Legal Commons^™

Book Review: Cohen, Adam. Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, And The Sterilization Of Carrie Buck. New York: Penguin Press, 2016., Dana Dawson

Saber and Scroll

A review of Adam Cohen's Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck.

A House Of Cards: Free Banking In Antebellum Chicago, Miles J. Holtzman

Business and Economics Summer Fellows

The Chicago free banking market of the antebellum period has more than once aroused the interest of historians and economists alike. Implemented in the state of Illinois in 1851, free banking was a common, though not universal occurrence in the United States at the time. The city of Chicago’s experience with free banking was anything but common, however. Within the first 18 months after the Illinois legislature enacted the Illinois Free Banking Law, 9 free banks had begun operation in Chicago and between them had an aggregate note issue of over $800,000. But by 1860, Chicago was home ...

Following The Spirit Of The Law: Col. Eberhard P. Deutsch And The Legal Division Of United States Forces Austria, 1945-1946, Peter J. Casey

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As World War II neared its end in Europe, the Allied powers faced a difficult situation with the occupied nation of Austria. Considering the complicated Austrian relationship with Nazism, the Allies had to decide how the nation would be liberated, occupied, and rehabilitated. Almost instantaneously, the United States, Great Britain, and France became at odds with a vengeful Soviet Union seeking to build a defensive shield of Communist European client states that included Austria. This study will show that as the head of the American Legal Division, Col. Eberhard P. Deutsch, United States Army, was instrumental in the reformation of ...

Unconventional Lawfare: Operational Law In The War On Terror, L. P. Miller

Political Science Student Scholarship

This thesis examines the legal work required to establish a sufficient lawfare defense by focusing on the Department of Defense Judge Advocate Generals’ Corps (JAG Corps). The work will describe the JAG Corps as a well-trenched bureaucracy with a moral mission to uphold the military’s honor through laws, and how this was interpreted by the Bush and Obama administrations.

The Nuremberg Trials As A Form Of Transitional Justice, Nicholas A. Richey

History

No abstract provided.

The Trials Of Louis Benecke, David Alan Whitby

MSU Graduate Theses

The Civil War was the bloodiest war in American history, and the country felt its impact in many ways. One of those ways was in the expansion of the pension system. The scale of the war left thousands of wounded soldiers in need of care, and a government that recognized its duty to help. In this thesis, I examine the new pension laws that not only benefitted veterans, but also their dependents. Women and children were included within the laws of the ever changing and expanding pension system. This system was not just for white veterans, but also for African-American ...

The Interconnection Between Law And Christianity In Medieval England, Maria Isabel Caplazi

Young Historians Conference

In England, the influence of Christian morals and beliefs grew rapidly during the medieval era. Religious beliefs were evident in literature, laws, as well as social hierarchy. The extent of religious influence on medieval English law is undeniable, however historians have yet to attain a full understanding of religious reach because of institutionalized relativism -- the concept that varying environments affect how social regulations are established in their area. This paper discusses two of the most prominent ways Christianity influenced medieval English law -- through direct influence on laws themselves as well as religious impact on the individual administrators of law -- while ...

Commentary: Will The Courts Make Trump's Presidency Less Imperial?, Allen C. Guelzo, James H. Hulme

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Nearly three months ago, Donald Trump assumed a presidency that, for more than a century, had grown seemingly endless discretionary powers. And he did so in company with Republican majorities in Congress and in 32 state legislatures -- all of which should have made his decisions unassailable.

Instead, he has been stymied and embarrassed by resistance from a federal judiciary that has twice halted executive orders on the most prominent issue of his presidential campaign. So, will the federal judiciary become the wall against which Trump bleeds away the power not just of his own presidency but of the “imperial presidency ...

The Origins Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, James V. Spickard

Working Papers

Presents the history of the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, focusing on the prior status of human rights in international law and the cultural/ideological aspects of the debates surrounding its adoption. This chapter shows both the Western origin of the core human rights concepts and the positive-law nature of the Universal Declaration. it also shows that the cultural issues were present from the very start of the modern human rights era.

Commentary: California Secessionists Channel Logic Of Southern Slaveholders, Allen C. Guelzo, James H. Hulme

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

'Thursday night the streets were filled with excited crowds. No one talks of anything but the necessity for prompt action. . . . It is hardly prudent for any man to express his opinion adverse to immediate secession, so heated are the public passions, so intolerant of restraint is the popular will."

You would probably assume that this report came from California in the wake of the 2016 election, right? After all, Alex Padilla, the California secretary of state, has now authorized the Yes California Independence Campaign to begin collecting signatures for a state referendum on California's secession from the United States ...

How The Willowbrook Consent Decree Has Influenced Contemporary Advocacy Of Individuals With Disabilities, Kristen S. Addessi

Student Theses

The existence of the Willowbrook State School was a culmination, of over a one-hundred-year history of Western society’s attempts to provide adequate care, and treatment for individuals with disabilities. The residents housed there, suffered violations of their human and civil rights in various forms of severe abuse, neglect, and violence. Following a three-year legal battle in 1975, as a result of the travesties that occurred, the legal doctrine known as the Willowbrook Consent Decree was written. The Consent Decree was implemented to ensure that the residents’ human and civil rights are met and protected. The Willowbrook State School and ...

Salafism, Wahhabism, And The Definition Of Sunni Islam, Rob J. Williams

Honors Program: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

My capstone deals with the historical definition of Sunni Islam, and how it has changed in approximately the past 200 years. Around 1800, Sunni Islam was pretty clearly defined by an adherence to one of four maddhabs, or schools of law: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali schools and are all based in nearly a millennium of legal scholarship. Since 1800, however, numerous reform movements have sprung up which disavow previous scholarship and interpret Islamic law their own way. However, certain reformist groups, such as Traditionalist Salafis and Wahhabis, claim that their version of Islam is the only “pure ...

Grave Breaches: American Military Intervention In The Late Twentieth- Century And The Consequences For International Law, Calla Cameron

CMC Senior Theses

The duality of the United States’ relationship with international criminal law and human rights atrocities is a fascinating theme that weaves through all of American history, but most distinctly demonstrates the contradictory nature of American foreign policy in the latter half of the 20th century. America is both protector of human rights and perpetrator of human rights atrocities, global police force and aggressor. The Cold War exacerbated the tensions caused by American military dominance. The international political and physical power of the American military allowed the United States to do as it pleased in the 20th century with few consequences ...

The Origins Of The Chinese Communist Party’S Early Marriage Laws, Yuan Yuan

Senior Projects Spring 2017

The First Chinese Marriage Law was a civil marriage law passed in the People's Republic of China on May 1, 1950. It was transformative because the Marriage Law was a radical change from existing patriarchal Chinese marriage traditions. It was also highly political because it sharply reflected ideologies about class struggle, land reform, Marx and Leninism, which were prevalent in the Chinese Revolution. The New Marriage Law with its revision of family relations did not happen in one night, but through a long process. According to Neil Jeffrey Diamant, in 1931, “Marriage Regulations” was promulgated in the party’s ...

Dorothy Moser Medlin Papers - Accession 1049, Dorothy Moser Medlin

Manuscript Collection

(The Dorothy Moser Medlin Papers are currently in processing.)

This collection contains most of the records of Dorothy Medlin’s work and correspondence and also includes reference materials, notes, microfilm, photographic negatives related both to her professional and personal life. Additions include a FLES Handbook, co-authored by Dorothy Medlin and a decorative mirror belonging to Dorothy Medlin.

Major series in this collection include: some original 18th century writings and ephemera and primary source material of André Morellet, extensive collection of secondary material on André Morellet's writings and translations, Winthrop related files, literary manuscripts and notes by Dorothy Medlin (1966-2011 ...

Wabanki Access To Sweetgrass (Hierochloe Odorata) Within Coastal Maine's Diminishing Open Land Tradition, Amanda Marie Ellis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nontimber forest products (NTFPs), refer to a class of resources (i.e. moss, fungi, mushrooms, plants, etc.) gathered in both rural and urban landscapes. NTFPs are utilized by a variety of cultures all over the world and are a critical part of medicinal, spiritual, dietary, and economic practices. In fact, some NTFP species are so critical to people that they are considered ‘cultural keystone species’ (Garibaldi and Turner 2004). This designation means that without access to the NTFP, cultural survival is at risk. This is the case in Maine where the Wabanaki, a confederacy of four tribes (Passamaqouddy, Penobscot, Mikmaq ...

From Love Canal To The Flint Water Crisis: Government, Public Opinion, And Environmental Crises, Sarah Hughey

Honors Theses

After the rise of the modern-day environmental movement, environmentalism in the United States focused more and more on issues and crises related to the areas in which people lived and to the aspects that impacted public health. In particular, the crisis at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York during the late 1970s and early 1980s provided a starting point to the awareness and activism of modern environmental history. Recently, an environmental crisis related to drinking water occurred in Flint, Michigan in the mid-2010s that showcases how various aspects of the environmental movement have developed over time since the Love ...

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Research Day Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I ...

Tragedy, Outrage & Reform Crimes That Changed Our World: 1911 – Triangle Factory Fire – Building Safety Codes, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

Faculty Scholarship

Can a crime make our world better? Crimes are the worst of humanity’s wrongs but, oddly, they sometimes do more than anything else to improve our lives. As it turns out, it is often the outrageousness itself that does the work. Ordinary crimes are accepted as the background noise of our everyday existence but some crimes make people stop and take notice – because they are so outrageous, or so curious, or so heart-wrenching. These “trigger crimes” are the cases that this book is about.

They offer some incredible stories about how people, good and bad, change the world around ...

The Moroccan Jurist Al-Khamlīshī: Can A Woman Become A Legislator (Mujtahid)?, Nayel A. Badareen 2564414

Mathal

The idea of deducing legal rulings in Islamic law, or ijtihād, as well as the qualifications of the person who practices ijtihād, known as the mujtahid, has been a complex issue among Muslim ʿulamāʾ for centuries. Many Muslim ʿulamāʾ and Western scholars have maintained that the gate of ijtihād was closed. The title of mujtahid was therefore impossible to attain. The Moroccan intellectual al-Khamlīshī maintains that the strenuous conditions put forth by some of the Sunni jurists to qualify an individual to become a mujtahid actually contributed to the demise of ijtihād. These qualifications, according to al-Khamlīshī, were proven to ...

Setting Precedents For A Nation On Trial: Selection Of Defendants For The International Military Tribunal At Nuremberg, Delia Root

Honors College Theses

The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, commonly known as the Nuremberg Trials, is credited with indictment of the major Nazi war criminals of the Second World War. But, were all of the individuals who were indicted in 1945 actually major war criminals? Or, were they minor war criminals who happened to be more well-known? Through the use of historical and legal means, my research looks to why the twenty-four defendants were chosen to be indicted in an era which hosts scores of persons who could be labelled major war criminals. Reasons including the groups that these defendants were connected with ...

Welcome To Dignity, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Legislative Art As Policy And Pedagogy, Albert Stabler

Marilyn Zurmuehlen Working Papers in Art Education

The primary medium for artist Laurie Jo Reynolds is that of political lobbying. She refers to her practice as “legislative art,” adapting the term “legislative theater,” a technique for grassroots lawmaking developed and coined by Brazilian director and playwright Augusto Boal, who both founded the Theater of the Oppressed and served as a member of the Rio city government from 1993 to 1997. By linking the discourses of art and law, Reynolds’ practice can be understood as a form of education, highlighting the restrictions required for creativity, and the possibilities afforded by structure. In my essay I bring together European ...

Agents Of Justice: Female Plaintiffs In The King’S Court In Thirteenth And Fourteenth-Century England, J. Savannah Shipman

Master's Theses

It has often been assumed that medieval women, noble or common, had little or no agency, were forced into submissive roles by dominating men, and had little control over their day-to-day lives. Theoretical statements about law served to support these assumptions as they forbade women from prosecuting men for any crimes other than the murder of her husband or for rape. Yet the records of the court proceedings before the king and his justices and the Calendar of Patent Rolls paint a very different picture. The sources themselves show that women regularly came to court to gain compensation and justice ...

Guide To Ac028 - Records Of The Center For Access To Justice & Technology, Jona Whipple

Finding Aids

Records of the Center for Access to Justice & Technology, 1990-2005

The Center for Access to Justice and Technology (CAJT), formerly Justice Web Collaboratory, was formed at Chicago-Kent in 1999. The CAJT worked to make justice more accessible to the public by promoting the use of the Internet in the teaching, practice, and public access to the law. The CAJT conducted research, built software tools, taught classes, and supported faculty, staff, and student projects on access to justice and technology.

The first major focus of the CAJT was Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants: A Consumer Based Approach, or the “Meeting the Needs” project. The project investigated barriers to access to justice facing self-represented litigants, applied system design methodology to redesign court processes, and built an Internet-based prototype for implementation by the courts. The first phase of the project began in August 2000 with a course taught by Professor Ron Staudt, the Justice Web Collaboratory Interprofessional Research Opportunity (IPRO). In the class, 13 law students from Chicago-Kent and 5 graduate design students from the IIT Institute of Design explored existing pro se assistance programs by observing the Chicago-Kent Advice Desk at the Richard J. Daley Center, and gathering information from litigants and courts in Cook and Lake Counties, Illinois; Delaware; Boulder County, Colorado; and Ventura County, California. Using data collected during the site visits, students identified the factors restricting access to justice and created solutions based on information structure, and finally constructed a communication document for their ideas to overcoming these factors. A second course in Systems Design and Structured Planning, taught by Charles Owen at the Institute of Design, began in January 2001, and consisted of 22 graduate-level students, including four law students from Chicago-Kent College of Law and 18 design students from the Institute of Design. In this second ...

The One Exhibition The Roots Of The Lgbt Equality Movement One Magazine & The First Gay Supreme Court Case In U.S. History 1943-1958, Joshua R. Edmundson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The ONE Exhibition explores an era in American history marked by intense government sponsored anti-gay persecution and the genesis of the LGBT equality movement. The study begins during World War II, continues through the McCarthy era and the founding of the nation’s first gay magazine, and ends in 1958 with the first gay Supreme Court case in U.S. history.

Central to the story is ONE The Homosexual Magazine, and its founders, as they embarked on a quest for LGBT equality by establishing the first ongoing nationwide forum for gay people in the U.S., and challenged the government ...

The Political Illegitimacy Of "Superstition:" Obeah After The Morant Bay Rebellion, 1865-1900, Rachael Mackenzie Maclean

University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects

No abstract provided.

The Meanings Of The "Privileges And Immunities Of Citizens" On The Eve Of The Civil War, David R. Upham

Notre Dame Law Review

The Fourteenth Amendment to our Constitution provides, in part, that “[n]o State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” This “Privileges or Immunities Clause” has been called “the darling of the professoriate.” Indeed, in the last decade alone, law professors have published dozens of articles treating the provision. The focus of this particular study is the interpretation of the “privileges and immunities of citizens” offered by American political actors, including not only judges, but also elected officials and private citizens, before the Fourteenth Amendment, and primarily, on ...

Hibakusha And The Japanese Supreme Court: Judgement Long Overdue, Timothy J. Duefrane

History Undergraduate Theses

On August 6 and 9 1945 the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Survivors of the attacks, who were exposed to atomic radiation, have come to be known by the Japanese term for an atomic bomb survivor, hibakusha. The fight against the violations of hibakusha rights due to discrimination as well as misconceptions and misinterpretations of the acts and laws for survivor welfare and support have been one long and brutal legal battle after another. The appeal cases relating to the hibakusha living outside of Japan have begun to be investigated and ...

Thinking Through The Monarchy In Sixth-Century Visigothic Spain, Cade Meinel

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper uses a comparison of the laws of the Visigothic Code to the events of the sixth century to investigate the continuity that the concepts surrounding the Visigothic monarchy, such as negotiated sovereignty and religious and ethnic identities, provided within the Visigothic kingdom in Spain. It first establishes the theoretical framework for the monarchy found in the law before exploring how these ideas influenced and were in turn affected by the events of the sixth century. It moves through the century starting with King Theodoric the Great and the Ostrogoth influence and ends with the kings Liuvigild and Recarred ...