APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1

Newsletter on Philosophy and Law

Abstracts:
Recent Law Review Articles of Interest

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Shapiro, David L., et al. "The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: A Fiftieth Anniversary Symposium," Harvard Law Review 112 (1999): 1834–1923

The latest effort in the ongoing cottage industry of updating Lon Fuller’s famous 1949 survey of contending legal philosophies about the nature of law and the role of judges, by means of a series of fictional appellate judicial opinions on an equally fictional case from the planet Newgarth. (See abstract of a similar article by Alexander Sanders on pp. 93-94 of the Fall 1998 issue of this Newsletter. See also Peter Suber, The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions (Routledge, 1998); William N. Eskridge, et al., "The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Twentieth Century Statutory Interpretation in a Nutshell [and] Contemporary Proceedings," 61 George Washington Law Review (1993), 1731–1811; and Anthony D’Amato, "The Speluncean Explorers–Further Proceedings," 32 Stanford Law Review (1980), 467–85.) This latest incarnation boasts some heavy hitters among the new "en banque" panel: federal judge Alex Kozinski and law professors Cass Sunstein and Robin West all voting to affirm the lower court’s conviction of the spelunkers; and federal appellate judge Frank Easterbrook, Harvard Law School gadfly Alan Dershowitz (a.k.a. Justice de Bunker), and Critical Race theorist Paul Butler (a.k.a. Justice Stupidest Housemaid) all voting to reverse. Shapiro’s role is to write an introduction, which includes a useful summary of the views expressed by Fuller’s original panel of five, as well of the views expressed in the seven additional opinions in the GW Law Rev. articles. This new set of opinions represents yet another intriguing gloss on Fuller’s work, and is well worth the read.

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APA Newsletters Fall 1999 Volume 99, Number 1

APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1