Judicial Review/Law/Legal Analysis

JUDICIAL OPINION ASSIGNMENT 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 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. (Justice Easterbrook is a colleague of Judge Posner on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.) 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.

Your opinion must be 3,000–3,500 words, excluding footnotes. While the length and quantity of footnotes will vary, your opinion must not exceed 15 pages. 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 in-text citations for most sources).
Your opinion must use and cite the other opinions that form the basis of the assignment, with a particular emphasis on Justice Easterbrook’s opinion. In addition, this assignment must use and cite at least 3 scholarly, legal sources in addition to the other opinions, the course textbooks, and the Bible.