John T. Noonan as Judge: What Can Empathic Judging Mean for Women?
Judge Noonan's book, Persons and Masks of the Law, written a decade before he became judge, stirred up both hope and skepticism. On the one hand, readers felt drawn to what today might be called a kinder, gentler vision of judging. It is a vision that insists on viewing people in their full and...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1995
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| In: |
Journal of law and religion
Year: 1995, Volume: 12, Issue: 2, Pages: 541-552 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Judge Noonan's book, Persons and Masks of the Law, written a decade before he became judge, stirred up both hope and skepticism. On the one hand, readers felt drawn to what today might be called a kinder, gentler vision of judging. It is a vision that insists on viewing people in their full and connected humanity, rather than as the abstracted and partial legal constructs that filter through the laws of evidence and trial court decisions to the briefs and arguments that appellate judges see. On the other hand, some readers expressed concern that the richer contextualization Noonan had modeled could not, by itself, determine particular outcomes. Those contextualizing facts require interpretation and ordering. Furthermore, for every detail seeming to point in one direction, another detail pointing to an opposite outcome is likely to be available. In other words, contextualization risks either endless regression or arbitrary truncation. Despite the polite controversy—some of the politeness no doubt due to the fact that at the time Noonan was a professor and in no danger of wreaking any contextualist havoc on the Rule of Law—his book did ensconce the trope of "empathy." |
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| ISSN: | 2163-3088 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of law and religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1051593 |