Reinventing American Jurisprudence

<p><span>In </span><span>Reinventing American Jurisprudence: Law through the Lens of Value</span><span>, George David Miller and Laura Brown unfurl an original approach to value and an imaginative landscape in philosophy of law. Value essentialism identifies value formations such as a sacred cow and scapegoat tandem and the intensification of “oughtness” as it approaches sacred zenith values. Readers learn how Occam’s razor has been responsible for the death of many ideas; how the celebrated Other gains nuance as near and remote; and where a spectral assessment of probability and necessity leads. Analyses of Supreme Court cases grow out in different and exciting directions. </span><span>Buck </span><span>was not about eugenics, but another iteration of the value of efficiency and Yo Wick was decided less on law and more on a justice’s finding humanity in Chinese laundry mat proprietors. </span><span>Lochner </span><span>involved not an ideological binary but three distinct value schemes. “Separate but equal” was refined as parallelism and exploitative tangents. In </span><span>Brown</span><span>, the Fourteenth Amendment took a significant subjective turn. In </span><span>Heller</span><span>, the communitarian position of stopping violence before it began could be contrasted with the individualistic position of waiting until you see the whites of their eyes in your bedroom. </span><span>Citizens United</span><span> was distilled into the question: was the First Amendment designed to maximize participation or maximize democracy? </span></p>