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This is Lawrence Solum's legal theory weblog. Legal Theory Blog comments and reports on recent scholarship in jurisprudence, law and philosophy, law and economic theory, and theoretical work in substantive areas, such as constitutional law, cyberlaw, procedure, criminal law, intellectual property, torts, contracts, etc.

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Saturday, January 31, 2004
 
Legal Theory Bookworm This week the Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Constitutional Interpretation: Textual Meaning, Original Intent, and Judicial Review by Keith E. Whittington (Princeton). Whttington's book is one of the very best about originalism in constitutional theory. Here is a blurb:
    Constitutional scholarship has deteriorated into a set of armed camps, with defenders of different theories of judicial review too often talking to their own supporters but not engaging their opponents. This book breaks free of the stalemate and reinvigorates the debate over how the judiciary should interpret the Constitution. Keith Whittington reconsiders the implications of the fundamental legal commitment to faithfully interpret our written Constitution. Making use of arguments drawn from American history, political philosophy, and literary theory, he examines what it means to interpret a written constitution and how the courts should go about that task. He concludes that when interpreting the Constitution, the judiciary should adhere to the discoverable intentions of the Founders. Other originalists have also asserted that their approach is required by the Constitution but have neither defended that claim nor effectively responded to critics of their assumptions or their method. This book sympathetically examines the most sophisticated critiques of originalism based on postmodern, hermeneutic, and literary theory, as well as the most common legal arguments against originalists. Whittington explores these criticisms, their potential threat to originalism, and how originalist theory might be reconstructed to address their concerns. In a nondogmatic and readily understandable way, he explains how originalist methods can be reconciled with an appropriate understanding of legal interpretation and why originalism has much to teach all constitutional theorists. He also shows how originalism helps realize the democratic promise of the Constitution without relying on assumptions of judicial restraint. This book carefully examines both the possibilities and the limitations of constitutional interpretation and judicial review. It shows us not only what the judiciary ought to do, but what the limits of appropriate judicial review are and how judicial review fits into a larger system of constitutional government. With its detailed and wide-ranging explorations in history, philosophy, and law, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in how the Constitution ought to be interpreted and what it means to live under a constitutional government.


 
Download of the Week This week's Download of the Week is Rescuing Justice from Constructivism by G. A. Cohen (Oxford). Here is a taste of this sophisticated paper that poses a fundamental challenge for constructivists like Tim Scanlon & the late Jack Rawls. Here is a taste:
    On the constructivist view of justice, fundamental principles of justice are the outcome of an idealized legislative procedure, whose task is to elect principles that will regulate our common life. In Rawls’s version of constructivism, the legislators are citizens who are ignorant of how they in particular would fare under various candidate principles. In a Scanlonian version of constructivism about justice, the legislators are motivated to live by principles that no one could reasonably reject (I shall, for the most part, be interested, here, in the Rawlsian version of constructivism, although some of my objections to it also apply against Scanlonian and other versions of it.) But however the different versions of constructivist theories of social justice differ, whether in the nature of the selection procedure that they mandate, or in the principles that are the output of that procedure, they all assign to principles of justice the same role. That role is determined by the fact that constructivism's legislators are asked to elect principles that will regulate their common life: the principles they arrive at are said to qualify as principles of justice because of the special conditions of motivation and information under which principles that are to serve the role of regulating their common life are reached. But, and here I state my disagreement with the constructivist metatheory, in any enterprise whose purpose is to select principles of regulation, attention must be paid, either expressly or in effect, to considerations that do not reflect the content of justice itself: while justice (whatever it may be: the present point holds independently of who is right in disagreements about the content of justice) must of course influence the selection of regulating principles, factual contingencies that determine how justice is to be applied, or that make justice infeasible, and values and principles that call for a compromise with justice, also have a role to play in generating the principles that regulate social life, and legislators, whether flesh-and-blood or hypothetical, would be profoundly mistaken to ignore those further considerations. It follows that any procedure that generates the right set of principles to regulate society fails thereby to identify a set of fundamental principles of justice, by virtue of its very success in the former, distinct, exercise. But, while the relevant non-justice considerations indeed affect the outcome of the constructivist procedure, constructivists cannot acknowledge that their influence on the output of that procedure means that what it produces is not fundamental justice, and is sometimes, indeed, as we shall see in section 5, not justice at all. Given its aspiration to produce fundamental principles of justice, constructivism sets its legislators the wrong task, although the precise character, and the size, of the discrepancy between fundamental justice and the output of a constructivist procedure will, of course, vary across constructivism’s variants. That it sets its idealized legislators the wrong task is my principal - and generative - complaint against constructivism, as a meta-theory of fundamental justice.
Download it while its hot!


Friday, January 30, 2004
 
Conference Announcement: Workshop on Vagueness
    Universita' degli Studi di Bologna Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione Dipartimento di filosofia SECOND WORKSHOP ON VAGUENESS 9-10 January, 2004 Bologna Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione Via Azzo Gardino 23, Bologna Sala delle Riunioni, III piano Invited speakers Roy Cook, Patrick Greenough, Sebastiano Moruzzi, Agustin Rayo, Sven Rosenkranz, Crispin Wright Program: FRIDAY JANUARY 9th 10.30 - 12.30 Crispin Wright (St. Andrews University, New York Univerities) "Introduction: the State of Play" 12.30 - 14.30 Lunch 14.30 - 16.30 Sven Rosenkranz (Freie Universitaet Berlin) "Wright on Knowledge in Borderline Cases" Discussant: Manuel Gatto (Università del Piemonte Orientale) 16.30 - 17 Coffee Break 17 - 19 Sebastiano Moruzzi (Università del Piemonte Orientale) "Vagueness and Agnosticism" Discussant: Vittorio Morato (Università di Bologna) SATURDAY JANUARY 10th 10.30 - 12.30 Agustin Rayo (St. Andrews University) "The Unexplained Supervenience Objection" Discussant: Luca Morena (Università di Bologna) 12.30 - 14.30 Lunch 14.30 - 16.30 Roy Cook (St. Andrews University) "The Symptoms of Vagueness" Discussant: Andrea Sereni (Università di Bologna) 16.30 - 17 Coffee Break 17 - 19 Patrick Greenough (St. Andrews University) "Looks. On the Phenomenal Sorites" Discussant: Antonio Capuano (Università di Bologna) INFO: http://www.dsc.unibo.it/~leonardi/altro/vaghezza.html Organizing Commitee: Sebastiano Moruzzi, mer0090@iperbole.bologna.it Andrea Sereni, phdts@tin.it


 
Call for Papers: Human Rights, Democracy, and Religion
    Call for Papers "Human Rights, Democracy, and Religion" 21st International Social Philosophy Conference Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska (USA) July 29-31, 2004 Organized by the North American Society for Social Philosophy Submissions on the conference theme are encouraged, but proposals in all areas of social philosophy are welcome. Potential contributors should submit 300-500 word proposals for individual presentations, panels, workshops, or roundtable discussions by March 15, 2004 (North American contributors), or January 15, 2004 (international contributors) to: Lisa Schwartzman Dept. of Philosophy 517 S. Kedzie Hall Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824-1032 email: lhschwar@msu.edu Direct questions about local arrangements to: Kevin Graham Dept. of Philosophy Creighton University 2500 California Plz. Omaha, NE 68178-0301 email: kgraham@creighton.edu


 
Conference Announcement: Rocky Mountain Virtue Ethics Conference
    University of Colorado at Boulder April 3-5, 2004 The three-day Rocky Mountain Virtue Ethics Summit, organized and hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Colorado at Boulder, is an opportunity for scholars to evaluate the possibilities of and problems raised by virtue ethics. The conference will feature three of the most influential contemporary virtue ethicists: Rosalind Hursthouse, Michael Slote, and Christine Swanton. The conference is designed to illuminate the most important topics in virtue ethics for the attendees; the topics discussed will range from the foundations of virtue theory to the epistemology of virtue. In addition to the formal sessions, there will also be opportunities for informal discussions. To foster an intimate, intensive atmosphere, the Summit will host under two dozen presenters and commentators.


 
Complex Egalitarianism Check out Complex Egalitarianism by Erik Olin Wright and Harry Brighouse. Here is a taste:
    [F]ormulating . . . reform strategies and pushing for them within capitalism is essential if the anticapitalist Left is ever to be a credible force within capitalism. For the anticapitalist left to be able to take advantage of even the most favorable conditions, it has to be able to offer well-designed reforms which resonate with the public, which accomplish real improvements in the present, and which show the way forward to the better social structure we ultimately advocate. Public disillusion with the left is deep in Western societies, nowhere more so than the United States. There is no guarantee that when (or if) conditions change in the future the left will be able to take advantage of them; whether we can do so depends on what we have to offer. The left cannot be content with offering revolution and some hand-waving comments about something that has never been tried: it has to be able to point to concrete successes within capitalism and to offer up for scrutiny detailed prescriptions of what it would do as an alternative to capitalism. There is nothing elitist or undemocratic about this – the point is to subject proposals to popular scrutiny so they can be rejected, refined, or embraced.


 
Ashiagbor on Economic and Social Rights in the EU Charter at Oxford At Oxford's faculty of laws, Diamond Ashiagbor presents Economic and social rights in the EU charter (on human rights, social rights and social policy discourse).


 
Gross on Indian Citizenship & Identity at Texas At the University of Texas, Ariela Gross, USC, presents Administering Citizenship, Identity and Land in Indian Territory, 1865-1907.


 
Saul on Pornography & Speech Acts at Oxford At Oxford's Jowett Society, Jennifer Saul (Sheffield) presents Pornography, Speech Acts, and Context.


 
Start on Contractarian Approaches to Disability at North Carolina At the University of North Carolina's philosophy department, Cynthia Stark (Utah) presents How To Include the Severely Disabled in a Contractarian Theory of Justice.


 
Goodman on Telecosm Spectrum Rights Ellen P. Goodman (Rutgers University - Law School) has posted Spectrum Rights in the Telecosm to Come (San Diego Law Review, Vol. 41, 2004) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    How access to radio frequencies should be controlled and what different control structures might mean for the development of wireless communications has been the subject of intense debate. Legal scholars and economists have proposed radical reformation of the current regime of spectrum regulation, and such reform is being considered at both the FCC and in Congress. The next few years will be critical in shaping the wireless world to come. Despite the importance and timeliness of the debate over spectrum rights, the theoretical literature has not advanced beyond first principles. Many have written, in the tradition of Coase, in favor of exclusive property rights in spectrum. More recently, several scholars have countered that spectrum should be managed as a commons in which transmission rights are broadly shared, subject only to compliance with certain technical protocols. What has received little attention is the question of how spectrum disputes should be resolved the day after the revolution in spectrum management, whatever its character. Little consideration has been given to what legal structures and rules will be necessary, and to what extent even radical change in spectrum management will relieve decisionmakers of the public interest balancing the FCC undertakes today in distributing spectrum entitlements. I consider these questions by first developing a framework for understanding different kinds of interference disputes among wireless operators. Then, focusing on the possibility of "fee simple" ownership in spectrum, I apply the insights of Calabresi's and Melamed's Cathedral and follow-on literature to the resolution of these interference disputes. I conclude that a nuisance-like common law, as applied to spectrum, will require its own public interest standard. Like the FCC, decisionmakers will have to balance efficiency and fairness goals in the pursuit of a particular kind of communications environment. I show, moreover, that the development of liability standards and nuisance remedies will be difficult and costly. The costs and indeterminacy of dispute resolution could be reduced, however, with the development of a hybrid approach that combines the strengths of regulation and the common law. Such an approach might involve defining categorical nuisances in spectrum and establishing presumptions as to the appropriate entitlements in different kinds of interference disputes. The commons alternative to property rights will not eliminate all this complexity and uncertainty. In the wireless commons, as in the wireless subdivision, the resolution of interference disputes will require choices among various efficiency and fairness goals. Here too, judicious use of the regulatory function will be necessary to implement a mature legal structure for the telecosm to come. Whether a revolution in spectrum management is at hand or still far off, the administration of spectrum rights is changing. These changes should be undertaken with an eye to the private and common property rights of the future, and the efficient and fair resolution of spectrum disputes.


 
Anti-Theory in Literature Check out Theory in chaos by David Kirby over at CSMonitor.com:
    [F]or some academics, what the rejection of theory is really about is the joyous rediscovery of literature itself. There is today "a renewed appreciation of the irreducible particularity of an art work, an author, an historical moment, a particularity that theory may illuminate but never fully explain," according to Dennis Todd, professor of British literature at Georgetown University.
The joys of caselaw, anyone?


 
Reidenberg on States and Internet Enforcement Joel Reidenberg (Fordham University School of Law) has posted States and Internet Enforcement (University of Ottawa Law & Technology Journal, Vol. 1, 2004) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    This essay addresses the enforcement of decisions through Internet instruments. Traditionally, a state's enforcement power was bounded by territorial limits. However, for the online environment, the lack of local assets and the assistance of foreign courts no longer constrain state enforcement powers. States can enforce their decisions and policies through Internet instruments. Online mechanisms are available and can be developed for such pursuits. The starting point is a brief justification of Internet enforcement as the obligation of democratic states. Next, the essay describes the movement to re-engineer the Internet infrastructure by public and private actions and argues that the re-engineering facilitates state enforcement of legal and policy decisions. The essay maintains that states will increasingly try to use network intermediaries such as payment systems and Internet service providers as enforcement instruments. Finally and most importantly, the essay focuses on ways that states may harness the power of technological instruments such as worms, filters and packet interceptors to enforce decisions and sanction malfeasance.


 
Mossoff on Epstein on "Is Copyright Property?" Adam Mossoff (Michigan State University-DCL College of Law) has posted Is Copyright Property? A Comment on Richard Epstein's Liberty vs. Property (from Adam Mossoff, PROMOTING MARKETS IN CREATIVITY: COPYRIGHT IN THE INTERNET AGE, James V. DeLong, ed., 2004) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    This short essay is derived from commentary on Richard Epstein's article, Liberty vs. Property, which were delivered at the 2003 conference on Promoting Markets in Creativity: Copyright in the Internet Age, co-sponsored by The Progress & Freedom Foundation and the George Mason University's Tech Center. The essay suggests that the opponents of Epstein's position that copyright entitlements are derived from similar policy concerns as tangible property rights would reject his thesis at the conceptual level, maintaining that copyright is not property, especially in the context of digital media. By assuming their rallying cry that "copyright is policy, not property," this essay reveals that opponents of digital copyright are caught in a dilemma of their own making. In one sense, their claim that "copyright is policy, not property," is an uninformative truism about all legal entitlements, and in another sense, represents a fundamental misconception of the history and concept of copyright. The concept and historical development of copyright are more substantial than its representation today as merely a monopoly privilege issued to authors according to the government's utility calculus. The essay concludes with the observation that those who wish to see copyright eliminated or largely restricted in digital media are in fact driven by an impoverished concept of property that has dominated twentieth-century discourse on property generally. As a doctrine in transition - we are still in the midst of the digital revolution-copyright may be criticized for various fits and starts in its application to new areas, but the transition itself does not change copyright's status as a property entitlement.


 
Speta on FCC Authority Over the Internet James B. Speta (Northwestern University - School of Law) has posted FCC Authority to Regulate the Internet: Creating It and Limiting It (Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, Vol. 35, No. 15, 2004) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    This short paper discusses the FCC's authority, under its so-called ancillary jurisdiction (under Title I of the Communications Act), to address competition problems that may arise in Internet markets. It is argued that the FCC likely does not have jurisdiction to address most Internet regulatory issues, because whatever expansive readings such ancillary jurisdiction has received in the past are no longer tenable. The paper proposes, instead, a new, limited statutory interconnection rule, which the FCC could enforce in limited ways in Internet markets. The paper also argues that, even if the FCC does have authority to develop its own common law of Internet regulation, a limited grant of statutory authority is a superior regulatory construct. The paper also argues that FCC administration of this proposed statute is superior to remitting all Internet interconnection problems to the common law processes of antitrust. Professor Philip Weiser's contribution to the same journal issue (also available on SSRN) takes a different, more expansive view of the FCC's ancillary jurisdiction.


Thursday, January 29, 2004
 
Fisher on Alterntive Compensation for the Entertainment Industry The Thursday is Workshop Day post below already mentions that Terry Fisher (Harvard Law School) is delivering An Alternative Compensation System for the Entertainment Industry at Stanford's Olin series today. I've now had a chance to look at Fisher's paper on this very timely and important topic. Here is a taste:
    [T]his chapter proposes that we replace major portions of the copyright and encryption-reinforcement models . . . a governmentally administered reward system. In brief, here?s how such a system would work. A creator who wished to collect revenue when her song or film were heard or watched would register it with the Copyright Office. With registration would come a unique file name, which would be used to track transmissions of digital copies of the work. The government would raise, through taxes, sufficient money to compensate registrants for making their works available to the public. Using techniques pioneered by American and European performing rights organizations and television rating services, a government agency would estimate the frequency with which each song and film was heard or watched by consumers. Each registrant would then periodically be paid by the agency a share of the tax revenues proportional to the relative popularity of his or her creation. Once this system were in place, we would modify copyright law so as to eliminate most of the current prohibitions on unauthorized reproduction, distribution, adaptation, and performance of audio and video recordings. Music and films would thus be readily available, legally, for free.
If you are interested in the future of copyright, you will want to read this Chapter from Fisher's forthcoming book.


 
Rational Agency Without Noumenal Selves As I posted below, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is presenting Rational Agency and Normative Concepts at Penn's law and philosophy series. I've had a chance to look at this marvelous paper. Here is a very brief snippet from the introduction:
    As Kant emphasized, famously, there’s a difference between merely acting in accord with duty and acting from duty, where the latter requires a distinctive capacity. More generally, there is a difference between conforming to norms (intentionally or not, from ulterior motives or not) and doing what one does because one judges it to be morally good or right. The difference is, I think, central to morality and my main interest here is to get a handle on what has to be true of people for them to do what they do because they think it right or good. The abilities required are, I think, a special case of the abilities that are required to be what Kant identified as a rational agent. I focus on this more general capacity (the having of which is a necessary condition of moral agency) in the rest of the paper. As will become clear, I think Kant was right that the rational agency is important. I hope, though, to spell out what rational agency requires in a way that steers clear of Kant’s own appeal to hypothetical and categorical imperatives as well as his eventual reliance on noumenal selves and kingdom of ends. What follows is an attempt to underwrite Kantian convictions (concerning rational agency) with more or less Humean resources.
Highly recommended.


 
Original Meaning and Martin Luther King, Jr. See this post by John Rosenberg on Discriminations.


 
Thursday is Workshop Day Here is the roundup of workshops from hither and yon:
    At Penn's law and philosophy series, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is presenting Rational Agency and Normative Concepts with comments by Hans Oberdiek.
    Also at Penn, Martha Nussbaum (Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Economics, University of Chicago) is giving the JUDITH R. BERKOWITZ ENDOWED LECTURESHIP IN WOMEN'S STUDIES. Her title is Gender Justice, Human Rights, and Human Capabilities.
    At Boston University law, Susan Koniak (BU) presents How Like a Winter? The Plight of Absent Class Members Denied Adequate Representation.
    At Florida State, Jennifer Mnookin, University of Virginia School of Law, presents Atomism, Holism and the Law of Evidence.
    At Georgetown's Colloquium on Intellectual Property & Technology Law, Rosemary J. Coombe, York University, presents The Globalization of Intellectual Property: Informational Capital and Its Cultures.
    At Stanford's Olin series, Terry Fisher (Harvard Law School) presents An Alternative Compensation System for the Entertainment Industry.
    At the University of Michigan's law and economics series, Omri Ben-Shahar, Michigan, presents "Agreeing to Disagree": Filling Gaps in Deliberately Incomplete. The title on the website is "incomplete," but not deliberately so.
    At George Mason, Craig Lerner, GMU School of Law, presents “Accomodations” for the Learning Disabled: A Level Playing Field or Affirmative Action for Elites?
    At Oxford's Public International Law Discussion Group, Robert Volterra presents The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf: Technical Science, Star Chamber, or Quasi-Judicial Tribunal?
    At the Australian National University's RSSS, Norva Lo (La Trobe University) presents Humpty Dumpty Analysis of 'Valuing', Empty Analysis of 'Valuable'.
    At UCLA's legal history series, Sally Gordon, University of Pennsylvania, presents Parochial School Funding: Catholics, Protestants, and Legal Activism at Mid-Century.


 
Will the Tenure Devolution Hit the Legal Academy? While the legal academia sleeps, tenure is rapidly disappearing. Consider the following from The Morphing of the American Academic Profession by Martin Finkelstein:
    Quite beyond the surge in part-time faculty appointments over the past quarter century, the majority (i.e., over half) of all new full-time faculty hires in the past decade have been to non-tenure-eligible, or fixed-term contract positions (Finkelstein and Schuster 2001). Put another way, in the year 2001, only about one-quarter of new faculty appointments were to full-time tenure track positions (i.e., half were part-time, and more than half of the remaining full-time positions were “off” the tenure track). This is nothing short of what Jack Schuster and I have labeled elsewhere a new academic “revolution”—albeit a largely silent one.
Of course, the legal academy already has non-tenure track positions for legal writing instructors, clinicians, and adjuncts. More interesting is the recent development of the pre-tenure track (VAP or Visiting Associate Position) that is increasingly becoming an entry point for tenure-track jobs in the legal academy. One can imagine the evolution of a system where entry-level candidates must essentially fulfill the old-fashioned requirements for tenure before getting onto the tenure-track.


 
Nelkin on Moral Luck Dana Nelkin (UC San Diego & affiliated with USD's Institute on Law and Philosophy) has the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy entry on Moral Luck posted. Here is a taste:
    Moral luck occurs when an agent can be correctly treated as an object of moral judgment despite the fact that a significant aspect of what she is assessed for depends on factors beyond her control. Bernard Williams writes, “when I first introduced the expression moral luck, I expected to suggest an oxymoron” (Williams 1993, 251). Indeed, immunity from luck has been thought by many to be part of the very essence of morality. And yet, as Williams (1981) and Thomas Nagel (1979) showed in their now classic pair of articles, it appears that our everyday judgments and practices commit us to the existence of moral luck. The problem of moral luck arises because we seem to be committed to the general principle that we are morally assessable only to the extent that what we are assessed for depends on factors under our control (call this the “Control Principle”). At the same time, when it comes to countless particular cases, we morally assess agents for things that depend on factors that are not in their control. And making the situation still more problematic is the fact that a very natural line of reasoning suggests that it is impossible to morally assess anyone for anything if we adhere to the Control Principle.
Also up at the superb Stanford site Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism by Mark van Roojen.


 
Ginsburg & McAdams on International Dispute Resolution Tom Ginsburg and Richard H. McAdams (University of Illinois College of Law and Yale Law School (Visiting)) have posted Adjudicating in Anarchy: An Expressive Theory of International Dispute Resolution (William & Mary Law Review, Fothcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    Frequent compliance with the adjudicative decisions of international institutions, such as the International Court of Justice, is puzzling because these institutions do not have the power domestic courts possess to impose sanctions. This paper uses game theory to explain the power of international adjudication via a set of expressive theories, showing how law can be effective without sanctions. When two parties disagree about conventions that arise in recurrent situations involving coordination (such as a convention of deferring to territorial claims of first possessors), the pronouncements of third-party legal decision-makers - adjudicators - can influence their behavior in two ways. First, adjudicative expression may construct focal points that clarify ambiguities in the convention. Second, adjudicative expression may provide signals that cause parties to update their beliefs about the facts that determine how the convention applies. Even without the power of sanctions or legitimacy, an adjudicator's focal points and signals influence the parties' behavior. After explaining the expressive power of adjudication, the paper applies the analysis to a range of third party efforts to resolve international disputes, including the first-ever review of the entire docket of the International Court of Justice. We find strong empirical support for the theory that adjudication works by clarifying ambiguous conventions or facts via cheap talk or signaling. We claim that the theory has broad implications for understanding the power of adjudication generally.


 
Lipton on Information Policy Jacqueline D. Lipton (Case Western Reserve University School of Law) has posted A Framework for Information Law and Policy (Oregon Law Review, Vol. 82, No. 3, 2004) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    The information age calls for new legal and policy approaches to the ways in which we deal with information. Previous moves in this area have tended to center around developing a 'cyberlaw' or 'Internet law'. This has involved largely piecemeal attempts to gather together miscellaneous legal issues that happen to relate to digital communications technologies. No clear discernible normative framework has yet emerged. Rather than focusing on these new technologies, any new legal and policy framework for the information age should be organized around the idea of 'information' per se, with its focus on society's interactions with various kinds of information. Such a development would require the identification and development of normative principles that will shape the development of relevant laws and policies. This article suggests that an appropriate set of normative principles might be derived from identifying a set of 'control' and 'access' rights in relation to information. These rights could be utilized as 'organizing tools' for the development of a legal and policy framework that would help inform the development of a harmonized and cohesive set of 'information law and policy principles' for the global information age. The following discussion demonstrates how this might be achieved in theory and practice, and presents case studies to illustrate how such a law and policy framework might prove useful in informing future debate in the 'information law' area.


Wednesday, January 28, 2004
 
KaZaA Strikes Back Check out the CNET story here:
    A U.S. federal court has cleared the way for Kazaa file-sharing software owner Sharman Networks to sue the entertainment industry for copyright infringement, Sharman said on Friday. Sharman, targeted by studios and record companies because its software is used to trade music and video files, has sought to turn the tables on the industry, accusing it of misusing Kazaa software to invade users' privacy and send corrupt files and threatening messages.
This should be fun!


 
Hasen on Slate Election law superblogger Rick Hasen has a new piece on Slate. Here is a taste:
    Whoever ultimately emerges as the presumptive Democratic nominee from the front-loaded primary season can expect a pummeling from President Bush's re-election committee. That committee will have between $130 million and $200 million to spend on attack ads during Bush's own "primary season" (in which he is running unopposed by serious candidates) lasting up to the Republican convention—a convention slated later than usual to maximize the pummeling time. Bush's committee is borrowing from Bill Clinton's 1996 playbook when the Democrats used that period to run ads beating up on presumptive Republican nominee Bob Dole, though with only a fraction of the money raised by Bush's committee. Whether supporters of the Democratic nominee will have the resources to fight back this spring and summer may depend a great deal on arcane administrative decisions to be made by the Federal Election Commission. At issue is whether pro-Democratic non-party organizations can raise large "soft money" donations to spend supporting the Democrats and pummeling Bush back. The fight to limit donations to these groups has created an odd alliance between campaign-finance-reform organizations and the Republican Party, and the coalition just may win before the FEC.
I always learn from Hasen on election-law issues. Surf on over!


 
Confirmations Wars Department: More on the Memos The Hill has a detailed report on the inner workings of the Senate Judiciary Committee in relation to the access by Republican staffers to Democratic memos on judicial selection. The story focuses on a shift in control of the committee from the leadership to Senator Hatch's personal staff. Here is a taste:
    Hatch’s acquiescence to the probe seems to have shifted control of the fight over judicial nominees from the leadership, whom conservatives had convinced to take an aggressive approach, to that of his personal office. The conservatives’ ire has focused on Patricia Knight, the chief of staff in Hatch’s personal office, who conservative staffers say is now calling the shots at the Judiciary Committee.


 
Hasen's Guide to Bush v. Gore Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog has posted A Critical Guide to Bush v. Gore Scholarship on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    This article evaluates the emerging legal and political science scholarship created in the wake of the United States Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, the case that ended the 2000 Florida election controversy between supporters of George W. Bush and Al Gore. It surveys answers that scholars have given to four central questions: (1) Were the Supreme Court's majority or concurring opinions legally sound? (2) Was the Supreme Court's result justified, even if the legal reasoning contained in the opinions was unsound? (3) What effects, if any, will the case and the social science research it has spurred have on the development of voting rights law? (4) What does the Court's resolution of Bush v. Gore tell us about the Supreme Court as an institution?


 
Kamm on Just War Theory and Terrorism at UCL At University College's Colloquium in Legal and Social Philosophy, Frances Kamm presents Failures of Just War Theory and Terrorism. Here is a bit from the introduction:
    This article has three parts. In the first part, I shall try to provide an overview of issues related to both terror and nonterror-killing inside and outside of standard war. It provides a framework within which we can locate some issues that will be explored in more detail in subsequent parts. The second part deals with the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) in standard just war theory. I criticize its prohibition on intending harm and consider cases where it is permissible, for example, to terror bomb combatants and noncombatants. Through criticism of the DDE as a way of justifying unintended noncombatant deaths, I am led in the third part to focus on (A) the relative degrees of inviolability of various types of people in intergroup conflict and (B) a better justification for the permissibility of causing some types of foreseen noncombatant deaths.
This is the famous series, hosted by Ronald Dworkin and Stephen Guest, at University College. Kamm is the first speaker of 2004!


 
Parry on Torture at Villanova At Villanova law today, John Parry (University of Pittsburgh School of Law) presents Chavez v. Martinez and the Jurisprudence of Torture.


 
Levinson on Non-Evidence at Loyola Marymount At Loyola Marymount, Laurie Levenson (LMU) presents Why Looks Matter: The Impact of Non-Evidence on the Courtroom.


 
Sussman on Disgrace at Yale Today at Yale's philosophy series, David Sussman presents Kant and the Politics of Disgrace..


 
Tehranian on Natural Law and Fair Use John Tehranian (University of Utah) has posted Et Tu, Fair Use? The Triumph of Natural Law Copyright on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    Since its advent in 1841, the fair use doctrine has been hailed as a powerful check on the limited monopoly granted by copyright. Fair use, we are told, protects public access to the building blocks of creation and advances research and criticism. This Article challenges the conventional wisdom about fair use. Far from protecting the public domain, the fair use doctrine has played a central role in the triumph of a natural law vision of copyright that privileges the inherent property interests of authors in the fruits of their labor over the utilitarian goal of progress in the arts. Thus, the fair use doctrine has actually enabled the expansion of the copyright monopoly well beyond its original bounds and has undermined the goals of the copyright system as envisioned by the Framers. Specifically, this the Article first analyzes the anti-monopolistic impetus for federal copyright protection and reflects on the original understanding of copyright as epitomized by a series of early cases on the rights of translation and abridgement. The Article then examines the impact of the fair use doctrine on the copyright monopoly and progress in the arts. All told, the Article calls for a serious reassessment of the role of fair use in the infringement calculus, especially in an age where networked computers and malleable digital content has enabled new forms of artistic and post-modern experimentation.


 
Liebowitz and Margolis on the Economists' Brief in Eldred Stan J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis (University of Texas at Dallas - School of Management and North Carolina State University) have posted Seventeen Famous Economists Weigh in on Copyright: The Role of Theory, Empirics, and Network Effects on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    The case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, which sought to have the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA, aka Sonny Bono Copyright Act) found unconstitutional, was recently argued before the Supreme Court. A remarkable group of seventeen economists including five Noble laureates, representing a wide spectrum of opinion in economics, submitted an amicus curie brief in support of Eldred. The economists condemned CTEA on the grounds that the revenues earned during the extension are so heavily discounted that they have almost no value, while the extended protection of aged works creates immediate monopoly deadweight losses and increases the costs of creating new derivative works. More important, we believe, than the particulars of this case, is the articulation of the economic issues involved in copyright extension. The articulation of those issues is not well framed in the brief. Nor is the case as one sided as the Eldred economists have claimed. First, private ownership of creative works may internalize potentially important externalities with respect to the use of existing works and the creation of derivative works. Second, the Eldred economists neglect the elasticity of the supply of creative works in their analysis, focusing instead solely on the benefits received by authors, leading to potential underestimation of additional creativity that confers benefits immediately. Third, the Eldred economists neglect certain features of copyright law, such as fair use, the distinction between idea and expression, and the parody exemption, which mitigate the costs of copyright. Finally, we present data that counters a common claim that copyright extension so far out in the future can have little effect on creativity. The small fraction of books that have the majority of commercial value when they are new appear to remain valuable for periods of time that are consistent with the expanded term of copyright under CTEA.


 
Two by Weisbach David A. Weisbach (University of Chicago Law School) has posted two papers on SSRN:
    The (Non) Taxation of Risk:
      A long line of literature argues that income taxes do not tax the return to risk bearing. The conclusion, if correct, has important implications for the choice between an income tax and a consumption tax and for the design of income taxes. The literature, however, on its face seems unrealistic because it models only very simplified tax systems, assumes perfect rationality by individuals, and requires the government to take complex positions in securities markets to hold in equilibrium. This paper examines the extent to which these problems affect the conclusions we draw from the literature. It argues that the criticisms are overstated. Moreover, the criticisms do not detract from the central value of the models, which is to understand ideal income taxes, which are the purported goal of most who support an income tax.
    Corporate Tax Avoidance:
      This essay analyzes the problem of corporate tax avoidance. It shows how the marginal efficiency cost of funds and optimal elasticity of taxable income measures can be used to analyze the problem and determine the proper scope of allowable tax planning. It then analyzes the optimal form of tax laws addressing shelters, such as whether the law should use more detailed rules or broad standards.


 
Iontcheva on the International Criminal Court Jenia Iontcheva (University of Chicago - Law School) has posted Nationalizing International Criminal Law: The Internatinoal Criminal Court as a Roving Mixed Court on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    International law scholars often assume that the best way to enforce human rights is by establishing strong international institutions that develop the law progressively and enforce it independently. Political realists counter that such institutions are only as useful as powerful states permit them to be, and discourage expansive visions of their mandate. Partisans of the recently created International Criminal Court (ICC) must come to terms with the realist challenge. They must work to adapt the institution accordingly, without abandoning hope for the project altogether. Although the ICC will be constrained by the state support it commands, it can make a difference in the enforcement of human rights law by encouraging and assisting national authorities in upholding and enforcing international law.


Tuesday, January 27, 2004
 
Bainbridge on Corporate Responsibility for Past Wrongs Stephen Bainbridge has a provocative & sensible post on this interesting topic. Here's a taste:
    So who do we punish when we force the corporation to pay reparations? Since the payment comes out of the corporation's treasury, it reduces the value of the residual claim on the corporation's assets and earnings. In other words, the shareholders pay. Not the directors and officers who actually committed the alleged wrongdoing (who in most of these cases are long dead anyway), but modern shareholders who did nothing wrong. Retributive justice is legitimate only where the actor to be punished has committed acts to which moral blameworthiness can be assigned. Even if you assume the corporation is still benefiting from alleged wrongdoing that happened decades or even centuries ago, which seems implausible, the modern shareholders are mere holders in due course. It is therefore difficult to see a moral basis punishing them. They have done nothing for which they are blameworthy


 
Cohen on Justice and Constructivism at Oxford At Oxford's Jurisprudence Discussion Group, G. A. Cohen (Oxford) presents Rescuing Justice from Constructivism. Here is a taste:
    On the constructivist view of justice, fundamental principles of justice are the outcome of an idealized legislative procedure, whose task is to elect principles that will regulate our common life. In Rawls’s version of constructivism, the legislators are citizens who are ignorant of how they in particular would fare under various candidate principles. In a Scanlonian version of constructivism about justice, the legislators are motivated to live by principles that no one could reasonably reject (I shall, for the most part, be interested, here, in the Rawlsian version of constructivism, although some of my objections to it also apply against Scanlonian and other versions of it.) But however the different versions of constructivist theories of social justice differ, whether in the nature of the selection procedure that they mandate, or in the principles that are the output of that procedure, they all assign to principles of justice the same role. That role is determined by the fact that constructivism's legislators are asked to elect principles that will regulate their common life: the principles they arrive at are said to qualify as principles of justice because of the special conditions of motivation and information under which principles that are to serve the role of regulating their common life are reached. But, and here I state my disagreement with the constructivist metatheory, in any enterprise whose purpose is to select principles of regulation, attention must be paid, either expressly or in effect, to considerations that do not reflect the content of justice itself: while justice (whatever it may be: the present point holds independently of who is right in disagreements about the content of justice) must of course influence the selection of regulating principles, factual contingencies that determine how justice is to be applied, or that make justice infeasible, and values and principles that call for a compromise with justice, also have a role to play in generating the principles that regulate social life, and legislators, whether flesh-and-blood or hypothetical, would be profoundly mistaken to ignore those further considerations. It follows that any procedure that generates the right set of principles to regulate society fails thereby to identify a set of fundamental principles of justice, by virtue of its very success in the former, distinct, exercise. But, while the relevant non-justice considerations indeed affect the outcome of the constructivist procedure, constructivists cannot acknowledge that their influence on the output of that procedure means that what it produces is not fundamental justice, and is sometimes, indeed, as we shall see in section 5, not justice at all. Given its aspiration to produce fundamental principles of justice, constructivism sets its legislators the wrong task, although the precise character, and the size, of the discrepancy between fundamental justice and the output of a constructivist procedure will, of course, vary across constructivism’s variants. That it sets its idealized legislators the wrong task is my principal - and generative - complaint against constructivism, as a meta-theory of fundamental justice.
Update: I've now had a chance to look at this paper (or book excerpt). Cohen has given other parts of this project in other fora over the last year or so. As always, Cohen's work is brilliant and interesting. The fundamental argument--that constructivism does not capture the internal requirements of justice, because constructivism takes into account external constraints on justice--certainly gets at something. But what? My first read of this section of the paper left me with the impression that this particular criticism may be deflected by moves that merely clarify the aim of the constructivist project without modifying the substantive conclusions that constructivists reach. Cohen makes the following comment in a footnote:
    The denizens of Rawls’s original position do not, of course, expressly distinguish between considerations of justice and other considerations. They simply choose whatever principle which, given their particular combination of knowledge and ignorance, they see (not as serving justice but) as serving their interests. But principles of regulation must reflect both sorts of considerations. Accordingly, if the denizens of the original position select the right principles of regulation, then the principles they select are not fundamental principles of justice, but, at best, applied ones.
    (Note that, for all that I am here purporting to show, the original position might be the right procedure for generating principles of regulation. But I do not, in fact, believe that, for uneccentric reasons that have nothing to do with the case being mounted here.)
Expressed in this way, the comment seems to be based on an odd construal of the role that interests play in constructivist reasoning. It is as if Cohen believes that the original position--to take Rawls's form of constructivism--is a representation of self-interest, because the representative parties in the original position are concerned with the shares of primary goods of those whom they represent. I'm sure I've got this wrong, but it almost seems as if Cohen is arguing that theories of justice that take interests into account are thereby partially theories of interest and not theories of justice. Perhaps, but if interests are of concern to justice, then this point seems toothless. The question is whether interests play the right role in the theory--not whether they play a role at all. This really is a must download for anyone interested in contemporary political philosophy. My very highest recommendation!


 
Lichtman on Irreperable Harms and Benefits at Chicago At the University of Chicago, The Coase Lecture is presented by Douglas Lichtman, Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School, who will deliver Irreparable Harms and Irreparable Benefits.
Update: Amanda Butler has a report on the event here.


 
Szigeti on Moral Sentiments & Dilemmas at Oxford Today at Oxford's Ockham Society, Andreas Szigeti presents Moral Sentiments and Moral Dilemmas.


 
Fennell on Contracting Communities I was especially interested in this paper, which approaches its question from a very interesting perspective. Lee Anne Fennell (University of Texas School of Law) has posted Contracting Communities (University of Illinois Law Review, 2004) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    Private residential developments governed by homeowners associations have rapidly proliferated in recent decades. The servitudes that form the backbone of these private developments are usually viewed as autonomy- and value-enhancing private contractual arrangements that are presumptively valid. The appealing contractual justification for private land use regimes seems to have shut down many of the usual paths of inquiry into the ability of the resulting arrangements to deliver on consumer preferences. In this article, I focus on several factors that can drive a wedge between homeowner preferences and the private land use regimes that the market provides. The analysis proceeds in six parts. I begin by sketching the conceptual underpinnings of private developments, after outlining some key features of the legal landscape in which they are presently flourishing. Part II examines the problems that arise from the fact that servitudes are typically uniform ? and uniformly enforced ? across an entire community. Part III examines two dynamics that might push servitude regimes towards a stricter convergence point than many individuals might desire: the potential for adverse selection into lenient regimes, and the path dependence of community formation. Part IV considers some additional obstacles to the realization of consumer preferences in servitude regimes, including gaps in consumer understanding and difficulties that consumers may have in effectively sending market signals to developers. Part V considers the implications of a contract-based and association-administered regime for the development and deployment of norms and social capital within a community. Part VI presents some concluding observations that suggest how we might begin to address these difficulties.
Highly recommended.


 
Two by Goldman Eric Goldman (Marquette University - Law School) has posted two papers on SSRN:
    Where's the Beef? Dissecting Spam's Purported Harms (John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law, Forthcoming):
      Virtually everyone seems to agree that spam causes tremendous harm, but there is surprisingly little consensus on exactly what those harms are. This Essay examines various harms that spam purportedly causes to assess if the harm is real and if spam is treated dichotomously compared to other media communications. Based on this analysis, the Essay concludes that many harms purportedly caused by spam are not appropriate policy justifications for regulation.
    Warez Trading and Criminal Copyright Infringement:
      Warez traders have been blamed as a significant cause of copyright piracy, which has led to several dozen conviction of warez traders in the past two years. The article analyzes how criminal copyright infringement and other laws apply to warez trading. The article also describes the prosecutions of warez trading, including a comprehensive chart of all warez trading convictions. The article concludes with a brief policy discussion about the problems created by Congress' effort to criminalize warez trading.


 
Conference Announcement: Religiously Affiliated Law Schools
    A Conference of religiously affiliated law schools March 25–27, 2004 University of Notre Dame Law School
    Friday, March 25, 2004 9:00?10:15 a.m. Session 1
      curriculum: religion in the public law courses Religion in the Teaching of Legal History--Howard Bromberg, Ave Maria Law School The Relevance of Religion in Teaching Criminal Law--Sam Levine, Pepperdine Law School Religion? in the Constitutional Law Course--Richard Myers, Ave Maria Law School Notes Toward a Catholic Critique of American Establishment Clause Jurisprudence--John Stinneford, University of Dayton School of Law
    10:30 a.m. Session 2
      curriculum: religion in the private law courses Religious Belief and Private Law Ordering--Matt Harrington, George Washington University School of Law The Intersection of Law and Theology in a Products Liability Course--Amy Uelmen, Fordham Law School Law and Community in the Law School Classroom: The Case of Torts--Robert Cochran, Pepperdine Law School Intersections of Law and Religion in a First-Year Property Course--David Thomas, BYU Law School
    1:30 p.m. Session 3
      religion across the curriculum Faith and Formation--Tom Mengler, St. Thomas School of Law The Jesuit Legal Tradition and the Curriculum--Dan Morrissey, Gonzaga Law School Teaching Ethics in a Religiously Affiliated Law School--Rev. John J. Coughlin, O.F.M., Notre Dame Law School
    3:00 p.m. Session 4
      assessment strategies Assessment of the Impact of Religious Faith on the Well-Being of Law Students--Jerry Organ, University of St. Thomas School of Law A Longitudinal and Holistic Design for Assessing the Law Student Experience--Mark Guntym, Institutional Research, University of Notre Dame Listening to Learners: The Law School Survey of Student Engagement--Patrick O?Day, Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research
    Saturday, March 27 10:15 a.m. Session 5
      integrating faculty who do not share the institution's religious tradition into advancing the tradition Pilgrimage or Exodus: Responding to Faculty Faith Diversity at Religious Law Schools--Marie A. Failinger, Hamline University School of Law Most Faculty Do Not Support the Mission: The Dilemma of (Most) Catholic Law Schools, and How to Deal With It--Mark Sargent, Villanova Law School Fostering the Conversation--Bill Treanor, Fordham Law School
    10:30 a.m. Session 6
      "hard scholarship" on relevant issues of interest to the legal academy, but from particular "faith-based" perspectives "[T]hrough a glass, darkly...": Christianity, Law and Capital Execution in Twenty-First-Century America--Anthony Baker, Campbell University School of Law Catholic Social Teaching on Taxation, Canon Law, and Beyond--Matthew J. Barrett, Notre Dame Law School Natural Law in the Development of International Human Rights Law--Kathryn Lee Boyd, Pepperdine Law School Render Unto Caesar: How the Catholic Church Should Deal with Civil Legal Authorities in the Clergy Abuse Cases--James V. Feinerman, Georgetown University Law Center


 
Guzman on the Design of International Agreements Andrew T. Guzman (University of California, Berkeley - School of Law (Boalt Hall)) has posted The Design of International Agreements on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    States entering into international agreements have at their disposal several tools to enhance the credibility of their commitments, including the ability to make the agreement a formal treaty rather than soft law, provide for mandatory dispute resolution procedures, and establish monitoring mechanisms. Each of these strategies - referred to as "design elements" - increases the costs associated with the violation of an agreement and, therefore, the probability of compliance. Yet even a passing familiarity with international agreements makes it clear that states routinely fail to include these design elements in their agreements. This Article explains why rational states sometimes prefer to design their agreements in such a way as to make them less credible and, therefore, more easily violated. In contrast to domestic law, where contractual violations are sanctioned through zero-sum payments from the breaching party to the breached-against party, sanctions for violations of international agreements are not zero-sum. To the extent sanctions exist, they almost always represent a net loss to the parties. For example, a reputational loss felt by the violating party yields little or no offsetting benefit to its counter-party. When entering into an agreement, then, the parties take into account the possibility of a violation and recognize that if it takes place, the net loss to the parties will be larger if credibility enhancing design measures are in place. In other words, the design elements offer a benefit in the form of greater compliance, but do so by increasing the cost of a violation and the net cost to the parties. When deciding which design elements, if any, to include, the parties must balance the benefits of increased compliance against the costs triggered in the event of a violation.


Monday, January 26, 2004
 
Weekend Wrap Up On Saturday, the Download of the Week was Inheriting Responsibilties by David Miller. Also on Saturday, The Legal Theory Bookworm recommended Michael Moore's Placing Blame, a General Theory of the Criminal Law. Sunday's regular features were delayed, but you can now find the Legal Theory Lexicon entry on Causation and the Legal Theory Calendar.


 
Mirowski on the Philosophical Hammer at George Mason At George Mason's Philosophy, Politics and Economics series, Phil Mirowski (Department of Economics, University of Notre Dame) presents Philosophizing with a Hammer.


 
Silberman on International Jurisdiction and Judgments at NYU At NYU's law series, Linda Silberman discusses the ALI Project on International Jurisdiction and Judgments.


 
Holthoefer on International Law and Order at Chicago Today at the University of Chicago's political theory workshop series, Anne Holthoefer, University of Chicago, presents A Procrustean Bed? International Law and the Shaping of International Order.


 
Crisp on Hedonism at Oxford Today at Oxford's Moral Philosophy Seminar, Roger Crisp (Oxford) presents Hedonism Reconsidered.


 
Strahilevitz on the Right to Destroy Lior Strahilevitz (University of Chicago Law School) has posted The Right to Destroy on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    Do you have the right to destroy that which is yours? This paper addresses that fundamental question. In contested cases, courts are becoming increasingly hostile to owners' efforts to destroy their own valuable property. This sentiment has been echoed in the legal academy, with recent scholarship calling for further restrictions on an owner's right to destroy cultural property. Yet this property right has received little systematic attention. The paper therefore examines owners' rights to destroy various forms of property, including buildings, jewelry, transplantable organs, frozen human embryos, patents, personal papers, and works of art. A systematic treatment of the subject helps support a qualified defense of the right to destroy one's own property. For example, an examination of American laws and customs regarding the disposition of cadaveric organs helps one understand and weigh the expressive interests that prompt people to try to destroy jewelry via will. Similarly, an examination of patent suppression case law points toward a form of ex ante analysis that has been de-emphasized in opinions involving the destruction of buildings and other structures. An analysis of cases involving the destruction of frozen human embryos may shed light on creators' rights to burn unpublished manuscripts or works of art. And collectivist theories of free speech may help explain why the Visual Artists Rights Act sensibly prohibits the destruction of paintings by living artists, but not Old Masters. In advocating a more unified treatment of destruction rights, the paper argues that greater deference to owners' destructive wishes often serves important welfare and expressive interests. The paper also critiques existing case law that calls for particular hostility toward will provisions that direct the destruction of a testator's valuable property. Courts and commentators have not given particularly persuasive justifications for restricting testamentary destruction, and the paper proposes a safe-harbor provision whereby sincere testators who jump through certain hoops during their lifetimes can have their destructive wishes enforced.


 
Gibbons on a Federal Common Law of Copyright Contract Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons (University of Toledo - College of Law) has posted Stop Mucking up Copyright Law: A Proposal for a Federal Common Law of Contract is a Common Sense Solution (Rutgers Law Journal, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    This article proposes an alternative to the two current schools of academic thought regarding which body of contract law should govern copyrights. The traditionalists contend that existing state contract law, either common law contract or Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, is adequate to meet the marketplace's need for stable and predictable law. The other school argues that neither form of state law is adequate. Rejecting existing contract law, this school proposes creating new sui generis bodies of state law, such as the proposed Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), to address problems applying state common law or the UCC to copyrights and copyrightable works. Both schools, to some degree, recognize the vexing problems encountered by scholars trying to reconcile state contract law and the federally created body of copyright law. This article rejects this artificial dilemma in proposing a third alternative, one that has not been suggested in the literature: federal courts or Congress should create a body of contract law for copyrights. This avoids the federal preemption and choice of law issues presented by applying state law principles to a federal body of property rights by creating a federal body of contract law. Further, in light of The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) recent withdrawal of UCITA as a proposed uniform state law, this article represents the only counter proposal to the traditional school of thought and may serve as a possible starting point for developing a uniform body of federal contract law for copyrights.


 
Wasserman on Symbolic Counter-Speech Howard M. Wasserman (Florida International University College of Law) has posted Symbolic Counter-Speech (William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Vol. 12, February 2004) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    In this article, Professor Wasserman introduces, defines, and explores a new form of expression, labeled symbolic counter-speech. Symbolic counter-speech is an outgrowth of two extant free expression concepts - the right and opportunity to communicate through symbols and the Brandeis imperative of counter-speech as the acceptable answer to objectionable speech. Symbolic counter-speech responds to a symbol on its own terms, countering the message presented by a particular symbol while using that symbol as the vehicle or medium for the contrary message. Symbolic counter-speech includes a range of expressive actions, from silent non-participation with a symbol or symbolic ceremony to confrontation of the symbol with a different, contrary symbol to attacks on the original symbol by destroying it or altering it to create a new message. Professor Wasserman considers symbolic counter-speech in the post-September 11 environment, when the United States has returned to what Vincent Blasi called a "pathological period," a period in which commitment to free speech wanes and in which government is especially likely to engage in systemic suppression. Although there have not been widespread governmental restrictions on expression, the primary feature of previous pathologies, there has been a dramatic increase in government and private patriotic symbolism and expression and of intolerance for objections to that patriotism. This has been particularly true with regard to the American flag and its complementary symbols, such as the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem and God Bless America. The focus of this paper is the increase in patriotic symbolism, along with incidents of counter-speech to that symbolism, at professional and collegiate sporting events, the primary forum in American society in which crowds of adults regularly engage in patriotic expression. Finally, the concept of symbolic counter-speech and these examples of flag-related symbolic counter-speech show the inconsistency between principles and traditions of freedom of speech and the movement for "flag preservation," which logically would eliminate all symbolic counter-speech directed against the flag and its complements.


 
Gross on Constitutional Emergency Provisions Oren Gross (University of Minnesota Law School) has posted Providing for the Unexpected: Constitutional Emergency Provisions (Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, Vol. 32, 2004) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    The article seeks to examine some of the general patterns with respect to treating emergencies as they are reflected in domestic constitutional arrangements. The article explores existing constitutional emergency arrangements of over seventy countries around the world, attempting to classify some of the important attributes of such constitutional arrangements into meaningful categories. Specifically, the article examines the various constitutional options with respect to such questions as: (1) how (and whether) to define a state of emergency in the constitutional document; (2) who has the power and authority to declare a state of emergency (and to terminate such a declaration); (3) what political and judicial control (if any) exists under the constitutional framework over the use of emergency powers; and (4) what are the legal ramifications of declaring a state of emergency with respect, for example, to the protection of individual rights and civil liberties and the possibility of suspending the constitution, in whole or in part.


Sunday, January 25, 2004
 
Legal Theory Calendar
    Monday, January 26 Tuesday, January 27
      At the University of Chicago, The Coase Lecture is presented by Douglas Lichtman, Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School, who will deliver Irreparable Harms and Irreparable Benefits.
      At Oxford's Jurisprudence Discussion Group, G. A. Cohen (Oxford) presents Rescuing Justice from Constructivism.
      At Oxford's Ockham Society, Andreas Szigeti presents Moral Sentiments and Moral Dilemmas.
    Wednesday, January 28
      At University College's Colloquium in Legal and Social Philosophy, Frances Kamm presents Failures of Just War Theory and Terrorism.
      At Villanova law, John Parry (University of Pittsburgh School of Law) presents Chavez v. Martinez and the Jurisprudence of Torture
      At Loyola Marymount, Laurie Levenson (LMU) presents Why Looks Matter: The Impact of Non-Evidence on the Courtroom.
      At Yale's philosophy series, David Sussman presents Kant and the Politics of Disgrace..
    Thursday, January 29
      At Penn's law and philosophy series, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is presenting Rational Agency and Normative Concepts with comments by Hans Oberdiek.
      Also at Penn, Martha Nussbaum (Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Economics, University of Chicago) is giving the JUDITH R. BERKOWITZ ENDOWED LECTURESHIP IN WOMEN'S STUDIES. Her title is Gender Justice, Human Rights, and Human Capabilities.
      At Boston University law, Susan Koniak (BU) presents How Like a Winter? The Plight of Absent Class Members Denied Adequate Representation.
      At Florida State, Jennifer Mnookin, University of Virginia School of Law, presents Atomism, Holism and the Law of Evidence.
      At Georgetown's Colloquium on Intellectual Property & Technology Law, Rosemary J. Coombe, York University, presents The Globalization of Intellectual Property: Informational Capital and Its Cultures.
      At Stanford's Olin series, Terry Fisher (Harvard Law School) presents An Alternative Compensation System for the Entertainment Industry.
      At the University of Michigan's law and economics series, Omri Ben-Shahar, Michigan, presents "Agreeing to Disagree": Filling Gaps in Deliberately Incomplete. The title on the website is "incomplete," but not deliberately so.
      At George Mason, Craig Lerner, GMU School of Law, presents “Accomodations” for the Learning Disabled: A Level Playing Field or Affirmative Action for Elites?
      At Oxford's Public International Law Discussion Group, Robert Volterra presents The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf: Technical Science, Star Chamber, or Quasi-Judicial Tribunal?
      At the Australian National University's RSSS, Norva Lo (La Trobe University) presents Humpty Dumpty Analysis of 'Valuing', Empty Analysis of 'Valuable'.
      At UCLA's legal history series, Sally Gordon, University of Pennsylvania, presents Parochial School Funding: Catholics, Protestants, and Legal Activism at Mid-Century.
    Friday, January 30
      At the University of Texas, Ariela Gross, USC, presents Administering Citizenship, Identity and Land in Indian Territory, 1865-1907.
      At Oxford's faculty of laws, Diamond Ashiagbor presents Economic and social rights in the EU charter (on human rights, social rights and social policy discourse).
      At Oxford's Jowett Society, Jennifer Saul (Sheffield) presents Pornography, Speech Acts, and Context.
      At the University of North Carolina's philosophy department, Cynthia Stark (Utah) presents How To Include the Severely Disabled in a Contractarian Theory of Justice.


 
Legal Theory Lexicon: Causation
    Introduction Causation is one of the basic conceptual tools of legal analysis. And for most purposes, we can get along with a notion of causation that is both vague and ambiguous. In the world of medium sized physical objects (automobiles, pedestrians, etc.), there are many clear-cut cases. The driver’s negligence caused the death of the pedestrian but did not cause John Kerry to win the Iowa caucuses in 2004. In these cases, various notions of causality converge. The person on the street, the scientist, and lawyer can all agree in such cases that for all practical purposes X caused Y but not Z. But sometimes the various notions of cause come apart exposing ambiguities and vagueness in both ordinary and legal talk about causes and effects. This post provides a very basic introduction to causation for law students (especially first-year law students) with an interest in legal theory.
    Cause-in-Fact & Legal Cause Let’s put the most important distinction on the table right away. Contemporary legal theory and judicial practice assume that there is a distinction between legal cause on the one hand and cause-in-fact on the other. What does that mean? That’s a huge question, of course, but we can state one conclusion straight away: that X is a cause-in-fact of Y does not entail that X is a legal cause of Y. Less obviously, that X is a legal cause of Y does not entail that X is a cause-in-fact of Y. The various ways that cause-in-fact and legal cause can come apart leads many to the conclusion that legal cause simply has nothing to do with causation, but this turns out to be an exaggeration. I know this all sounds very airy. So let’s get down to brass tacks!
    Cause-in-Fact What do we mean when we say that X is a cause-in-fact of Y? Many law students learn that the answer to this question is but-for causation. If it is the case that but for X, Y would not have occurred, then X is a but-for cause of Y and hence X is a cause-in-fact of Y. This simple story works most of the time, and as a rough and ready rule of thumb, it isn’t half bad. But it turns out that if you try to use but-for causation as a hard and fast rule for determining whether X is the cause of Y, you will run into trouble, sooner or later. In torts and criminal law, but-for causation runs into trouble somewhere in the midst of the first-year course. In a sense, the point of this Lexicon post is to provide a set of tools that for understanding the troubles that overreliance on but-for causation can cause.
    Necessary and Sufficient Causes The first item in the causation toolkit is the distinction between necessary and sufficient cause. The basic ideas are simple and familiar. X is a necessary cause of Y, if Y would not have occurred without X. Ben’s running the red light is a necessary cause of the damage to Alice’s car, just in case the damage would not have occurred without Ben’s having run the light. X is a sufficient cause of Y, if Y would have occurred so long as X occurred. Alice’s shooting Ben through the heart is a sufficient cause of Ben’s death, just in case the shot thru the head by itself would have caused Ben’s death.
    The Role of Counterfactuals The notions of necessary and sufficient causation are familiar to almost everyone. We use these ideas all the time in everyday life. But the very familiarity of these concepts creates a temptation to take them for granted. There is an important feature of these ideas that our day-to-day use of them does not make explicit. Both necessary and sufficient causation are counterfactual concepts. What does that mean? “Counterfactual” is simply the fancy name for “what if” thinking. What if Ben had stopped at the red light? Would the damage to Alice’s car still have occurred? What if the Ben had gotten immediate medical attention? Would the shot through the head still have killed him? Every statement regarding a necessary or sufficient cause can be interpreted as making a counterfactual (“what if”) claim.
    What-if reasoning is itself familiar and ordinary. When we say, Ben’s running the red light was a necessary cause of the damage to Alice’s car, we are claiming that if the world had been different and Ben had not run the red light, then Alice’s car would not have been damaged. We imagine what the world would have been like if Ben had stopped at the red light, and Alice had proceeded through the intersection without being struck by Ben’s car. Counterfactual reasoning can get more complicated that this, but for our purposes we can use everyday what-if reasoning as our model of role of counterfactuals in necessary and sufficient causation.
    Overdetermination Once we’ve gotten the notions of necessary and sufficient causes, we can move on to the idea of overdetermination. An effect is overdetermined if it has more than one sufficient cause. Take the case of Alice shooting Ben through the heart. We have postulated that the bullet passing through the heart was a sufficient cause of Ben’s death, but it may not have been a necessary cause. Suppose that Alice was a member of a firing squad, and that at the exact same moment that Alice’s bullet passed through Ben’s heart, another Bullet, fired by Cynthia, passed through Ben’s cerebral cortex and that this would have resulted in Ben’s death, even if Alice’s had not fired or her bullet had missed. Ben’s death now results from two sufficient causes, but neither Alice’s shot nor Cynthia’s shot was necessary. If Alice had not fired, Cynthia’s shot would have killed Ben. If Cynthia had not fired, Alice’s shot would have killed Ben.
    Overdetermination is important, because it undermines the idea that but-for causation tells us everything we need to know about cause-in-fact. We might say that both Alice and Cynthia’s shooting caused Ben’s death or we might say they were both partial causes of Ben’s death, but we would not be likely to say that neither Alice nor Cynthia’s shot was the cause.
    The firing squad example was described as a case of simultaneous overdetermination—both sufficient causes occurred at the same time. What if Cynthia shot a few seconds before Alice and Ben died before Alice’s shot pierced his heart? In that case, Cynthia’s shot would have preempted the causal role of Alice’s shot. If Cynthia had missed, then Alice’s shot would have killed Ben. This kind of case is sometimes called preemptive causation.
    Coincidence Overdetermination poses one kind of problem for but-for causation, coincidence poses another a different sort of difficulty. Suppose the driver of a trolley is speeding. As a result the trolley is in just wrong place and time and a tree falls, injuring a passenger. If trolley had gone just a little faster or just a little slower, the tree would have missed the trolley and the injury would not have occurred. Given these circumstances, speeding was a but-for cause (a necessary cause) of the tree injuring the passenger. So what? Coincidence is no problem for cause-in-fact, but it does pose a problem for the legal system. Intuitions vary, but lots of folks are inclined to believe that one should not be legally responsible for harms that one causes as a result of coincidences.
    Coincidence is related to a variety of other problems with but-for causation. Take our example of Ben running the stoplight and hitting Alice’s car. Running the stoplight was one but-for cause of this accident, but there are many others. For example, Alice’s being in the intersection was also a but-for cause. And how did Alice come to be in the intersection at just the time when Ben was running the red light? If her alarm clock hadn’t gone off, she would have slept in and arrived in the intersection long after Ben, so her alarm clock’s ringing was another but-for cause. And you know how the story goes from here. As we trace the chain of but-for causes back and out, we discover that thousands and millions and billions of actions and events are but-for causes of the accident.
    Legal Cause What do we about the problems with problems created by but-for cause? One way that the law responds is with the idea of legal cause or proximate cause. In this post, we cannot hope to achieve a deep understanding of legal cause, but we can get a start. Here are some of the ideas that help me to understand legal cause.
    First, there is a terminological issue: causation may be confused with responsibility. “Legal cause” is only partially about cause. We start with the idea of cause-in-fact (understood in light of the distinction between necessary sufficient cause). This idea of cause seems, on the surface, to fit into the structure of various legal doctrines. So we imagine that if a defendant breaches a duty of care and causes a harm, then defendant is legally responsible for the harm. This works for lots of cases, but then we start thinking about other cases like overdetermination and coincidence. “Legal cause” is the way that we adjust our ideas about legal responsibility to overcome the counterintuitive results that would follow from a simple reliance on but-for causation. In other words, “legal cause” may be a misnomer. It might be clearer if we used the phrase “legal responsibility” (or some other phrase) to describe the ways in which we adjust the law.
    Second, legal cause is frequently associated with the idea of foreseeability. For example, in coincidence cases, the harm (the tree injuring the passenger) is not a foreseeable consequence of the wrongful act (driving the trolley at an excessive speed). If the purpose of the law is deterrence, then no good purpose may be served by assigning legal responsibility in cases where the effect is unforeseeable.
    Third, legal cause is sometimes associated with the idea of proximity in time and space. Of course, the phrase “proximate cause” emphasizes this connection. We usually don’t want to hold defendants responsible for the remote and attenuated effects of their actions. We frequently do want to hold defendants responsible for the immediate and direct effects of their actions. “Proximity” seems to capture this point, but an overemphasis on proximity in time and space leads to other problems. Some immediate consequences do not give rise to legal responsibility: the trolley driver may have started speeding just seconds before the tree fell. Some causal chains that extend for long distances over great durations do give rise to legal responsibility: Osama bin Laden’s responsibility for 9/11 would not be vitiated by the fact that he set events in motions years in advance and thousands of miles away.
    Probability Our investigation of causality so far has elided an important set of issues—the connections between causation and probability. These connections are far too large a topic for this post, but even a superficial analysis requires that we consider two perspectives--ex ante and ex post.
    Ex post questions about causation arise in a variety of contexts, but for the legal system, a crucial context is provided by litigation and especially trial. In many cases, there is no doubt about causation. When Ben’s car speeds through the red light and hits Alice’s car, we don’t have much doubt about what caused the damage. But in many types of cases, causation will be in doubt. Did the chemical cause cancer? Was the desk job the cause of the back injury? Sometimes the evidence will answer these questions with certainty (or perhaps, with something that is so close to certainty that we treat it as certainty for legal and practical purposes). But in other cases, the evidence will leave us with a sense that that the defendant’s action is more or less likely to have caused the harm to the defendant. Such probabilities may be expressed either qualitatively or quantitatively. That is, we might say that it is “highly likely” that X caused Y or we might say that there is a 50% chance (p = .5) that X caused Y.
    Ex ante issues of causation also arise for the law. For example, the legal system may be required to assign a value to a risk of harm that has not yet been realized. David has been exposed to asbestos, but may or may not develop cancer. In this case, probabilities refer to the likelihood of future events.
    Decision theory and mathematics have elaborate formal machinery for representing and calculating probabilities. In this short post, we cannot even scratch this surface, but there are two or three bits of notation that every legal theorist should know:
      --The letter “p” is frequently used to represent probability. Most law students encounter this notation in Justice Hand’s famous opinion in the Carroll Towing case (B < PL or “burden less than loss discounted by probability). The notation p(x) = 0.1 can be read “the probability of x equals 1/10.” And the notation, p=0.5 can be read “probability equals one in two.”
      --The symbol “|” is frequently used to represent conditional probabilities. Suppose we want to represent the probability that X will occur given that Y has occurred, we can use this notation: p(X|Y). So we could represent the sentence, “The probability of Cancer given Exposure to Asbestos is ten percent,” as p(C|EA)=0.1.
    Types and Tokens So far, we have been focusing mostly on cases where an individual instance of harm is caused by some particular wrongful action. But of course, we frequently think about causation as a more general relationship. For example, in science we might speak of “causal laws.” There is no standard terminology for this distinction: we might use the phrase “individual causation” and “systematic causation.” One helpful bit of terminology for getting at this idea is to differentiate “types” and “tokens.” Ben’s running the rend light at a particular time and location is an event token and it is a token of a type of events, i.e. the type “running a red light.”
    Once we have the distinction between types and tokens in place, we can define individual causation as a causal relationship between a token (e.g. a token event) and another token (e.g. a token action). And we can define systematic causation as a causal relationship between a type (e.g. a type of event) and another type (e.g. a type of action). Science studies causal relationships between types; trials frequently involve questions about the causation of one token by another. This leads to another important point: the question whether an individual harm was caused by an individual action will sometimes depend on the question whether a systematic causal relationship exists; for example, the question whether this factory’s release of a chemical caused an individual case of cancer may require a jury to resolve a “scientific” question about systematic causation.
    Conclusion Even though this is a long entry by the standards of the Legal Theory Lexicon it is a very compressed and incomplete treatment of the concept of causation. Given the way legal education is organized (around doctrinal fields like torts, criminal law, and evidence), most law students never get a truly comprehensive introduction to causation. Torts may introduce the distinction between cause-in-fact and legal cause; criminal law, problems of overdetermination; and evidence, the relationship between probability and causation. If this post accomplishes anything of value, I hope that it serves as warning—causation is a deep and broad topic about which there is much to learn.


 
Calendar & Lexicon Late Today The Legal Theory Calendar and the Legal Theory Lexicon will be posted late today. I'm returning home from the Roundtable on Causation and Probability in Death Valley.
Update: When I returned home, my intenet connection was out. The Lexicon entry is now up, but the Legal Theory Calendar won't go up until later on Monday.


Saturday, January 24, 2004
 
Legal Theory Bookworm This week the Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Placing Blame, a General Theory of the Criminal Law (Oxford University Press ). Moore is one of the most interesting and deep thinkers in contemporary legal theory. Here is the blurb:
    This is a collection of essays which form a thorough examination of the theory of criminal responsibility. The author covers a wide range of topics, but perhaps the most significant feature of this book is Moore's espousal of a retributivist theory of punishment. This anti-utilitarian standpoint is a common thread throughout the book. It is also a trend which is currently manifesting itself in all areas of moral, political and legal philosophy.
Moore is retributivist to the bone, embracing and defending a rigorous version of retributivist theory that must be taken into account if you are interested in criminal law theory. Highly recommended.


 
Download of the Week This week the Download of the Week is Inheriting Responsibilities by David Miller. Here is a taste of this nifty paper:
    One quite striking feature of the politics of the last half-century has been the escalation of demands for redress, issued by groups who see themselves as the victims of historic acts of injustice. Present-day governments and their citizens are being asked to bear responsibility for the actions and policies of earlier generations, and to take a variety of steps to correct the harm and injustice that they perpetrated. Not all such demands have been successful, but many have been, and the costs incurred have in some cases been considerable. The claims in question have been very diverse, both in terms of who is making them and in terms of the acts singled out as standing in need of redress. Let me remind you of some well-known examples:
      1) The payments that have been made by the German government to Jews as reparation for the Nazi holocaust, mainly in the form of transfers to Israel, and estimated to be in the order of 80 billion Deutschmarks.
      2) The demands made by members of the Australian Aboriginal community for compensation and for a national Day of Apology for the so-called ‘stolen generation’ of Aboriginal children taken from their families and brought up in white homes or orphanages.
      3) The compensation of $122 million awarded by the US Supreme Court to the Sioux Indians for the occupation by whites in the late 19th century of the goldrich Black Hills area that had previously been reserved to the Sioux by treaty.
      4) Demands that Japan should pay compensation to ‘comfort women’ taken from other East Asian countries (especially Korea) and forced into prostitution by the Japanese military, giving rise to official apologies and the creation of an Asian Women’s Fund to offer compensation to the women involved.
      5) Demands that items of symbolic significance seized from their original owners should be returned to those owners or their descendants, for instance the demand that the Parthenon Marbles should be returned to Greece, or the demand by some aboriginal peoples that the bones of their ancestors now held in museums across the world should be sent back to them for reburial.
      6) The many and varied demands that have been made in the US as forms of redress for black slavery, from land settlements for blacks, to financial compensation to the descendants of slaves, to affirmative action policies, to formal apologies for slavery on the part of Congress or the President.
    My interest in this issue stems from a broader interest in the idea of national responsibility. When does it make sense to hold those collectivities we call nations responsible both for the benefits and harms they bring to themselves and for the benefits and harms that they inflict on others? I have tried in another paper to answer this question as it applies to nations considered as groups of contemporaries, and for the purpose of the present paper I am going to assume that the core idea of national responsibility is defensible.3 But clearly it is one thing to argue that we share in responsibility for the actions of the present generation – for political decisions taken in our name, for instance – and another to argue that we can inherit responsibilities from the past. How can we be liable for what our forefathers did when we had no opportunity either to contribute to or to prevent the actions and policies that created the injustice?
Download it while its hot!