The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
 By Rebecca Heilweil
Rebecca Heilweil is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. Constituencies expect clarity from their legislation. While the drafters of law certainly can hold their own personal political stakes in keeping statutes vague‐ of which the Ninth Amendment is a great example‐ it is common expectation that the rhetoric of bills will, at the least, hold some sort of concrete meaning. Yet, this rarely happens, which necessitates an appellate judiciary process to interpret and contextualize the laws produced by legal bodies. Furthermore, in addition to the interpretive debates that dominate the federal appellate court spheres, international governmental bodies must remember the politics of language, and translation, in crafting and applying international law.
0 Comments
 By Rebecca Heilweil Rebecca Heilweil is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. Surrogacy, an age‐old process that has helped created unique and vibrant families, has improved the lives of many. Surrogates have enabled single, same‐sex, and infertile parents to have the children they’ve always wanted, thus contributing, in their own small way, to America’s unique culture. But even successful surrogate stories can bring up questions regarding custody and parental rights, and unenforced surrogacy contracts become even more complicated. When money becomes involved and courts refuse to enforce surrogacy contracts, people feel personally victimized. Not only are thousands of dollars lost, but potential parents have also been denied the family that had been promised to them. 
By Rebecca Heilweil
Rebecca Heilweil is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. Religion and legal doctrine have a long, shared history. Before church and state began to move apart, moral ecclesiastic authority and legal force held equal importance. Canon law was often written within civil code, citing Biblical verses. But more than simply providing another source of statutes, Abrahamic religion underlied the meaning and authority of political compacts. The Mayflower Compact, for instance, considered America's first constitution, recognizes God, and creates a parallel between the famous biblical covenant and its own political doctrine. Most early colonial legal documents, perhaps saving Roger William's, which celebrated the non-denominational nature of Rhode Island, embraced Christian rhetoric. References to the Holy Trinity and Jesus Christ were abundant. However, when comparing methods of interpreting religious and legal documents, it is interesting to note the similarities between how rabbinic scholars discuss the Jewish Torah and the Supreme Court analyzes the Constitution.  By Rebecca Heilweil
Rebecca Heilweil is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. Free speech is perhaps the basis of American democracy. As the opening of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment holds that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of Speech." The first ten amendments of the Constitution were meant to dilute a strong national government, seen as a federalist victory. They represented an attempt to re-solidify the individual as the unit of New World republican values, rather than an overly empowered President or Congress. Free speech is often thought of as the power of the individual to speak up against the government. However, Supreme Court reasoning offers an alternate view. While patriotic rhetoric paints the First Amendment as a declaration of individual agency, judicial reasoning often prefers to classify the freedom of speech as communal or utilitarian. |
|
|
