subjectivities, conceptual geographies, and interpretations of history created by the right to access to justice. It also examines a …

Introduction, Colin Crawford, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The papers gathered in this volume analyze access to justice in Latin America, Europe, and North America from a philosophical, legal, and sociological perspective. In these three regions of the world, as in the rest of the globe, liberal democracies face a troubling gap between the normative and the descriptive: the access to justice promises made by the legal and political system are not fully realized in practice. The studies collected here, therefore, share two baseline assumptions. First, the right of access to justice is fundamental in a liberal state. Access to justice ensures that citizens are able to defend …

Public Defenders' Offices In Brazil: Access To Justice, Courts, And Public Defenders, Alexandre Dos Santos Cunha

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This essay discusses the impact of public defenders' offices in promoting equality through the enforcement of the right to access to justice in Brazil. To achieve this goal, this note is divided into two parts.

Part I presents the Brazilian public defenders' offices, their history, institutional design, rights, and prerogatives. Part II discusses the role played by public defenders in the enforcement of the right to access to justice in Brazil, as well as the relations established between public defenders and courts. The Conclusion attempts to assess the sustainability of the Brazilian model, in order to determine if there is …

Access To Justice For Collective And Diffuse Rights: Theoretical Challenges And Opportunities For Social Contract Theory, Colin Crawford

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This analysis consists of three principal parts. First, it briefly reviews the classical contract account that explains how and why individuals enter civil society, found in the writings of both Hobbes and Locke. The analysis then examines the limited extent to which classical contract theory treats questions of rights vindication or, in more modern terms, with questions of access to justice. Second, the analysis examines the nature of collective and diffuse rights claims and will make a case for their importance in the modern world. Third, the analysis seeks to identify arguments from the classical account that might be useful …

Cause Lawyering And Compassionate Lawyering In Clinical Legal Education: The Case Of Chile, Fernando Munoz L.

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In order to contribute from a situated perspective to a global narrative of access to justice, in the next sections I will trace the origins of compassionate and cause lawyering in the history of Chilean legal aid and training. Part II will explain how legal assistance to the poor was codified as a duty of legal professionals during the Middle Ages, in both canon law and in Castilian legislation. Part III will show that practical legal training, both in Spain and in Chile, began much later as the result of the ambition among prominent members of the legal profession to …

Public Law, Precarity, And Access To Justice, Amnon Lev

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In the first part, I examine Thomas Hobbes' theory of commonwealth to see how it situates subjects in relation to justice. Hobbes famously founds his commonwealth on the equal subjection of all to the Leviathan, which is the equal subjection of all to law. We need to understand why he nevertheless needs to accommodate the diversity of society-the basic fact that some are weak while others are not-into the operation of the public law machine. As we shall see, the accommodation of social diversity is tied to a proto-liberal distinction between social spheres that relegates much of human life to …

February 9, 2020: The Sprit Of The Age, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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