Natural Law Commons^™

Assessing The Scope Of The National Environmental Policy Act: Recent Attempts By Environmentalists To Add Climate Change Considerations Into Nepa Review, Maureen O'Dea Brill

Natural Resources Journal

As the United States continues its roaring ramp up as the world’s leading natural gas producer, the environmental community is trying to force the federal government to account for the aggregate impact of domestic natural gas production from shale, especially in the context of climate change. To achieve this goal, environmental organizations have sought to employ the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law aimed at increasing government awareness of the broader environmental consequences of federal action. This article explores the two ways in which environmental organizations have tried to expand federal environmental reviews to include climate change considerations under …

The Great Power Origins Of Human Rights, Seth Mohney

Michigan Journal of International Law

For years, historians depicted the history of human rights as the inexorable triumph of universal norms. This account underestimates both the historical and contemporary uncertainty surrounding many international human rights. As even casual observers must note, the tale of human rights progress is not littered with beneficent heads of state persuaded to pursue progress by the moral charge of universal norms. Instead, this history’s primary scenes feature struggles among great powers, peoples, and movements advancing diverse interests. Recognizing the complexity of human rights history, a new generation of historians has emphasized that human rights progress is not preordained, but rather …

Natural Law And Legal Positivism In The Nuremberg Trials, Judah B. Murray

Senior Honors Theses

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how a natural law based jurisprudential philosophy would have proved superior to the Austinian legal positivist prepositions that the Allies worked from in the Nuremberg Trials. This is achieved through defining natural law as it was classically understood by its historical advocates such as Thomas Aquinas and Sir William Blackstone. Natural law’s applicability to the Trials builds off the principles articulated by those writers. In the process of making this determination, as to why natural law represents a viable jurisprudential idea, this paper addresses the fundamental conflict between natural law and …

Morning-After Decisions: Legal Mobilization Against Emergency Contraception In Chile, Fernando Muñoz León

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In Chile, the Criminal Code bans all forms of abortion. Furthermore, the Constitution—drafted and enacted by the Military Junta led by General Augusto Pinochet—was inspired by a conservative version of Catholic natural law championed by prominent Chilean constitutional law scholars. This Article traces the emergence, development, and ultimately the defeat of a persistent legal mobilization driven by natural law-inspired litigants, politicians, and scholars against levonorgestrel-based emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill. In their decade-long efforts at legal mobilization, these natural law litigants used every tool of the Chilean legal system to challenge the legality and the constitutionality of …

The Charter Of The Forest: Evolving Human Rights In Nature, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Carta de Foresta, the Charter of the Forest of 1217, is among the first statutes in environmental law of any nation. Crafted to reform patently unjust governance of natural resources in 13th century England, the Charter of the Forest became a framework through which to reconcile competing environmental claims, then and into the future. The Charter confirmed the rights of “free men.” Kings resisted conceding these rights. When confronted with violation of the Charter, barons and royal councils obliged kings repeatedly to reissue the Forest Charter and pledge anew to obey its terms.

Front Matter, Natural Resources Journal

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

The Natural Complexity Of Patent Eligibility, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

It has long been assumed that the doctrine of patent eligibility’s prohibition of patents on “laws of nature,” “natural phenomena,” and “products of nature” rests on legalistic interpretations of those terms. But there is good reason to doubt this assumption. Since the doctrine’s inception, the Supreme Court has yet to provide any framework, formula, or factors explaining these “natural” terms. Rather, the Court has increasingly fixated on a list of scientific tropes, such as gravity, the heat of the Sun, and extracted metals, that it believes are true examples of “natural laws,” “phenomena,” and “products.”

An actual examination of scientific …

Law As Fact And As Reason For Action: A Response To Robert Alexy On Law's 'Ideal Dimension', John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Robert Alexy’s 2013 Natural Law Lecture, published in vol. 58 of the American Journal of Jurisprudence, presents law as having two dimensions, ideal and real, and thus a dual nature, to be elucidated by a conceptual analysis distinguishing between the observer’s and the participant’s perspective. It argues on this basis for a “non-positivist” theory of law that is “inclusive” in that it classifies some unjust laws as laws, but not all (and is thus not “super-inclusive”); it rejects the “exclusive non-positivism” that would treat every injustice in a law’s making or content as excluding it from the class of valid …

Natural Law As Part Of International Law: The Case Of The Armenian Genocide, Fernando R. Tesón

San Diego Law Review

In this Article I argue that some norms are part of international law even if they have never been created by treaty or custom. Because such norms have never been posited, they are natural law norms, and my thesis is that these natural law norms are as much part of international law as the posited norms. By this I mean that these norms should figure in any catalog of what international law prescribes or permits.

Creating New Spaces For Sustainable Water Management In The Senegal River Basin, Frans J.G. Padt, Juan Carlos Sanchez

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

International Trade And Investment Law And Carbon Management Technologies, Nigel Bankes, Anatole Boute, Steve Charnovitz, Shi-Ling Hsu, Sarah Mccalla, Nicholas Rivers, Elizabeth Whitsitt

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Constitutionalism Ancient And Early Modern: The Contributions Of Roman Law, Canon Law, And English Common Law, Janelle Greenberg, Michael J. Sechler

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lifeless Writings Or Living Script?: The Life Of Law In Plato, Middle Platonism, And Jewish Platonizers, Melissa S. Lane

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comments: The Hidden Cost Of Rod And Rifle: Why State Fish And Game Laws Must Be Amended In Order To Protect Against Unreasonable Search And Seizure In The Great Outdoors, Bryan M. Mull

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dignity As Perception: Recognition Of The Human Individual And The Individual Animal In Legal Thought, Joseph Vining

Book Chapters

'To their murderers these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals.' This was Telford Taylor, beginning the presentation of the 'Medical Case' at the Nuremberg Trials after the Second World War. The 'Medical Case' was not about genocide or war or the conduct of war. It was about experimentation on human beings; and it was this trial that produced the 'Nuremberg Code', the first control of such treatment of human beings by one another. The word 'individual' came naturally to Taylor the lawyer as a starting point, and with …

A Response To Harel, Hope, And Schwartz, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

A seminar held in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in December 2012 discussed critical comments by Alon Harel, Simon Hope, and Daniel Schwartz on themes and theses in Human Rights and Common Good, volume III of Collected Essays of John Finnis (Oxford University Press, 2011). Revised versions of these comments, and of the response I gave at this seminar, are now published in the Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies. The Response retains the informal and engaged character of this very good academic occasion. Section I considers Harel’s thesis that judicial review of legislation can be defended because my “in-authenticity” …

Burdens On Public Access, Elizabeth Blank

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

Anaerobic Digestion Technology: How Agricultural Producers And The Environment Might Profit From Nuisance Lawsuits, Catherine M. H. Keske

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Sovereignty In Theory And Practice, Winston P. Nagan, Aitza M. Haddad

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article deals with the theory and practice of sovereignty from the perspective of a trend in theoretical perspectives as well as the relevant trend in practice. The Article provides a survey of the leading thinkers’ and philosophers’ views on the nature and importance of sovereignty. The concept of sovereignty is exceedingly complex. Unpacking its meanings and uses over time is challenging. An aspect of this challenge is that the discourse about sovereignty is vibrant among diverse policy, academic, and political constituencies. At times, its narratives are relatively discrete and at other times, the narratives overlap with the discourses from …

On Strict Liability Crimes: Preserving A Moral Framework For Criminal Intent In An Intent-Free Moral World, W. Robert Thomas

Michigan Law Review

The law has long recognized a presumption against criminal strict liability. This Note situates that presumption in terms of moral intuitions about the role of intention and the unique nature of criminal punishment. Two sources-recent laws from state legislatures and recent advances in moral philosophy-pose distinct challenges to the presumption against strict liability crimes. This Note offers a solution to the philosophical problem that informs how courts could address the legislative problem. First, it argues that the purported problem from philosophy stems from a mistaken relationship drawn between criminal law and morality. Second, it outlines a slightly more nuanced moral …