Natural Law Commons^™

Front Matter, Natural Resources Journal

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Enduring Originalism, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski, Kevin C. Walsh

Journal Articles

If our law requires originalism in constitutional interpretation, then that would be a good reason to be an originalist. This insight animates what many have begun to call the “positive turn” in originalism. Defenses of originalism in this vein are “positive” in that they are based on the status of the Constitution, and constitutional law, as positive law. This approach shifts focus away from abstract conceptual or normative arguments about interpretation and focuses instead on how we actually understand and apply the Constitution as law. On these grounds, originalism rests on a factual claim about the content of our law: …

Legal Agreement, Andrew Tutt

Akron Law Review

This Article grapples with the question of what it means to agree about what the law is. First, it shows that the question of what it means to “agree about the law” invites us to consider many different kinds of agreement and disagreement we might have about what the law is. Second, it shows that without selecting one of these kinds of agreement, we cannot speak intelligibly about whether we agree or disagree. Third, it explains that this failure to choose is a source of much confusion and apparent disagreement between competing philosophers and philosophies of law. Fourth, it argues …

William Cullen Bryant And The Poetry Of Natural Law, Steven M. Richman

Akron Law Review

The question has more than academic interest, as noted in Lloyd Weinreb's Natural Law and Justice, in which he argues for a return to natural law's ontological basis.' Tracing its roots in Greek expressions of natural law that allowed for free will in an otherwise determinate natural order, Weinreb surveys the history of natural law only to find that what began as ontological became deontological, which led natural law theories away from nature and reason and towards a focus on concepts of morality. He argues ultimately that such deontological theories fail to answer the question of human freedom within a …

A Radical Theory Of Jurisprudence: The "Decisionmaker" As The Source Of Law - The Ohio Supreme Court's Adoption Of The Spendthrift Trust Doctrine As A Model, Gerald P. Moran

Akron Law Review

This article will apply the jurisprudential thesis that law is essentially the naked preference of the Decisionmaker in examining the judicial enactment of Ohio's spendthrift trust doctrine. With some degree of hope, such an examination will clarify the Decisionmaker's institutional role in the Ohio Supreme Court's determination of whether a spendthrift trust is valid. In doing so, the article will ask why the Court adopted one line of legal reasoning over another? To this end, the often noted observation of the great sage Holmes enlightens us to the principle that an explanation is not found in the exercise of logic, …

Enduring Acequias: Wisdom Of The Land, Knowledge Of The Water By Juan Estevan Arellano, Bianca Smoker

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Water Ethics: A Values Approach To Solving The Water Crisis By David Groenfelt, Robin James

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Natural Resources Journal

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Water 4.0: The Past, Present, And Future Of The World's Most Vital Resource By David Sedlak, Brian Smith

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Southern Free Women Of Color In The Antebellum North: Race, Class, And A "New Women's Legal History", Bernie D. Jones

Akron Law Review

This article develops Welke’s theme and proposes that in the field of legal history, the analyses can not be limited to “race, gender, or class,” but that matrices of race, gender, and class must be considered at their intersections, “race, and gender, and class,” where they might shed light on the significance of shifting legal modalities. It explores how race, gender, and class as legal policy in the 19th century could be crucial for the formation of family and marital relationships in the private sphere. The focus here is upon free women of color living in the antebellum North who …

Secession And Breach Of Compact: The Law Of Nature Meets The United States Constitution, Stephen C. Neff

Akron Law Review

This discussion will briefly outline the legal arguments in favour of the secessionist position. The first section will survey four arguments that could, in theory, have been employed but which, in practice, were used either not at all or only marginally. The second section will survey, in greater detail, the principal argument which was advanced in 1860-61: that secession was a lawful remedy available to the Southern states in the face of material breaches of the Constitutional compact of 1787 by the free states. It will be observed that, in this argument, general considerations of natural law and of the …

"The Tempest": Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates, P.A. V. Allstate Insurance Co.: The Rules Enabling Act Decision That Added To The Confusion - But Should Not Have, Donald L. Doernberg

Akron Law Review

This Article discusses the effect Shady Grove is likely to have on vertical choice-of-law in cases involving a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure...Part II of the Article discusses the majority opinion. Part III deals with parts II-B and II-C of Justice Scalia’s opinion and with the concurrence. Part IV addresses the dissent. Part V offers a critical evaluation of the opinions. Part VI discusses some of the scholarly interpretations of REA and suggests two possible perspectives on REA’s substantive-rights limitation that make it more understandable in light of the Erie doctrine’s history, easier to navigate, and less of a threat …

Nature’S Law: The Evolutionary Origin Of Property Rights, Kathryn Loncarich

Pace Law Review

This article contributes to the outline of the origin of property rights set forth by Professor Krier, by more fully analyzing the role of evolutionary biology in the development of property rights. This article focuses on the pre-political formation of property ownership and the initial formation of concepts of property and ownership. Expanding on Krier’s analysis, this article considers the implications of this evolutionary foundation on our modern property regime, particularly given the growing chasm between the wealthy on one side and the poor and middle-class on the other.

Part II discusses the growing disparity of wealth in America and …

Sovereignty And Subversion, Alice Ristroph

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Return To Political Theology, Joshua D. Hawley

Notre Dame Law Review

My aim in what follows is to employ N.T. Wright’s powerful and provocative analysis of Paul’s political gospel as a critical perspective on the foundational claims of the Great Separation. Because the very possibility of political theology is disputed in many quarters, I begin in Part I with a defense of political theology as critical theory. In Part II, I turn to Paul’s political gospel, tracing Wright’s reconstruction of its central terms, including the Pauline critique of empire. In Part III, I explore—briefly—the affirmative political vision Pauline theology makes possible, with particular focus on that theology’s unique form of political …

The End Of Jurisprudence, Scott Hershovitz

Articles

For more than forty years, jurisprudence has been dominated by the HartDworkin debate. The debate starts from the premise that our legal practices generate rights and obligations that are distinctively legal, and the question at issue is how the content of these rights and obligations is determined. Positivists say that their content is determined ultimately or exclusively by social facts. Anti-positivists say that moral facts must play a part in determining their content. In this Essay, I argue that the debate rests on a mistake. Our legal practices do not generate rights and obligations that are distinctively legal. At best, …

When Does Flexibility Matter In Environmental Law?, Josh Eagle

Faculty Publications

Environmental law scholars, practitioners, and policymakers have wrestled for some time with the implications of climate change for environmental law. There is widespread, although not universal, agreement that climate change requires greater flexibility in environmental legal systems. Flexibility-reduced procedural requirements for administrative agency decision making and less rigid substantive standards-would allow the agencies that implement environmental law to adapt to a future world characterized by dynamic, uncertain changes in natural resource systems. According to its proponents, flexibility would make it easier for agencies to more frequently update their management or regulatory decisions to respond to changed conditions, and also to …

America The Eusocial, 49 New Eng. L. Rev. On Remand 71 (2015), Timothy P. O'Neill

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Natural Resources Journal

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

The Doctrine Of Legitimate Defense, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The following article reorients mainstream conceptions of self-defense by defending a broader doctrine of legitimate defense that, in limited circumstances, justifies unilateral intervention. The source of the doctrine is natural law, which was explicitly incorporated into the text of UN Charter article 51. The effect of this incorporation was to preserve, as a carve-out from the prohibition against force in Article 2, the natural law rights of defensive force. Specifically, the Article concludes that defensive force under natural law included, in extreme situations, a right of intervention in rogue States that refused to comply with natural law. The Article then …