5 days ago · Dan Friedman (Appellate Court of Maryland) has posted Miles to Go: A Response to Dr. Nicholas Cole’s Speech at the Third Annual Robert F. Williams Lecture on State Constitutional Law on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The article is a short response to Dr. Nicholas Cole’s speech, entitled “Writing America’s Constitutions: Understanding the …

Sep 9, 2012 · Introduction. The counter-majoritarian difficulty may be the best known problem in constitutional theory.The phrase is attributed to Alexander Bickel—a Yale Law School Professor—who is said to have introduced it in his famous book The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics.. Whatever Bickel actually meant by the phrase, it has now taken on a life of its own.

5 days ago · Ratna Kapur (School of Law) has posted On Violence, Revolution and the Self (Postcolonial Studies, volume 24, issue 2) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This article examines the integral relationship between epistemic violence and power, specifically at the level of the conception of the individual subject in law.

Introduction. Law students soon learn that the interpretation of legal texts is one of the most important things that lawyers and judges do. In a previous Legal Theory Lexicon entry, a distinction was made between "interpretation" and "construction." Although we could use other words to express the distinction, it expresses an important conceptual difference between …

Jan 16, 2025 · Cosmas Emeziem (Boston College Law School) has posted Soft International Economic Law: A New Sovereign? on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Article has two broad and intersecting goals. First, it argues that soft laws influence formal International Economic Law structures and have vital implications for commercial treaties, global financial regulation policies, investment agreements, and ...

Nov 25, 2018 · Introduction Constitutional discourse in both the academy and the public sphere has recently included quite a bit of talk about "originalism." But what about originalism's great historical rival, "living constitutionalism?" What is living constitutionalism and …

Jan 20, 2025 · George Letsas (University College London - Faculty of Laws) has posted Structural Injustice and The Law: A Philosophical Framework on SSRN. Here is the abstract: What is the role of law in injustices that philosophers call structural? Iris Marion Young argued that law is unable to capture the ...

Jack Whiteley (University of Minnesota School of Law) has posted The Three-Verdict Problem (Forthcoming, Legal Theory) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In Scotland, for hundreds of years, juries have chosen between three criminal verdicts: "guilty," "not guilty," and "not proven."

Dec 1, 2024 · Introduction. This installment of the Legal Theory Lexicon is a very brief introduction to utilitarian moral and political philosophy tailored to law students (especially first-year law students) with an interest in legal theory.. Law students learn early on that classroom discussion of cases and statutes may begin with questions about what the rule is but is likely to turn to questions about ...

Jan 16, 2025 · Youngjae Lee (Fordham University School of Law) has posted Is Prison Abolitionism Self-Defeating? (Criminal Law and Philosophy, 0[10.1007/s11572-024-09743-6]) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Essay argues that prison abolitionism is self-defeating in three ways. First, putting pressure on the...