Why the Law Is So Perverse

Why the Law Is So Perverse
Author: Leo Katz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2011-09
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0226426033

"Katz focuses on four fundamental features of our legal system, all of which seem to not make sense on some level and to demand explanation. First, legal decisions are essentially made in an either/or fashion... Second, the law is full of loopholes... Third, legal systems are loath to punish certain kinds of highly immoral conduct while prosecuting other far less pernicious behaviors... Finally, why does the law often prohibit what are sometimes called win-win transactions, such as organ sales or surrogacy contracts?" - from the University of Chicago Press press release

The Law

The Law
Author: Frédéric Bastiat
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
Total Pages: 74
Release: 2007
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1610163273

No Contest

No Contest
Author: Ralph Nader
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 461
Release: 1998-12-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0375752587

The legal rights of Americans are threatened as never before. In No Contest, Ralph Nader and Wesley J. Smith reveal how power lawyers--Kenneth Starr perhaps the most notorious among them--misuse and manipulate the law at the expense of fairness and equity. Nader and Smith document how corporate lawyers File baseless lawsuits Use court secrecy to their unfair advantage Engage in billing fraud Nader and Smith sound the warning that this system-wide abuse is eroding our basic legal rights, and propose a positive, commonsense vision of what should be done to reverse the corporate-inspired corruption of civil justice. Timely, incisive, and highly readable, this is a book for all citizens who believe that prompt access to justice is the backbone of democracy, and a precious right to be reclaimed.

Against the Law

Against the Law
Author: Paul F. Campos
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1996
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780822318415

A fundamental critique of American law and legal thought, Against the Law consists of a series of essays written from three different perspectives that coalesce into a deep criticism of contemporary legal culture. Paul F. Campos, Pierre Schlag, and Steven D. Smith challenge the conventional representations of the legal system that are articulated and defended by American legal scholars. Unorthodox, irreverent, and provocative, Against the Law demonstrates that for many in the legal community, law has become a kind of substitute religion--an essentially idolatrous practice composed of systematic self-misrepresentation and self-deception. Linked by a persistent inquiry into the nature and identity of "the law," these essays are informed by the conviction that the conventional representations of law, both in law schools and the courts, cannot be taken at face value--that the law, as commonly conceived, makes no sense. The authors argue that the relentlessly normative prescriptions of American legal thinkers are frequently futile and, indeed, often pernicious. They also argue that the failure to recognize the role that authorship must play in the production of legal thought plagues both the teaching and the practice of American law. Ranging from the institutional to the psychological and metaphysical deficiencies of the American legal system, the depth of criticism offered by Against the Law is unprecedented. In a departure from the nearly universal legitimating and reformist tendencies of American legal thought, this book will be of interest not only to the legal academics under attack in the book, but also to sociologists, historians, and social theorists. More particularly, it will engage all the American lawyers who suspect that there is something very wrong with the nature and direction of their profession, law students who anticipate becoming part of that profession, and those readers concerned with the status of the American legal system.

University of Chicago Law Review: Volume 79, Number 4 - Fall 2012

University of Chicago Law Review: Volume 79, Number 4 - Fall 2012
Author: University of Chicago Law Review
Publisher: Quid Pro Books
Total Pages: 490
Release: 2012-01-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1610278909

A leading law review offers a quality ebook edition. This fourth issue of 2012 features articles from internationally recognized legal scholars, and extensive research in Comments authored by University of Chicago Law School students. Contents for the issue are: ARTICLES: -- Elected Judges and Statutory Interpretation, by Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl & Ethan J. Leib -- Delegation in Immigration Law, by Adam B. Cox & Eric A. Posner -- What If Religion Is Not Special?, by Micah Schwartzman COMMENTS: -- A Common Law Approach to D&O Insurance “In Fact” Exclusion Disputes -- Taming the Hydra: Prosecutorial Discretion under the Acceptance of Responsibility Provision of the US Sentencing Guidelines -- Are Railroads Liable When Lightning Strikes? -- Who’s Allowed to Kill the Radio Star? Forfeiture Jurisdiction under the Communications Act -- Federal Diversity Jurisdiction and American Indian Tribal Corporations -- The Right to Trial by Jury under the WARN Act The issue also includes a Review Essay by Saul Levmore, analyzing the Public Choice implications of "Why the Law Is So Perverse" by Leo Katz In the eBook edition, Tables of Contents are active, including those for individual articles; footnotes are fully linked and properly numbered; graphs and figures are reproduced legibly; URLs in footnotes are active; and proper eBook formatting is used.

The Law of Good People

The Law of Good People
Author: Yuval Feldman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2018-06-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107137101

This book argues that overcoming people's inability to recognize their own wrongdoing is the most important but regrettably neglected area of the behavioral approach to law.

Vagueness and Law

Vagueness and Law
Author: Geert Keil
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 563
Release: 2016-12-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191085715

Vague expressions are omnipresent in natural language. As such, their use in legal texts is virtually inevitable. If a law contains vague terms, the question whether it applies to a particular case often lacks a clear answer. One of the fundamental pillars of the rule of law is legal certainty. The determinacy of the law enables people to use it as a guide and places judges in the position to decide impartially. Vagueness poses a threat to these ideals. In borderline cases, the law seems to be indeterminate and thus incapable of serving its core rule of law value. In the philosophy of language, vagueness has become one of the hottest topics of the last two decades. Linguists and philosophers have investigated what distinguishes "soritical " vagueness from other kinds of linguistic indeterminacy, such as ambiguity, generality, open texture, and family resemblance concepts. There is a vast literature that discusses the logical, semantic, pragmatic, and epistemic aspects of these phenomena. Legal theory has hitherto paid little attention to the differences between the various kinds of linguistic indeterminacy that are grouped under the heading of "vagueness ", let alone to the various theories that try to account for these phenomena. Bringing together leading scholars working on the topic of vagueness in philosophy and in law, this book fosters a dialogue between philosophers and legal scholars by examining how philosophers conceive vagueness in law from their theoretical perspective and how legal theorists make use of philosophical theories of vagueness. The chapters of the book are organized into three parts. The first part addresses the import of different theories of vagueness for the law, referring to a wide range of theories from supervaluationist to contextualist and semantic realist accounts in order to address the question of whether the law can learn from engaging with philosophical discussions of vagueness. The second part of the book examines different vagueness phenomena. The contributions in part 2 suggest that the greater awareness to different vagueness phenomena can make lawyers aware of specific issues and solutions so far overlooked. The third part deals with the pragmatic aspects of vagueness in law, providing answers to the question of how to deal with vagueness in law and with the professional, political, moral, and ethical issues such vagueness gives rise to.

Arresting Dress

Arresting Dress
Author: Clare Sears
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2015-02-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822376199

In 1863, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed a law that criminalized appearing in public in “a dress not belonging to his or her sex.” Adopted as part of a broader anti-indecency campaign, the cross-dressing law became a flexible tool for policing multiple gender transgressions, facilitating over one hundred arrests before the century’s end. Over forty U.S. cities passed similar laws during this time, yet little is known about their emergence, operations, or effects. Grounded in a wealth of archival material, Arresting Dress traces the career of anti-cross-dressing laws from municipal courtrooms and codebooks to newspaper scandals, vaudevillian theater, freak-show performances, and commercial “slumming tours.” It shows that the law did not simply police normative gender but actively produced it by creating new definitions of gender normality and abnormality. It also tells the story of the tenacity of those who defied the law, spoke out when sentenced, and articulated different gender possibilities.

Knowing What the Law Is

Knowing What the Law Is
Author: Alexander Somek
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2021-08-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509951318

This book provides a selective and somewhat cheeky account of prominent positions in legal theory, such as American legal realism, modern legal positivism, sociological systems theory, institutionalism and critical legal studies. It presents a relational approach to law and a new perspective on legal sources. The book explores topics of legal theory in a playful manner. It is written and composed in a way that refutes the widespread prejudice that legal theory is a dreary subject, with a cast of characters that occasionally interact in order to illustrate the claims of the book. Legal experts claim to know what the law is. Legal theory-or jurisprudence-explores whether such claims are warranted. The discipline first emerged at the turn of the 20th century, when the self-confidence of both legal scholarship and judicial craftsmanship became severely shattered, but the crisis continues to this day.

Slices and Lumps

Slices and Lumps
Author: Lee Anne Fennell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2019-09-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 022665026X

How things are divided up or pieced together matters. Half a bridge is of no use at all. Conversely, many things would do more good if they could be divided up differently: Perhaps you would prefer a job that involves a third less work and a third less pay or a car that materializes only when needed and is priced accordingly? Difficulties in “slicing” and “lumping” shape nearly every facet of how we live and work—and a great deal of law and policy as well. Lee Anne Fennell explores how both types of challenges—carving out useful slices and assembling useful lumps—surface in myriad contexts, from hot button issues like conservation and eminent domain to developments in the sharing economy to personal struggles over work, money, time, diet, and exercise. Yet the significance of configuration is often overlooked, leading to missed opportunities for improving our lives. With a technology-fueled entrepreneurial explosion underway that is dividing goods, services, and jobs in novel ways, and as urbanization and environmental threats raise the stakes for assembling resources and cooperation, this is an especially exciting and crucial time to confront questions of slicing and lumping. The future of the city, the workplace, the marketplace, and the environment all turn on matters of configuration, as do the prospects for more effective legal doctrines, for better management of finances and health, and more. This book reveals configuration’s power and potential—as a unifying concept and as a focus of public and private innovation.