Comment on Peterson and Selvin

A comment on an article by Peterson and Selvin dealing with the role of courts as participants in the resolution of mass tort cases is presented

Liberalism, Community, and State Borders

Legal doctrine is a collection of technicalities, but it is not only that.It is also, often, something more. Legal doctrines embody intuitionsabout justice, fairness, efficiency-all the values held by the individualswho contribute to their formulation. Faced with problems that lackclear legal answers, judges grope for appropriate solutions; in their groping,they follow deeply held intuitions about what the law ought to be. Itshould be of no surprise that even some of the humblest legal doctrinesreflect much larger philosophical assumptions

Understanding IMCCs: Compensation and Closure in the Formation and Function of Intentional Mass Claims Commissions

International law is increasingly judicialized. A once straightforward and simple world of unconditional State sovereignty evolves before our eyes into a maze of regional courts, State-to-State arbitrations, specialized substantive adjudications, international criminal tribunals, and human rights commissions. This Article takes as its subject one particular kind of international adjudicative tribunal that has become increasingly important in recent years: international mass claims commissions (IMCCs)

Interstate Preemption: The Right to Travel, the Right to Life, and the Right to Die

State laws differ, and they differ on issues of tremendous importance to the ways that we conduct our lives. Abortion and the right to die are two issues on which state law intersects with deeply held moral convictions, and on which state laws vary. With so much hanging in the balance, it is not surprising that those who find themselves outvoted or outmaneuvered in local political processes sometimes seek a legal climate more compatible with their beliefs about human decency and dignity. The right to vote with one\u27s feet - to travel or move to another state and trade a law one finds repugnant for a better one is defined and circumscribed by the constitutional limitations peculiar to the conflict of laws. This article argues that, although the answer may depend upon the precise contours of state regulation, at least in the abortion and right to die cases states typically cannot regulate their citizens\u27 conduct in this way. States do possess the power to regulate their citizens\u27 conduct in other states in the usual case. I will argue, however, that abortion (and, analogously, the right to die) is not the usual case. Most states that choose not to prohibit abortion to the extent constitutionally permissible are not merely expressing a simple lack of interest in the abortion issue. They are, instead, affirmatively granting to those within their borders the freedom to make the choice whether to have an abortion

Legitimate Interests in Multi-State Problems: As Between State and Federal Law

The Supreme Court\u27s renewed interest in multistate problems isstriking. Aftter years of neglect, the Court in the last few terms hasdecided a series of cases on personal jursdiction, choice of law,and credit to judgments. Several of these opinions have been pathbreaking;at least one has revolutionized its field. One of the mostrecent, Allstate Insurance Co. v. Hague, is a choice-of-Iaw decisiondestined to provoke much scholarly comment

Jurisdictional Due Process and Political Theory

This paper is about the link between due process and politicaltheory, and more specifically, about the link between a particular sortof due process issue and political theory. The goal is to add to theagenda an important legal issue that has not captured its fair shareof philosophical attention. As this symposium demonstrates, proceduraldue process analysis has benefited greatly from the attentionof legal philosophers. Its foundations are far clearer and more interestingthan they would be if left to straight doctrinal analysis. The timehas come for legal philosophers, and philosophically inclined lawyers,to shine some comparable light on the foundations of jurisdiction

International Remedies

It could easily be argued that the most important topic in international law is the law of remedies. The subject includes both the sanctions that are imposed following a breach of international substantive norms, and the system of institutions designed to investigate violations and then impose those sanctions. The fact that norms governing international conduct lack a secure centralized enforcement mechanism leaves the international system vulnerable to the accusation that international law is not really law at all. For this reason, scholars of the subject have addressed with great seriousness the question of whether an adequate system of sanctions, formal or informal, exists

Institutional and Empirical Basis of the Rights Thesis

In recent years a new challenge to positivism has been issued in the form of several articles by Professor Ronald Dworkin which both raise objections to positivism and attempt to provide an alternative. Professor Dworkin\u27s new theory, the rights thesis, is distinctive because of three attributes-institutional autonomy, absence of judicial discretion, and lack of judicial originality-which he evidently believes answer his objections to positivism. This Article is not so much a defense of positivism as an attempt to show that the rights thesis does not possess, by virtue of these three characteristics greater normative or descriptive appeal