2006 Issue

By Louis E. Wolcher What a legal object is — its identity or essence — is co-determined by how it is: its mode of existence, or the way it manifests itself in time as a lived phenomenon. Thus, any serious effort to think about the human institutions that we call “law” requires a philosophy of Read More >

By Jarna Petman There is no doubt that human rights — especially international human rights — have been a Left or a liberal Left agenda throughout the 20th century, existing alongside liberal internationalism, and an embedded anti-State rhetoric. “Ours is the age of rights,” writes in a triumphant note Louis Henkin, one of the most Read More >

By Panu Minkkien The creation of some thirty truth commissions during the last four decades in countries throughout Central and South America, Asia, Africa and Europe has quite understandably produced a wealth of legal literature focusing on the possibilities of reconciliation and transitional justice after periods of intense internal conflict and crimes of the direst Read More >

By Anthony C. Infanti I always find January depressing. It isn’t the weather that gets me down, although the gray Pittsburgh skies and the frigid temperatures certainly can be trying. No, it’s the constant barrage of mail from banks, mortgage companies, and my employer, all of whom are so thoughtfully providing me with the information Read More >

By Stephen J. Fortunato, Jr. During the last months of 2005, as the nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court by President George W. Bush was ponderously discussed by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, political activists and columnists, the background issue of Alito’s Italian heritage occasionally seeped into the discourse, but Read More >

By Peter Fitzpatrick A borrowed beginning: “The business of America may be business as Calvin Coolidge once said, but it is at least as accurate and as important to assert that the religion of America is America.” That comes from Jaroslav Pelikan’s review in 1971 of Martin E. Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in Read More >