Law Commons^™

Racial Purges, Robert L. Tsai

Michigan Law Review

Review of Beth Lew-Williams' The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America.

Be Careful What You Wish For? Reducing Inequality In The Twenty-First Century, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Orli K. Avi-Yonah

Michigan Law Review

A review of Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century.

Family History: Inside And Out, Kerry Abrams

Michigan Law Review

The twenty-first century has seen the dawn of a new era of the family, an era that has its roots in the twentieth. Many of the social and scientific phenomena of our time - same-sex couples, in vitro fertilization, single-parent families, international adoption - have inspired changes in the law. Legal change has encompassed both constitutional doctrine and statutory innovations, from landmark Supreme Court decisions articulating a right to procreate (or not), a liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of one's children, and even a right to marry, to state no-fault divorce statutes that have fundamentally changed the …

Rights Lawyer Essentialism And The Next Generation Of Rights Critics, Alan K. Chen

Michigan Law Review

Richard Thompson Ford does not care much for the current state of civil rights. In his provocative new book, Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality, Ford lends an original, if often misdirected, voice to the chorus of contemporary critics of the American legal regime of rights. Situating himself among "second generation" rights critics (p. 259), Ford lays out a comprehensive indictment of current approaches to civil rights litigation as well as civil rights activism. His work is both intriguing and provocative, and it raises a number of issues that are surely worth serious consideration and discussion. …

But How Will The People Know? Public Opinion As A Meager Influence In Shaping Contemporary Supreme Court Decision Making, Tom Goldstein, Amy Howe

Michigan Law Review

Chief Justice John Roberts famously described the ideal Supreme Court Justice as analogous to a baseball umpire, who simply "applies" the rules, rather than making them. Roberts promised to "remember that it's my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat." At her own recent confirmation hearings, Elena Kagan demurred, opining that Roberts's metaphor might erroneously suggest that "everything is clear-cut, and that there's no judgment in the process." Based on his 2009 book, The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution, Barry Friedman …

A Distant Heritage: The Growth Of Free Speech In Early America, Jim Greiner

Michigan Law Review

A Review of A Distant Heritage: The Growth of Free Speech in Early America by Larry D. Eldridge

Shame, Culture, And American Criminal Law, Toni M. Massaro

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this Article is to analyze whether this link is one that American criminal court judges can, or should, exploit. I begin with a description of the new shaming sanctions and the possible justifications for this type of penalty. I then identify both psychological and anthropological aspects of the phenomenon of shame, or "losing face." I describe several cultures in which shaming practices are, or were, significant means of sanctioning behavior, and outline the shared features of these cultures.

These psychological and anthropological materials, taken together, suggest that shaming practices are most effective and meaningful when five conditions …

Privacy In A Public Society: Human Rights In Conflict, David Clark Esseks

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Privacy in a Public Society: Human Rights in Conflict by Richard F. Hixson

Law And Disputing In Commercializing Early America, Cornelia Dayton

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticut by Bruce H. Mann

Trial By Ordeal, Robert C. Palmer

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal by Robert Bartlett

Protection Of Civil Rights: A Constitutional Mandate For The Federal Government, Julius Chambers

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Federal Law and Southern Order: Racial Violence and Constitutional Conflict in the Post-Brown South by Michal Belknap

Transfers Of Property In Eleventh-Century Norman Law, William John Gallagher

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Transfers of Property in Eleventh-Century Norman Law by Emily Zack Tabuteau

The Future Of Liberal Legal Scholarship, Ronald K.L. Collins, David M. Skover

Michigan Law Review

Earl Warren is dead.

A generation of liberal legal scholars continues, nevertheless, to act as if the man and his Court preside over the present. While this romanticism is understandable, it exacts a high price in a world transformed.

The following commentary is a reconstructive criticism written from the perspective of two liberals concerned about the future of "legal liberalism." We present our views as a commentary to emphasize their preliminary character; they represent our current assessment of where liberals stand and where they might redirect their energies.

The Twentieth-Century Revolution In Family Wealth Transmission, John H. Langbein

Michigan Law Review

The main purpose of this article is to sound a pair of themes about the ways in which these great changes in the nature of wealth have become associated with changes of perhaps comparable magnitude in the timing and in the character of family wealth transmission. My first theme, developed in Part II, concerns human capital. Whereas of old, wealth transmission from parents to children tended to center upon major items of patrimony such as the family farm or the family firm, today for the broad middle classes, wealth transmission centers on a radically different kind of asset: the investment …

Women And The Law Of Property In Early America, David H. Bromfield

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Women and the Law of Property in Early America by Marylynn Salmon

Where They Are Now: The Story Of The Women Of Harvard Law 1974, Lissa M. Cinat

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Where They Are Now: The Story of the Women of Harvard Law 1974 by Jill Abramson and Barbara Franklin

Law, Legalism, And Community Before The American Revolution, Bruce H. Mann

Michigan Law Review

The connections between law and community are difficult to identify, let alone explain. It may be best to begin by seeing how law and the ways people used it changed, and then attempt to relate those changes to the surrounding economy and society. One must, of course, be wary of finding what one looks for. Nonetheless, as with objects against a dark background, it is sometimes easier to see things when they move than when they remain still. To illustrate the interactive nature of legal change and community, I will draw on examples from Connecticut before the Revolution - not …

When Justice Fails, Stephan Landsman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich

Lying Down Together: Law, Metaphor, And Theology, Jon M. Lipshultz

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Lying Down Together: Law, Metaphor, and Theology by Milner S. Ball

Legal Education: Its Causes And Cure, Marc Feldman, Jay M. Feinman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law School: Legal Education in America From the 1850s to the 1980s by Robert Stevens

Regulation In Perspective: Historical Essays, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Regulation and Perspective: Historical Essays edited by Thomas K. McCraw

Law In Colonial America: The Reassessment Of Early American Legal History, Warren M. Billings

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts: Essex County, 1629-1692 by David Thomas Konig, and Dispute and Conflict Resolution in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 1725-1825 by William E. Nelson, and Faithful Magistrates and Republican Lawyers: Creators of Virginia Legal Culture, 1680-1810 by A.G. Roeber

Anatomy Of Racism, Damon J. Keith

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Hearts and Minds: The Anatomy of Racism From Roosevelt to Reagan by Harry S. Ashmore

So Reason Can Rule, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of So Reason Can Rule by Scott Buchanan

From Pillory To Penitentiary: The Rise Of Criminal Incarceration In Early Massachusetts, Adam J. Hirsch

Michigan Law Review

While the transition from the old forms of criminal sanction to incarceration was perhaps not, as Jeremy Bentham claimed, "one of the most signal improvements that have ever yet been made in our criminal legislation," one does not overstate to call it a signal development in the history of Anglo-American criminal justice - a development, one may add, that still wants adequate examination, much less explanation. This Article attempts to do both for one sample region: Massachusetts. Though the jurisprudential movement from pillory to penitentiary took place throughout the new American republic, as well as much of western Europe, our …

Law For The Elephant: Property And Social Behavior On The Overland Trial, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law for the Elephant: Property and Social Behavior on the Overland Trial by John Phillip Reid

Toward A New Theory Of Roman Law, David F. Pugsley

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Landlords and Tenants in Imperial Rome by Bruce W. Frier

Social Research And The Use Of Medieval Criminal Records, Edward Powell

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England by James Buchanan Given, and Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348 by Barbara A. Hanawalt

Changed Society, Changing Law, Hence Unstable Prisons, Daniel Glaser

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society by James B. Jacobs

Doing Good And Getting Worse: The Dilemma Of Social Policy, Gerald N. Grob

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence by Willard Gaylin, Ira Glasser, Steven Marcus, and David J. Rothman