Legal Commons^™

Anti-Trafficking Legislation In Sub-Saharan Africa: Analyzing The Role Of Coercion And Parental Responsibility, Ruby Andrew, Benjamin N. Lawrance

Fourth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking, 2012

This article discusses the effect of US and international support for local laws to combat child trafficking in sub-Saharan African states. The annual ranking of African anti-trafficking measures, produced by the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (OMCTP) in conjunction with the UN Office on Crime and Drugs, not only provides an important source of data but also creates a powerful incentive for African states to effect legislative change.

We argue that, although the US supports criminalization of traffickers and the OMCTP espouses laws to deter parental inducement to support trafficking activities, the implementation of …

A Railway, A City, And The Public Regulation Of Private Property: Cpr V. City Of Vancouver, Douglas C. Harris

All Faculty Publications

The doctrine of regulatory or constructive taking establishes limits on the public regulation of private property in much of the common law world. When public regulation becomes unduly onerous — so as, in effect, to take a property interest from a private owner — the public will be required to compensate the owner for its loss. In 2000, the City of Vancouver passed a by-law that limited the use of a century-old rail line to a public thoroughfare. The Canadian Pacific Railway, which owned the line, claimed the regulation amounted to a taking of its property for which the city …

Primary Sources At A Distance: Researching Indian Colonial Law, Arthur Fraas

Arthur Mitchell Fraas

No abstract provided.

Legal Databases: A Comparative Analysis, Arthur Fraas

Arthur Mitchell Fraas

A comparative report commissioned by the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) on the world of electronic databases for legal history research.

Review Of "Heinonline", Arthur Fraas

Arthur Mitchell Fraas

A detailed review of the HeinOnline electronic database commissioned by the Center for Research Libraries (CRL)

Review Of "Llmc-Digital", Arthur Fraas

Arthur Mitchell Fraas

A detailed review of the LLMC-Digital electronic database commissioned by the Center for Research Libraries (CRL)

Keeping An Eye On Unrwa, Randa R. Farah Dr.

Randa R Farah Dr.

Israel recently launched a spate of attacks on UNRWA, the UN Agency serving Palestinian refugees, which could herald another attempt to shut the Agency down. At the same time, UNRWA faces serious external and internal challenges that, given the history of Western attempts to use it to resettle Palestinian refugees, could result in shifts in the Agency’s mission and mandate, as happened briefly in the post-Oslo period. Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Randa Farah analyses the Israeli, Western, and Arab challenges to UNRWA that call for Palestinian vigilance in 2012.

Bad News For John Marshall, David B. Kopel, Gary Lawson

David B Kopel

In Bad News for Professor Koppelman: The Incidental Unconstitutionality of the Individual Mandate, we demonstrated that the individual mandate’s forced participation in commercial transactions cannot be justified under the Necessary and Proper Clause as the Clause was interpreted in McCulloch v. Maryland. Professor Andrew Koppelman’s response, Bad News for Everybody, wrongly conflates that argument with a wide range of interpretative and substantive positions that are not logically entailed by taking seriously the requirement that laws enacted under the Necessary and Proper Clause must be incidental to an enumerated power. His response is thus largely unresponsive to our actual arguments.

The Israeli Welfare State, Jon Foster

Jon Foster

An analysis of the modern welfare state that exists within Israel. Identifying where the Israeli model falls in relation to the European and American model; differences, similarities, and unique aspects of the Israeli system in comparative perspective.

Tripartism In Ireland, Jon Foster

Jon Foster

Over the past few years, the term “PIIGS” has become synonymous with economic concerns and fears of collapse. The acronym, which currently refers to the European countries of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain: was originally just ‘PIGS’ , used to group the similar economies of Southern Europe when considering them for acceptance into the European Monetary Union. Nevertheless, as a result of the global financial crisis, this term soon came to identify economically weak and overly indebted nations. However, unlike Italy, Greece, and Portugal, who had before the crisis demonstrated relatively slow growth, modest unemployment, and a propensity to …

Labor Unions And Climate Change, Jon Foster

Jon Foster

The challenge of climate change and the need for a shift to more ecologically sustainable methods of production and innovation can dramatically redefine the strategy and objectives of the labor movement as a whole. Furthermore, within the specific sectors of: Agriculture, Construction, Utilities, and Automobiles, the reality of a changing environment, and social views, has already begun redefining what the future of these industries will mean in relation to labor unions.

Review Of The Website The Nuremberg Trials Project, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the website The Nuremberg trials project.

The Policy Of Constantinian And Theodosian Emperors Towards The Public Spectacles: Secularization Or Christianization?, Abdelaziz M. A. Ramadan

Abdelaziz M. A. Ramadan

Most scholars incline to discuss the late antique imperial attitudes toward public spectacles within the context of Secularization. This study goes to re-examine this theory suggesting that the imperial policy may cannot be treated aside from the process of Christianization. it focuses on the period from 325 to 426 A.D.

Finding Historic Indiana Documents In An Online Environment: Civil War Era And Later 19th Century, Bert Chapman

Libraries Research Publications

This presentation provides information on digitally accessing historic Indiana State and U.S. Government documents from the latter half of the 19th century. Examples of these resources include the periodical Indiana Farmer, Indiana Civil War Governor Oliver Morton's telegraph books, the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Indiana Adjutant General Reports, and the Brevier Indiana Law Reports covering Indiana General Assembly proceedings. These collections have been digitized by various Indiana libraries including Purdue University, IUPUI, and Indiana University. Accessing these primary source materials will enable users to gain augmented understanding ot the economic, military, and political issues facing Indiana …

Review Of Sex, Murder, And The Unwritten Law: Courting Judicial Mayhem, Texas Style. By Bill Neal., Paul N. Spellman

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

"If, as has often been contended, truth is the first casualty of traditional warfare, then logic, it appears, is the first casualty of sexual warfare." And with that thematic statement in hand, author Bill Neal is off to the proverbial races with an often delightful, sometimes troubling, and generally entertaining legal discourse on the so-called "unwritten law": that a cuckolded husband or a woman wronged has the God-given right to avenge or be avenged, even to redress by murder. With a curiously dispassionate, or at least overly serious, foreword by Cal State-Fullerton professor Gordon Morris Bakken, Neal's tales of adultery, …

Infinite Hope And Finite Disappointment: The Story Of The First Interpreters Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Elizabeth Reilly

University of Akron Press Publications

Infinite Hope and Finite Disappointment details the aspirations and promises of the 14th Amendment in the historical, legal, and sociological context within which it was framed. Part of the Reconstruction Amendments collectively known as "The Second Founding," the 14th Amendment fundamentally altered the 1787 Constitution to protect individual rights and altered the balance of power between the national government and the states. The book also shows how initial Supreme Court interpretations of the Amendment's reach hindered its applicability. Finally, the contributors investigate the current impact of the 14th Amendment.

Contents Infinite Hope: The Framers as First Interpreters The Antebellum Political …

Settlers And Immigrants In The Formation Of American Law, Aziz Rana

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This paper argues that the early American republic is best understood as a constitutional experiment in “settler empire,” and that related migration policies played a central role in shaping collective identity and structures of authority. Initial colonists, along with their 19th century descendants, viewed society as grounded in an ideal of freedom that emphasized continuous popular mobilization and direct economic and political decision-making. However, many settlers believed that this ideal required Indian dispossession and the coercive use of dependent groups, most prominently slaves, in order to ensure that they themselves had access to property and did not have to engage …

“Health Laws Of Every Description”: John Marshall’S Ruling On A Federal Health Care Law, David B. Kopel, Robert G. Natelson

David B Kopel

If John Marshall, the greatest of Chief Justices, were to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, how would he rule? Would the nationalist justice who, according to the New Deal Supreme Court, “described the Federal commerce power with a breadth never yet exceeded,” agree that federal control of health care was within that power?

In the fictional opinion below, Marshall rules on the constitutionality of a bill similar to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

We constructed this opinion chiefly from direct quotation and paraphrases of Marshall’s own words, …

‘Unkle Sommerset's’ Freedom: Liberty In England For Black Sailors, Charles R. Foy

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

With his 1772 decree in Somerset v. Steuart that slavery was ‘so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it [in England] but positive law’, Lord Mansfield altered the legal landscape regarding black rights in England. While earlier judicial decisions had implied that slaves who came to England were free, prior to the Somerset decision there was no judicial consensus on the issue. The Somerset decision did not decree that slavery was illegal in England. Yet many blacks believed it ‘emancipated’ any slave who reached the shores of England. This understanding, combined with the British military welcoming runaways into …

Hechiceras E Inquisidores: The Relative Lack Of Severity Of Witchcraft Prosecution Among Spanish Imperial Territories, Jeffrey Michael Mastrianni

Honors Scholar Theses

This paper examines the social, cultural, political, and judiciary motivations behind the prosecution of witchcraft in the Spanish Empire between the years of 1492 and 1643. Included as background material are introductions to witchcraft, the history of the Empire, and the behaviors of the Spanish Inquisition. The paper attempts to illustrate the fact that witchcraft prosecution was neither severe nor overly violent in the Empire, and that each of the four major regions of the Empire (Spain proper, the Netherlands, Italy, and the Viceroyalty of Mexico) witnessed a steady and early decline of witchcraft prosecutions, albeit for different reasons. It …