As this course makes clear, law and economics is the dominant jurisprudential thought system in the United States today. It not only addresses topics typically thought of as relating to economics, such as contracts, property, business organizations, taxation, debt, securities regulation, antitrust, or bankruptcy, but it also addresses areas of law not often thought of as economic in nature, such as family and criminal law.

Law and economics has been particularly influential with judges, many of whom use law and economics-style reasoning without explicitly stating that this is what they are doing. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that a well-informed Christian concerned about issues of law and policy in the United States today be able to understand and apply the economic analysis of law (law and economics) to issues of law and policy as expressed in the context of a judicial opinion and critique the law and economics approach from a distinctly evangelical Christian worldview.

The Posner text provides the law and economics approach, and the Chrisman text provides the Christian worldview approach. The Judicial Opinion Assignment gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your mastery of these two approaches to issues of law and policy by (1) reviewing mock judicial opinions written from a variety of jurisprudential perspectives, including the law and economics perspective but not the Christian perspective, (2) drafting a mock judicial opinion from the perspective of the distinctly evangelical Christian worldview taught in this course,

and (3) critiquing and arguing against the other mock legal opinions with a special focus on Judge Easterbrook’s mock opinion, which articulates the law and economics approach to the issue presented. INSTRUCTIONS Read Lon L. Fuller’s famous article The Case of the Speluncean Explorers, 112 HARV. L. REV. 1851 (1999). In that article, Fuller sets forth the facts of a hypothetical case involving a group of cave explorers who are trapped underground and forced to kill and eat one of their own in order to survive.

The facts are contained within the first of five hypothetical or mock judicial opinions that Fuller offers as representing various schools of jurisprudential thought. Assume that you are an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Newgarth in the year 4300. Further, assume that you serve on the Court with Chief Justice Truepenny and Associate Justices Foster, Tatting, Keen, and Handy from Fuller’s original article. In addition, you also serve on the Court with Associate Justices Kozinski, Sunstein, West, Easterbrook, De Bunker (Dershowitz,) and Stupidest Housemaid (Butler.)

Thus, the Supreme Court of Newgarth is sitting en banc and the vote is currently tied: five votes to affirm the convictions, five votes to reverse the convictions, and one abstention. You are the final vote, and the fate of the defendants rests in your hands. Draft your opinion as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Newgarth. Your opinion must be written from a distinctly evangelical Christian view of the law, and it must argue forcefully for either affirming or reversing the convictions from that worldview.

Further, your opinion must address the arguments of the other Justices to the extent that you see fit, but, in particular, it must address the arguments made from the law and economics perspective by Justice Easterbrook in detail. (Justice Easterbrook was a colleague of Judge Posner on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals for many years.) You should not feel compelled to interact with all of the other opinions, or any other opinion for that matter, except for Justice Easterbrook’s opinion, with which you must interact in detail.

Your opinion must be 3,000–3,500 words, excluding footnotes, if any. Note that the word count does not include footnotes, if any. Further, your opinion must use current Bluebook format, as with other writing assignments in this course. Be sure to use current Bluebook format for judicial opinions (which means you will use a minimum of footnotes and instead use in-text citations for most sources). Your opinion must cite as well as utilize the other opinions that form the basis of the assignment, with a particular emphasis on Justice Easterbrook’s opinion.

(As previously noted, you are only required to interact with Judge Easterbrook’s opinion as it represents the law and economics approach. You may interact with the others, and, if so, you must properly cite them.) In addition, your opinion must cite and utilize at least 3 scholarly, academic or legal sources in addition to the other opinions, the course textbooks, and the Bible for a minmum of 7 scholarly, academic or legal sources.

Scholarly, academic or legal sources provided in the course materials or cited in the course materials should be preferred to the extent that they are relevant to the assignment. Please note, this is not requiring a minimum of 7 citations but rather 7 sources. You should have numerous citations throughout your opinion as every major assertion should be supported by a citation to relevant authority.

Your opinion must contain 1-inch margins, use 12-point Ariel or New Times Roman font, and be double-spaced (with footnotes, if used, in a smaller font, single-spaced, and indented). Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the SafeAssig Please use Posner, Law and Economics in this paper.