Can Theories of Meaning and Reference Solve the Problem of Legal Determinacy?

Abstract. A number of important legal theorists have recently argued for metaphysically realist approaches to legal determinacy grounded in particular semantic theories or theories of reference, in particular views of meaning and reference based on the works of Putnam and Kripke. The basic position of these theorists is that questions of legal interpretation and legal determinacy be approached through semantic meaning. However, the role of authority (in the form of lawmaker choice) in law in general and democratic systems in particular require that these realist “solutions” to the problem of legal determinacy be rejected or at least significantly revised.     

The Promise and Problems of Universal,General Theories of Contract Law

There are a growing number of general theories of contract law and of other doctrinal areas. These theories are vastly ambitious in their aims. This article explores the nature of these claims, and the motivations for offering such theories, while considering the challenges to success. It is in the nature of theorizing to seek general categories, including doctrinal categories, and to try to discover insights that hold across those categories. However, differences both within a doctrinal area and across legal systems undermine the case for universal and general theories. Also, unjustifiably general theories may distract us from developing properly contextual legal rules, and might even have the unintended effect of legitimating unjust rules.     

Some Long-term Effects of U.S. Control of the Philippines

Abstract

To review some of the long term effects of American colonialism in the Philippines—the only Asian country that we ever directly subordinated to a formal colonial status—will enable us to gain a more vivid, personal appreciation of the record that we have made in another Southeast Asian country during this century.     

On Jon Halliday's Contribution to Understanding Japan

Abstract

The smashing of the Gang of Four and resurrection of Deng Xiaoping produced a sense of euphoria and gave rise to unrealistic expectations in many areas of Chinese life. In the economic realm, visionary planners drew up blueprints based upon resources that simply were not there. In the political realm, young men and women dared to act upon the conviction that the Gang's downfall would open the way to an overall democratization of Chinese politics.     

Report from Japan 1972 — Part II

Abstract

Since the Korean War in the early 1950’s, the strongest sustained impetus for altering the Japanese economy and constitution to serve militaristic ends has come not from military leaders, bureaucrats or conservative politicians but from the leaders of big business. Herein lies the crucial difference between prewar militarism and the still “non-ideological” variety emerging in Japan today.     

Human Rights Through the Legislature

Law and Philosophy -     

Raz on Necessity

Law and Philosophy -     

A Critique of Alexy’s Claim to Correctness

This article offers an overview of the difficulties in Robert Alexy’s idea of law’s “claim to correctness.” The inquiry takes us deep into the nature of simple communication, back out to what it means to have a theory about the nature of law, and also in the direction of wondering about the interaction of legal theory and practical reasoning—reasoning about how we should best act. The article offers reasons to question whether law in fact makes claims, at least in any straightforward sense. Even if one brackets that matter, there are reasons to raise doubts about what is in fact implicit in the act of lawmaking. At one level, an act of lawmaking does implicitly assert the authority to act in that way. Whether it also implies that the content of the action is morally good, or at least not clearly morally bad, is, at a minimum, a harder question.     

Regional integration: Japan and South Korea in America's Asian policy

Abstract

Ever since the late 1940s, U.S. Asian policy sought to use the southern half of the Korean peninsula and Japan to create a configuration of military and economic power which would enable the United States to contain the might of both China and the Soviet Union, while simultaneously insuring its own hegemony over Pacific-Asia. This basic strategy, which may be termed the regional integration of U.S. imperialism, turned on making industrialized Japan dependent on the U.S., and economically backward South Korea dependent, ultimately, on Japan. Its psychological roots lay in a traditional, shared Japanese-American ruling class attitude of contempt for the Koreans and the other formerly colonized peoples of Asia. If Theodore Roosevelt exemplified such an outlook early in this century, John Foster Dulles was its exemplar by the middle of the century. Dulles's first memorandum on Japan, dated June 6, 1950, and summarized by Frederick Dunn, stated that “… it might be possible to capitalize on the Japanese feeling of racial and social superiority to the Chinese, Koreans and Russians, and to convince them that as part of the free world they would be in equal fellowship with a group which is superior to the members of the Communist world.”