Philosophy of Law and Legal Ethics

This is the class blog for Penn State's Fall 2009 Introduction to Philosophy of Law and Legal Ethics course. Here you will find discussion of the fundamental principles influencing contemporary legal practice and theory.

Drawing on classical readings in natural law, legal positivism and legal realism along with more contemporary movements in legal philosophy including critical legal studies, law and economics theory and feminist jurisprudence, this blog will

• highlight the implications of legal theory for topical judicial decisions and legislative developments,
  
• identify the social-political consequences of particular attitudes toward law,
• and outline the significance of legal theory to other academic disciplines and professions.

Some ground rules for blogging:

• Blog entries should be long enough to develop a line of thought without becoming long winded. 250 words should do nicely. Replies, by contrast, should address specific ideas in the original post with comments for revision, elaboration, clarification or encouragement. 50-100 words will get the job done in most cases. However, if you find that your comment encompasses more than one idea or contributes to the development of a new topic for discussion, you might simply want to start a new post that links back and refers to related posts addressing similar issues.
• You may blog and comment as often as you wish, however, no more than one post or two replies made during any one calendar week beginning on Sunday and ending on Saturday will count toward your grade. This helps ensure that the blog will have continuous activity rather than being flooded with insipid posts and pointless replies that come in at the end of the semester in order to avoid missing a deadline. The point of the blog is to encourage communication on the topics we cover in class, so it really doesn't do anyone any good to contribute posts or comments that won't be read because they were merely completed for the sake of satisfying a course requirement. With that said, "extra" posts and comments offered during any one calendar week will be accepted at roughly one quarter their normal values. If you post and comment more than is necessary according to the course requirements, this will go towards extra credit, if you post less or tardily, this amounts to partial credit.
• At the end of the semester, I will collect your blog entries on the final day of class, 10 December 2009. In order to ensure that I have the necessary information to grade your contributions please include the following information in the printouts you turn in on the final day of class: Title of your post or the post on which you are commenting, your name, the date on which the post or comment was made, and the content of your post or comment. Without these four pieces of data for each post or comment, I will be unable to grade your contributions and you will receive no credit for entries lacking this information.
• Each student is expected to contribute 10 posts and 20 comments in fulfillment of their assigned blogging requirements. Posts count for 2 points each, comments count for half a point. Each post or comment will receive full credit provided it is on time, relatively on topic and not submitted for extra credit, in which case posts and comments count for .5 and .1 points, respectively.
  

That pretty much does it for now. I'll let you know either in class, by email or over the blog whether further adjustments need to be made. As I mentioned on the syllabus, get in the habit of using the blog to discuss the readings and topics raised in class. The mantra of READ-BLOG-DISCUSS-BLOG is not set in stone but it does offer a way to think about the blog as a place to articulate your thoughts about the reading, discuss those thoughts in class and return to the blog to reevaluate or amplify your previous thoughts. Of course you'll be doing this along with everyone else in class, so the blog also offers a way to discover and think about the ways others are encountering the same information, how we might account for different readings, and why it might be valuable to hear from a perspective that differs from our own.