Law professor Geoffrey Stone takes aim at the way conservatives have framed the debate over the role of judges in our political system. For 30 years, conservative commentators have persuaded the public that conservative judges apply the law, whereas liberal judges make up the law. According to Stone, Chief Justice Roberts’s analogy of an umpire [...]
Archive for the ‘Philosophy of Law’ Category
Constitutional Values
Posted in Philosophy of Law, Politics on April 15, 2010 | 6 Comments »
Dworkin on Immoral Law
Posted in Philosophy of Law on March 10, 2010 | 1 Comment »
There’s a classic debate in philosophy of law about the status of immoral legal systems. The example typically used is Nazism and question is framed as follows. Do we say, as Lon Fuller famously argued, that “laws” passed by the German legislature in the 1930s cannot fairly be called “laws” by virtue of their flagrantly [...]
Checkerboard Legislation & The Death Penalty
Posted in Philosophy of Law on March 2, 2010 | 7 Comments »
The recent news about Martin Grossman’s execution in Florida and the activism that surrounded it (e.g., here, here & here) struck a chord with me. There’s plenty to say about capital punishment, ethically, politically, religiously – and most of it has been said already. One of the common cases made against capital punishment is that [...]
