Judicial Responses to Long-Term Societal Decline

Abstract

In order to make a modest contribution to legal scholarship, one can either write definitively on a subject of limited importance or sketchily on a subject of arguably greater importance. This Article falls easily within the latter category. Its subject is nothing less than the judicial system's potential for response to perceived or actual manifestations of broad long-term societal decline. The Article discusses theories of societal decadence in general terms, and then considers examples involving judicial responses to obscene and offensive speech, criminal behavior, and the rights of undocumented aliens.