Law & Society Blog

Beyond the fulfillment of basic needs, what we know about human happiness is limited to those with whom we are most intimately familiar. It should not be a surprise that a scenario which effectively postulates omniscience will produce unintuitive results. On this view, we do have options. They arise out of uncertainty about the best means of achieving the utiliarian goal. Strike out the uncertainty, and one’s duties become clear.

Courtesy of Eszter Hargittai from Crooker Timber.
The brainy brains at gapminder have produced an incredible flash tool which allows one to appreciate the surface gloss of relevant statistics on human development worldwide. My utilitarian modernist heart clicks with dull satisfaction at the progress that’s evident. Somebody clearly put a lot of work into this tool, […]

The Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld came down today. In a five-four decision the court found that the Geneva Convention applies to the Al-Quaeda conflict. I haven’t read the whole opinion yet, but here his Marty Lederman on SCOTUSblog:
More importantly [than the Court’s holding that all commissions comply with the laws of war], […]

The final installment of ****’s graphic novel NYC2123 Dayender is available for download. Another very neat project released under a Creative Commons license.

Western identity is not so much defined by adherence to certain core values (even though it would be nice to think so), but by its constant unrest and ferment. So not core values and enlightenment but the constant struggle with the challenge of enlightenment and its rejection of the comforts of particularism and universalism alike might be the hallmarks of a modern Western identity.

This might be slightly off-topic, but if you are at all interested in contemporary science fiction, check out Nicholas Whyte’s amazing meta review site for all entries to this year’s Hugo award. Great job, Nicholas.

The question is whether R can be granted under the law given F, or put differently, whether there is a right to R given F, specifically, whether f1…fn fulfill the elements E of a norm N that orders the relief R…. That, in turn, informs the process of legal research.(1) A typical civil law argument uses F as a starting point for maximum possible abstraction, and then deducts the correct application of the law from that abstraction, following the system of categories developed by past jurisprudence.

I just discovered Library Thing, which is a community-enabled book catalog.

The connection between law and morality (or the lack thereof) is one of the most debated issues in legal philosophy.

…the law here seems to observe no difference between bad faith and non-good-faith, or (if it did accept there was a difference) doesn’t seem to care.

The question becomes: should it care? And why?