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Friday, November 22, 2024

Two Birds and Reader-Based Originalism

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Speaker intent governs speaker meaning. Hearer meaning doesn't. Thus legislative intent controls, not contemporaneous reader meaning (ev...
Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Another Attempt At Exorcising Langdell's Tenacious Ghost

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My latest attempt at exorcising C.C. Langdell's tenacious ghost is now in print: "Langdell & the Eclipse of Character." I...
Friday, August 2, 2024

Very Nice Little Post on Lawyers & Poets

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                                                                        From "Lawyer Poets"                                       ...
Sunday, January 28, 2024

The Arc Continues: Disdaining Langdell From Law Student to Law Professor

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  Favorite Carrell at Duke Law From LWI :  Lecturing Against Langdell at Wake Law : Not forgetting how our own legal education was watered d...
Sunday, January 14, 2024

Hats, Rabbits, and Jurists’ Magic (Or Jurists’ Bright and Dark Magic)

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I am grateful to Prof. Christine Corcos for inspiring to write an essay for her forthcoming second volume of Law and Magic which will be pu...

Langdell and the Eclipse of Character

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                                                                                       Abstract Christopher Columbus Langdell has not only d...

Recasting Canons of Interpretation and Construction into "Canonical" Queries: Further Canonical Queries of Presented or Transmitted Text

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                                                                                         Abstract This Article draws from, builds upon, and ...

Exploring Presumptions & Entailments: Does the Concept of an Omniscient, Moral, Loving, & Omnipotent Divinity Entail Incarnation?

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Lawyers and others (including theologians) who would conceptualize and reason well must carefully identify conceptual presuppositions and en...
Sunday, January 7, 2024

Hermeneutics and Anselm's Ontological Argument: Lessons for Lawyers and Others On Existential Proof

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When lawyers and others explore the limits of logical proof in proving matters of existence, it's quite useful to explore St. Anselm...
Friday, June 16, 2023

Therapeutics of Powerful Verse in Powerful Translation

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The therapeutic powers of poetry can be unparalleled. To cross languages, such powerful verse requires translation of no less merit. Transla...
Friday, February 17, 2023

Rhetoric Syllabus 2023

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  The Art of Persuasion: Classical Rhetoric for Lawyers   Harold A. Lloyd Spring 2023   (1-18-2023)   Involving the art of et...
Saturday, May 7, 2022

Balancing Freedom and Restraint: The Role of Virtue in Legal Analysis

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                                                                                Abstract Even if one sees the law as “a self-contained syste...
3 comments:
Thursday, September 2, 2021

Recasting Canons of Interpretation and Construction into "Canonical" Queries

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In a new Article I advocate recasting the canons of construction into neutral queries rather than presumptions or directives of meaning. Su...
Monday, July 12, 2021

Hypatia & Palladas

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  Not only is there a new book out about #Hypatia but Chapter 2 begins with lines from my #translation of the Complete #Palladas .
Sunday, December 6, 2020

My Common Thread

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Though the subject matters of my writing may seem quite diverse, there is a common thread. What is it? That common thread is a hermeneutic p...
Sunday, January 19, 2020

How To Do Things With Signs: An Overview of Semiotics for Lawyers and Others

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Click HERE for a link to my current draft of "How To Do Things With Signs: Semiotics in Legal Theory, Practice, and Education." ...
1 comment:
Monday, June 3, 2019

Voltaire and the Semiotics of Dress

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For those who doubt that there is a semiotics of dress, here is Voltaire wigged and wigless. Many thanks to the National Gallery of Art in W...
Wednesday, May 29, 2019

La Bruyère on Human Inconstancy

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It's a shame so many Anglophones don't read or even know of La Bruy ère.  Here's some food for thought from his clever pen (as t...
Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Joseph Ransdell on Charles Sanders Peirce

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"When the truth about Peirce's life and accomplishments becomes generally known, it will be perceived that he was not only the mo...
Saturday, February 23, 2019

Fantastic Cognitive Emotion & the Law Symposium Held at Wake Law 2/22/19

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Many thanks to the thoughtful speakers and Wake Law Review students who made possible this engaging February 22, 2019 symposium on the insep...
Sunday, February 17, 2019

Miscellaneous French Verse Translations

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When translating verse, I think one should try to capture both the form (meter, line positions, rhyme scheme, etc.) and substance to the ex...
Sunday, December 23, 2018

Musical Score for "The Flood" from "Charms and Knots"

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Click here for a link to Thomas Swenson's Musical Score for "The Flood."
Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Making Good Sense: Pragmatism’s Mastery of Meaning, Truth, and Workable Rule of Law

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Here is the abstract for my latest article forthcoming in the Wake Forest Journal of Law & Policy. In the article, I try to take a m...
Saturday, May 19, 2018

Addition to Strings of Thought 5-19-2018

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Hermeneutics                                 To Gadamer Though eye must squint, eye must explore the bird Who plays at the horizo...
Saturday, March 24, 2018

Why Legal Writing Is "Doctrinal" and More Importantly Profound

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It is high time that we end the disparate treatment of legal writing professors and the use of such disparaging labels as "non-doctrina...
Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Addition to "Strings of Thought" (2/7/18)

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2/7/18 A legislative bill or other proposal isn’t simply a string of words on a page. Instead, a legislative bill or other proposal involve...
Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Addition to "Strings of Thought" (1/30/18)

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Legislative Intent 1/30/18  Legislative “intent” lies in legislatures’ speech acts and not legislators’ speech acts.  That is, legisl...
Sunday, January 21, 2018

Addition to "Strings of Thought" (1/21/18)

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Speaker Meaning 1/21/18 “Original” speaker meaning includes the unexplored.  Imagine I buy a netted device I categorize as “my hammock...
Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Strings of Thoughts

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Recognizing I’ll never have time to put in finished prose or verse all the things I’d like to explore, I’m starting some strings of thought...
Thursday, December 21, 2017

The Inherent Inseparability of Doctrine & Skills

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A quick screen shot of my brief bit in Linda Edwards' fantastic new book The Doctrine Skills Divide: Legal Education's Self-Inflic...
Saturday, September 9, 2017

Speaker Meaning and the Interpretation and Construction of Executive Orders

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Here is an abstract of my latest article posted on SSRN : ABSTRACT: This Article explores the interpretation and construction of execu...
Monday, July 10, 2017

President Trump & Word Association

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As a lover of words, I am of course interested in the following Quinnipiac poll which asked responders "What is the first word that co...
Monday, June 5, 2017

Embracing Life: Shakespeare and "Existentialism"

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              Sartre claims that existence precedes “essence,” that “being-in-itself” is thrust upon us, that we have our subse...
Wednesday, May 17, 2017

A Sonnet on the Jerusalem Cross

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For me, the Jerusalem Cross is endlessly inspiring:   Christ before Paul; the Kingdom that’s within; the wisdom of the Buddha; Will...