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This paper critically assesses the "procedural" accounts
of political justice set forth by John Rawls in A Theory of
Justice (1971) and Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and
Utopia (1974). I argue that the areas of agreement between Rawls and
Nozick are more significant than their disagreements. Even though Nozick
offers trenchant criticisms of Rawls's argument for economic
redistribution (the "difference principle"), Nozick's own
economic libertarianism is undermined by his "principle of
rectification," which he offers as a possible ground in practice for
the application of something like the difference principle. Both
Rawls's and Nozick's accounts of justice fail because of their
abstraction from human nature as a ground of right. At the same
time the libertarianism on which they agree in the non-economic sphere
would deprive a free society of its necessary moral underpinning. Rawls
and Nozick err, finally, by demanding that the policies pursued by a just
society conform to theoretical formulas concocted by philosophy
professors, rather than leaving room (as Lockean liberalism does) for the
adjustment of policies to particular circumstances based on
statesmen's prudential judgment and the consent of the governed.
Particularly troubling from the perspective of a citizen seriously
concerned with the advancement of justice and freedom is both
thinkers' shrill denunciations of existing liberal societies for
failing to conform to their particular strictures.

For many, the end of this week marks the passage of a six-month period of American history characterized by throbbing dystopian existential dread. The pandemic has been the score to a dark production that, when the spotlight was hot, turned out to be a series of character studies that no one asked for nor were particularly interested in watching. With hundreds of thousands dead and millions more left with lives permanently affected by the virus, the richest among us have become much richer not just during the pandemic, but because of it, and many who were thriving at the start of this year now find themselves evicted from their homes with nowhere to go. What's more, police brutality and systemic injustice have packed our streets with protesters demanding meaningful change. Looting and rioting have occurred, which has motivated the federal government to respond with force not just against people violating the law, but against reporters and peaceful protestors as well. Against this backdrop of chaos, the President of the United States clenches his fist and calls for "law and order."

Problems with sub-prime loans roiled financial markets worldwide in 2007 and brought renewed attention to predatory lending practices by loan brokers in the United States. Questionable lending practices, however, plague consumer financial markets worldwide, including one of the largest, found in Japan. This Article addresses the Japanese response to systemic problems in its consumer finance market. Over the last forty years, the judiciary has led and the Diet followed. Most recently, in 2006, the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that turned the single most important earnings driver for the consumer finance industry into dead letter law. The Diet followed with legislative revisions. Both actions have imposed restrictions unheard of in the United States and drastically reshaped the financial industry in Japan. This Article analyzes these recent changes and places them in context. Doing so offers more than description and a point of comparison. It provides a window into the evolution of Japanese private law. It provides evidence that challenges the conventional wisdom on Japan. The Japanese judiciary is neither weak nor ineffectual. It is not limited to following the dictates of the Liberal Democratic Party or bureaucracy or filling in legislative lacuna. It has not limited itself to activism in the service of stability or community. In private law matters, it has come to act aggressively: repeatedly invalidating black letter law and providing substantive as opposed to procedural justice. This work shows the Japanese judiciary has not evolved into a monolithic bureaucracy, but one often driven by activist lower courts. The historical context and discussion of recent developments in consumer finance law offers insight into legal changes affecting the Japanese financial markets today, as well as the evolution of the role of law and the rule of law in Japan.

Iranian society has undergone significant transformations since the 1962 Land Reform and the modernization plans implemented by its different governments. These transformations include industrialization, bureaucratization, population explosion, rural-urban migration, increase in the size of the working class, massive entry of women into the labor force, and the subsequent 1979 Islamic Revolution. Since the Revolution, the class structure and the composition of Iran's political elites have changed significantly. Previous research has been particularly less attentive to the relationship between the structure of classes in Iran and the demographic composition of elected members of parliament (MPs). This study aims to enhance previous research by studying the nature and extent of representativeness of members of the Iranian parliament since the Revolution. Special attention will be paid to the descriptive representation of MPs by calculating the index of dissimilarity. Utilizing data on the occupational distribution of the general population and parliamentarians, this study will identify social class representativeness of MPs in each of the ten parliamentarian elections from 1980 to 2016. It employs a mixed methodology placing emphasis on the demographic (gender, age, ethnicity, etc.) and socioeconomic (education and occupation) dimensions of political representation. Using various theoretical models, it will test the extent to which each of the liberal-pluralist, instrumentalist and structuralist Marxists, or cultural reproduction theoretical approaches fit the evidence. The current study finds that educational credential, as a measure of credentialized cultural capital, is an important predictor of being elected as a member of parliament in Iran, supporting the cultural reproduction theory. Evidence also supports Marxist theory in that working class is underrepresented in the Majles, and that education itself is class-based. Finally, this study observes strong representation of professional and managerial class among the parliamentarians which lends support to liberal-pluralist theory.

The enactment of the law in society aims to create justice, legal certainty, benefit and social empowerment for the community, to lead to the ideals of the court as a protector of society, the judge must always prioritize the 4 (four) legal objectives above in every decision he makes. This is in line with what the law is based on, namely the law for the welfare of the community. The poor are often victims of unfair law enforcement due to their ignorance of law enforcement and financial incompetence. The purpose of this study is to analyze the progressive law applied to poor defendants seeking substantive justice and to find out and analyze the state should be able to assist poor defendants in the judicial process in accordance with the rule of law principle. This research uses normative juridical method. Judges in deciding legal cases for the poor should have a progressive view, thus judges will conceptualize each article in the legislation not only as a statement about the existence of a causal (cause and effect) relationship that is straightforward according to logical law but also always contains moral substance originating from ethics and professionalism of judges.

The gap between the content of the Surface Mining Control & Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) & its substantive enforcement is examined. Analysis is based on data collected from civil lawsuits filed in US district courts 1979-1985, congressional subcommittee hearings, General Accounting Office & Internal Revenue Service investigations, as well as environmental group assessments. The SMCRA's enactment was facilitated by: scientific expertise, political experience, & organizational abilities of environmental groups; the political disorganization of the coal industry; the economic expansion within the coal industry; & the support of Congress & the Carter administration. In the late 1970s, the coal industry & the coal-producing states organized politically & helped persuade the Carter administration to scale back its commitment to the SMCRA. The Reagan administration further reduced the enforcement power of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation & Enforcement (OSM). It is concluded that congressional gridlock as well as Dept of Interior & OSM delay of federal court orders all contributed to the substantive failure of the SMCRA. M. Greenberg