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Mitchell Berman

Leon Meltzer Professor of Law

Mitchell Berman

An internationally recognized legal theorist, Mitch Berman writes and teaches in several fields but is centrally focused on deepening our collective understanding of problems and puzzles that arise from law’s character as a normative practice—which is to say, a practice that creates (or purports to create) normative entities such as rights, duties, powers, permissions, and prohibitions.

One set of topics that Berman explores concerns the contents and contours of a variety of normative concepts—concepts such as justification, coercion, consent, desert, blameworthiness, penalty, and so on. Continue reading…

Articles and Book Chapters

Conditional Spending and the Conditional Offer Puzzle, in THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT DECISION: PHILOSOPHICAL AND LEGAL IMPLICATIONS (Fritz Allhoff & Mark A. Hall, eds., Routledge 2014).

Abuse of Property Right Without Political Foundations: A Response to Katz, 124 YALE L.J. F. 42 (2014).

On What Distinguishes New Originalism from Old: A Jurisprudential Take, 82 FORDHAM L. REV. 545 (2013) (with Kevin Toh).

Coercion, Compulsion, and the Medicaid Expansion: A Study in the Doctrine of Unconstitutional Conditions, 91 TEX. L. REV. 1283 (2013).

Sprints, Sports, and Suits, 40 J. PHIL. SPORT 163 (2013).

On What Distinguishes New Originalism from Old: A Jurisprudential Take (with Kevin Toh), 82 FORDHAM L. REV. 545 (2013).

Rehabilitating Retributivism, 32 LAW & PHIL. 83 (2013).

Introduction: Punishment and Culpability, 9 OHIO ST. J. CRIM. L. 441 (2012).

Pluralistic Non-originalism and the Combinability Problem, 91 TEX. L. REV. 1739 (2013) (with Kevin Toh).

The Justification of Punishment, in THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO PHILOSOPHY OF LAW 141 (Andrei Marmor ed., Routledge 2012).

Alexander’s Genius, APA NEWSL. PHIL. L., vol. 12, no. 1 (Fall 2012), at 1.

Attempts, in Language and in Law, 6 JERUSALEM REV. LEG. STUD. 1 (2012) (reviewing GIDEON YAFFE, ATTEMPTS (Oxford 2010)).

Two Kinds of Retributivism, in THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CRIMINAL LAW 433 (R. A. Duff & Stuart Green eds., Oxford 2011).

Reflective Equilibrium and Constitutional Method: Lessons from John McCain and the Natural-Born Citizenship Clause, in THE CHALLENGE OF ORIGINALISM 246 (Grant Huscroft & Bradley W. Miller eds., Cambridge University Press 2011).

Constitutional Interpretation: Non-originalism, 6 PHIL. COMPASS 408 (2011).

Blackmail, in THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY OF CRIMINAL LAW 37 (John Deigh & David Dolinko eds., Oxford 2011).

“Let ‘em Play”: A Study in the Jurisprudence of Sport, 99 GEO L.J. 1325 (2011).

On Interpretivism and Formalism in Sports Officiating: From General to Particular Jurisprudence, 38 J. PHIL. SPORT 177 (2011).

Replay, 99 CAL. L. REV. 1683 (2011).

Provocation Manslaughter as Partial Justification and Partial Excuse, 52 WM. & MARY L. REV. 1027 (2011) (with Ian P. Farrell).

Constitutional Constructions and Constitutional Decision Rules: Thoughts on the Carving of Implementation Space, 27 CONST. COMMENT. 39 (2010).

Constitutional Theory and the Rule of Recognition: Toward a Fourth Theory of Law, in THE RULE OF RECOGNITION AND THE U.S. CONSTITUTION 269 (Matthew D. Adler & Kenneth Einar Himma eds., Oxford University Press, 2009).

Originalism Is Bunk, 84 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1 (2009).

Symposium: Supreme Court Review—Symposium Foreword, 44 TULSA L. REV. 467 (2009).

Originalism and Its Discontents (Plus a Thought or Two about Abortion), 24 CONST. COMMENT. 383 (2007) (excerpted as chapter 8 in IT IS A CONSTITUTION WE ARE EXPOUNDING: COLLECTED WRITINGS ON INTERPRETING OUR FOUNDING DOCUMENT (2009)).

More publications can be found here.

Working Papers

Judge Posner's Simple Law (October 10, 2014). Michigan Law Review, Forthcoming 2015; U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 14-36. (forthcoming 2015)
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Modest Retributivism (Mar. 2014), U. Tex. Working Paper Series. (forthcoming)
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Conditional Spending and the (General) Conditional Offer Puzzle (Jul. 12, 2013), U. Tex. Sch. L., Pub. L. & Legal Theory Res. Paper Series No. 522. (forthcoming)
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