Holmes’s particular view on the misplaced role of morality in law was not accepted as canon by all. Rather, weighing in on the concept of morality in law was mid-20th c. founder of the positivist movement HLA Hart. A notoriously dense writer, Hart’s book The Concept of Law is, for even the most dedicated of […]
Today, the law is largely based on theories of human behavior, but this was not always the case. Before the nineteenth-century, laws were based much more upon the morally-informed concept of Natural Law. Then along came the Realists. Rather than a framework focused on essential, fundamental liberties and justice, prominent conceptualizations of law came, by […]
A better, perhaps more accurate title for this post just might read: “How do we interpret, institutionalize, theorize, conceptualize, etc. etc. etc. the law?” I doubt that any, save for steel-nerved, theory nerds, would click on that article. And for good reason: when we– those of us fixated on the words of nation founders, legislators, […]
Morality has the distinct honor of being a concept found and refound in discussions on legal theory. Let’s break — morality and legal theory are, to be sure, two dense, varied, and widely-studied topics. 500, or even 1000 words, covering the two dominant philosophies governing how law is made just barely puts a dent in […]
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of seeing Gail Collins, a New York Times Op-Ed columnist, speak in-person when she came to visit QC. The speaking event was hosted by The Knight News, and a number of students and faculty were in attendance. I was impressed by the number of people who showed up; […]
Queer sex is still criminalized in The United States. Though same-sex and transgender sex acts are no longer unlawful in our society, per se, another kind of queerness is. The queerness of HIV is stigmatized and literally criminalized throughout America via the persecution of consensual sex acts between an HIV positive person (someone with […]
On September 24, 2017, writer and activist Justina Ireland wrote a review of the YA novel, American Heart by Laura Moriarity. Her review, entitled “American Heart, Huck Finn and the Trap of White Supremacy” is critical of Moriarity’s choice, as a white author, to write a narrative about the American-Muslim experience with a white protagonist. […]
In this post, I will be following up on my analysis of the controversy by talking about some of my motivation for writing it in the first place. I typically write about national issues or broader topics, rather than about my local community or personal life. In fact, the only time that I have ever previously […]
Most memes happen by accident. An artist draws a cartoon, a reddit user will mess around with a stock photo, or someone will take a screenshot from a movie or TV show, and next thing anyone knows that image is everywhere. And then it will evolve, adopting new captions, new connotations, new users. Usually this […]
