Segue a ementa da materia intitulada 'Emotion, Reason and Law' lecionada por Martha Nussbaum na Universidade de Chicago.Emotions figure in many areas of the law, and many legal doctrines (from reasonable provocation in homicide to mercy in criminal sentencing) invite us to think about emotions and their relationship to reason. In addition, some prominent theories of the limits of law make reference to emotions: thus Lord Devlin and, more recently, Leon Kass have argued that the disgust of the average member of society is a sufficient reason for rendering a practice illegal, even though it does no harm to others. Emotions, however, are all too rarely studied closely, with the result that both theory and doctrine are often confused. Ainda, recomendo a bibliografia: Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life, Bacon Press, Chicago, 1997.Poets as Judges: Judicial Rhetoric and the Literary Imagination, The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 1477-1519The Use and Abuse of Philosophy in Legal Education, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 45, No. 6 (Jul., 1993), pp. 1627-1645The Literary Imagination in Public Life, New Literary History, Vol. 22, No. 4, Papers from the Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change (Autumn, 1991), pp. 877-910 Skepticism about Practical Reason in Literature and the Law," Harvard Law Review, Vol. 107, No. 3, Jan 1994 (http://bit.ly/idznqM) Interessante a palestra:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6mbjTEsD58http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZuJ5O0p1Nc&feature=related Segue comentario de Stanley Fish sobre a discussao da intencao interpretativa e o sobre originalismo.Discussoes academicas e seu valor - "tao paupaveis quanto exotericas"?What is academic work? Stanley FishIn previous columns I have argued that academic work is distinctive something and not everything and that a part of its distinctiveness is its distance from political agendas. This does not mean that political agendas cant be the subject of academic work one should inquire into their structure, history, etc. but that the point of introducing them into the classroom should never be to urge them or to warn against them. I have never felt that my attempts to explain this point have been entirely successful, but I am moved to try again by the recent experience of a conference that, I believe, exemplifies the point in action.The conference was held last weekend at the University of San Diego School of Law. The subject was originalism that brand of interpretation that demands fidelity to original meaning, identified either with the standard definition of words at the time of drafting and/or ratification or with the intentions of the drafters. The alternatives named in my previous sentence represent schools of originalism. When originalists gather or regale one another in print, much of the energy is devoted to debating which version of originalism is the true one. In these debates the contending parties cite examples in support of their position and the examples come from constitutional law cases. Those cases center on substantive questions like Is the death penalty an instance of cruel and unusual punishment? or Do individual citizens have a right to own guns? or Does the category of free speech include campaign expenditures?At this conference, the emphasis was not on