Reinventing American Jurisprudence

Law through the Lens of Value

George David Miller, Laura Brown

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9798881881771
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Courts
• Index: Law

In Reinventing American Jurisprudence: Law through the Lens of Value, George David Miller and Laura Brown unfurl an original approach to value and an imaginative landscape in philosophy of law. Value essentialism identifies value formations such as a sacred cow and scapegoat tandem and the intensification of "oughtness" as it approaches sacred zenith values. Readers learn how Occam's razor has been responsible for the death of many ideas; how the celebrated Other gains nuance as near and remote; and where a spectral assessment of probability and necessity leads. Analyses of Supreme Court cases grow out in different and exciting directions. Buck was not about eugenics, but another iteration of the value of efficiency and Yo Wick was decided less on law and more on a justice's finding humanity in Chinese laundry mat proprietors. Lochner involved not an ideological binary but three distinct value schemes. "Separate but equal" was refined as parallelism and exploitative tangents. In Brown, the Fourteenth Amendment took a significant subjective turn. In Heller, the communitarian position of stopping violence before it began could be contrasted with the individualistic position of waiting until you see the whites of their eyes in your bedroom. Citizens United was distilled into the question: was the First Amendment designed to maximize participation or maximize democracy?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I: Introduction to a New Theory of Law
• Chapter 1: The Primacy of Value: Value as the Sharp Edge of Meaning
• Chapter 2: Theories of Law through the Lens of Value
• II: Supreme Court Cases
• Chapter 3: Self-Determination v. Efficiency
• Chapter 4: Human Being v. Degraded Being
• Chapter 5: Security of Free Speech v. Wartime National Security
• Chapter 6: Personhood v. Property
• Chapter 7: Integration as a Means of Securing Personal Liberty for All and Preserving the Union v. Segregation as a Means of Limiting Personal Liberty and Permanently Securing White Supremacy
• Chapter 8: Economic Liberty over Paternalism v. Judicious State Intervention over Exploitative Liberty v. Malleable Constitution v. Dubious Liberty
• Chapter 9: The Value of Interdependence v. Value of a Private and Independent Economic Sphere
• Chapter 10: The Sacred Value of Privacy in Marriage v. Traditionalism
• Chapter 11: Malicious Free Speech v. Libel of a Government Official
• Chapter 12: The Subjective Turn of the Fourteenth Amendment v. Separate but Equal
• Chapter 13: Collective Safety Net v. Individualistic Self-Defense
• Chapter 14: The Establishment Clause v. Spiritual Heritage
• Chapter 15: Liberty and Privacy in the Bedroom v. the Stability of Homophobia
• Chapter 16: Weaponized Words v. the Fruition of Conscience in Action
• Chapter 17: Invidious Discrimination v. the Purity of White Supremacy
• Chapter 18: Health v. Liberty
• Chapter 19: Venerated Objects v. Freedom of Speech
• Chapter 20: Functional Judiciary v. Executive Privilege as a Means to Secure National Security
• Chapter 21: The First Amendment as a Means to Secure Corporate Dominance v. the First Amendment as a Means to Secure Democracy
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors