Contributing Editors

  • Anne Bardolph
    Acquisitions Librarian
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    Pat Bingham-Harper
    Cataloging Librarian
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    Margaret Clark
    Reference Librarian
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    Marin Dell
    Reference Librarian
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    Elizabeth Farrell
    Reference Librarian
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    Robin Gault
    Associate Director
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    Faye Jones
    Professor and Director of Law Library
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    Jon Lutz
    Electronic Services Librarian
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    Mary McCormick
    Assistant Director for Public Services
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    Trisha Simonds
    Reference Libriarian
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May 2008

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Virtue Jurisprudence

A new book titled Virtue Jurisprudence by Colin Farrelly and Lawrence Solum has just been published.  Here's the publisher's description:

In moral theory, virtue ethics offers a third way - an alternative to the deontological and consequentialist approaches that dominated modern moral philosophy until very recently.Virtue What would happen if we transplanted virtue ethics into normative legal theory? The essays in this anthology are part of a growing body of work that answers that question. According to the advocates of virtue jurisprudence, the final end of law is to promote human flourishing - to enable humans to lead excellent lives. Can the virtue ethics tradition really help us address the fundamental concerns of legal theory-like judicial review, criminal and tort law? The authors of this volume believe it can. By shedding the constraints of consequentialist and deontological theories, these authors illustrate how the virtue ethics tradition can enrich legal theory in distinctive and diverse ways.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Remainders

In describing an intuitive process native to novel writers, the author of Invisible Writer (Johnson, 1999, p.9) quotes American master of psychological realism, Joyce Carol Oates.

Somehow, without knowing what I did, without knowing, in fact, that I was doing anything extraordinary at all, I had written my mother’s story by way of a work of prose fiction I had invented.

The author of Invisible Writer says on the same page:

What Joyce did not mention is that a similar instance of her novelistic ‘intuition’ had occurred almost twenty years earlier. In A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967), she had written a scene that also bears a striking resemblance to the circumstances of her grandfather’s murder.

Novelistic intuition. I’m curious to know what phrase will be coined to cover the writerly source of this short story, especially because of this. (Mrs. Oates's apology.)

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A Research Fellow at St. Anthony's College, Oxford University and the Lokahi Foundation in London and author of a book to be published by Oxford University Press says he is “barred [...] from entering the United States to pursue an academic career.” (link)

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Mr. Salman Rushdie has sold his literary papers to Emory University and according to The Guardian newspaper, his "decision to sell his literary papers to an American university should be applauded for highlighting a lamentable aspect of UK government policy." (link)

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If you google, oops… [Note to self: To be on the safe side of the legal question, thall shalt not use Google as a verb (link)]. If you look for a Mr. Smiley III, you will learn that he is a thorn in the stacks of many libraries. (link)

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Jeffrey Toobin interviews the Honorable Stephen G. Breyer. (video)

Posted by Toni Urquhart

more on Healthcare Whistleblowing and Ethics

An interesting article online here, discussing healthcare whistleblowing and virtue ethics.
Practical virtue ethics:  health care whistleblowing and portable digital technology
    From the Abstract:  The authors examine whether healthcare whistleblowing should be considered central to any medical ethics emphasising professional virtues and conscience. They consider possible causes for the paucity of professional or academic interest in this area and examine the counterinfluence of a continuing historical tradition of guild mentality professionalism that routinely places relationships with colleagues ahead of patient safety. Journal of Medical Ethics 2005;31:612-618

Posted by Jon Lutz

An Aretaic Quarter Turn

A short but interesting entry from the Legal Philosophy Blog with a criticism of Lawrence Solum's Aretaic Turn article.  The author claims Solum misunderstood Aristotle's concept of justice and law.  See the whole article here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Developing and teaching the virtue-ethics foundations of healthcare whistle blowing

From the Abstract: "Few if any medical schools or law department health law and bioethics classes, teach whistle blowing in a formal sense." This article attempts to establish the theoretical foundations for healthcare whistle blowing.  Citation: Monash Bioeth Rev. 2004 Oct;23(4):41-55
Abstract

Posted by Jon Lutz

Edwin Locke's Illogical Attack on Animal Rights

Interesting short piece examining Edwin Locke's views on Animal Rights.
Locke's Illogical Attack on Animal Rights

Posted by Jon Lutz

Virtue Ethics

According to the Wikipedia, in philosophy, the phrase virtue ethics refers to ethical systems that focus primarily on what sort of person one should try to be.  One of the aims of virtue ethics to to establish the sort of characteristics of a virtuous person.
Wikipedia

Posted by Jon Lutz