New Scholarship from Pitt Law Faculty in January

"Reconciling Brennanian and Brandeisian Laboratories"

87 Albany Law Review 941 (2024)

Gerald S. Dickinson

In this Essay, Dean Jerry Dickinson explores the harmonious components of Brennanian and Brandeisian jurisprudence. United by the concept of democratic judicial laboratories, Justices Louis Brandeis and William Brennan, Jr. are recognized as two of the most influential U.S. Supreme Court Justices in shaping American state constitutional law and federalism. With the complexities and contradictions that arise at the intersection of courts, rights, and democracy in mind, Dickinson argues that this synthesized governance model enhances judicial legitimacy by empowering citizens to elect judges who reflect popular opinion, while simultaneously enabling state courts to function as judicial laboratories of democracy.

"A Naturalized Jurisprudence for International Law: Implications for Justice in the Global Economy"

U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2025-02

John Linarelli

In this Essay, Professor John Linarelli critically examines the ways in which international law could benefit from philosophical naturalism: the notion that the best legal answers come from empirical science. Linarelli argues that international law cannot legitimately govern without consideration of human psychology. This Essay investigates how attention to cognitive science might change the way international law approaches inter-group communication, suggesting a move away from Kantian rights and duties toward a Humean cosmopolitanism. 

"Professional Responsibility and Privilege in the Cross-Border Practice of Law"

43 Journal of Law and Commerce (Forthcoming 2025)

Ronald A. Brand

In this Essay, Professor Ronald Brand reviews U.S. law on professional responsibility and cross-border practice, with a focus on disciplinary decisions and cases dealing with the unauthorized practice of law. Brand considers attorney-client privilege and work product doctrines in order to highlight how challenges to the admissibility of evidence in dispute resolution proceedings both demonstrate the differences in legal system approaches to the lawyer-client relationship and indicate the need for careful communication at all stages of that relationship when it crosses borders. This Essay concludes that the current self-regulating system fails to meet the needs of the contemporary world.