Law Commons^™

The Law Of Burial Insurance, Charles T. Cady

Vanderbilt Law Review

Burial insurance, used in the sense of a risk-shifting device to aid the less fortunate, has existed in the form of friendly societies from time immemorial. Indeed, it is probable that this noncommercial type was the first form of insurance. There is some evidence that such societies existed in Egypt, 2500 B.C. There exists more concrete evidence that they thrived in ancient China, India, Greece and Rome. The Grecian societies, although largely religious and ritualistic, had as their main function the guarantee of a decent burial for their members. The existence around A.D. 117-138 of Roman societies, called collegia, is …

County Home Rule In Tennessee, Henry N. Williams

Vanderbilt Law Review

The present Tennessee Constitution as interpreted by the courts permits the legislature to grant to the governing boards of counties a considerable amount of power to determine and regulate matters which are of local concern. There is no reason to doubt that the legislature could authorize county governing boards great freedom in determining the form and organization of county government. Thus the General Assembly could go far in establishing county home rule in Tennessee.

The chief difficulty in relying on the General Assembly's granting considerable authority under the existing constitutional provision to the governing boards of the counties to determine …

State Statutes And The Full Faith And Credit Clause -- Hughes V. Fetter, Jay A. Hanover

Vanderbilt Law Review

The full faith and credit clause of the Constitution' has commonly been regarded as concerned only with the enforcement of foreign judgments between the states of the Union. The numerous cases which have come before the Supreme Court have dealt almost exclusively with the "judicial Proceedings" phrase of the clause, while the words "public Acts" and "Records" have been, for the most part, left untapped as a source of decisional law. It has only been in recent years that the Supreme Court has broadened its approach by applying the full faith and credit clause to the legislative acts of the …

Alienability Of Future Interests In Tennessee, Ernest C. Matthews, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the most technical problems in the field of property law is the manner in which future interests in realty and personalty may be alienated. The term, future interest, is used here to mean a presently existing interest which is deprived of possession but which looks forward to possession in the future. The term is a misnomer. Such an interest is "future" only in the sense that it looks toward becoming possessory in the future. Just as future interests is a law of words, so the alienability of future interests is, in the absence of statute, a law of …

State Constitutions, State Courts And First Amendment Freedoms, Monrad G. Paulsen

Vanderbilt Law Review

We have recently been reminded that one of the current and recurrent quandaries of the Supreme Court of the United States arises from the American constitutional system's counterpart of the philosophical problem of the One and the Many. When an individual's freedom is involved, the question is whether and to what degree state legislators, public officials and judicial officers shall be called upon to enforce standards of respect for personal liberties defined by the Federal Constitution and the United States Supreme Court; or, put another way, how far the first eight amendments of the Federal Constitution are incorporated into the …

Statutory Construction In Resolving Conflicts Between State And Local Legislation, Charles S. Rhyne

Vanderbilt Law Review

My contribution to this symposium will consist of the advancement of one main thesis and four subordinate and supporting ones. My main thesis is simple indeed. Procedural rules must be viewed as grants or creations of judicial power. My subordinate theses then indicate certain complications showing that in practice the matter cannot be thus wholly disposed of. Though too much reform has so assumed, it turns out that telling a court it has power does not guarantee exercise of that power. Judicial inertia, prece- dent-mindedness, love of technical niceties-all play their part in halting procedural improvement. So does, even more, …

Statutory Construction In Resolving Conflicts Between State And Local Legislation, Charles S. Rhyme

Vanderbilt Law Review

As creatures of the states, our municipalities occupy a unique position in our governmental scheme. Not endowed with sovereignty, the municipality possesses no inherent powers, and can only do that which is authorized by the state.' The exercise of local powers, therefore, becomes the exercise of those powers which have been conferred upon it by state legislative action. Possible exceptions to this are those states in which "home rule" has been constitutionally conferred upon municipalities, by which authority to form local governments and to administer municipal affairs in the manner desired by the local electorate prevails. In view of the …

Book Reviews, Joseph C. Hutcheson, Jr. (Reviewer), W. Raymond Denny (Reviewer), Robert G. Storey (Reviewer), W. W. Berry (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

BOOK REVIEWS

The Power in the People

By Felix Morley

New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc., 1949. Pp. xii, 293. $3.50

reviewer: Joseph C. Hutcheson, Jr.

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Men and Measures in the Law

By Arthur T. Vanderbilt

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949. Pp. xxii, 156. $3.00

reviewer: W. Raymond Denny

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The Case of General Yamashita

By A. Frank Reel

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949. Pp. v, 324. $4.00

reviewer: Robert G. Storey

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Tax Planning for Estates

By William j. Bowe

Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1949. Pp. 93. $2.00

reviewer: W. W. Berry

The Tennessee Law Of Arrest, Rollin M. Perkins

Vanderbilt Law Review

The many sections in the Tennessee Code' dealing with arrest constitute an incomplete codification of the common law of this subject modified by some important changes. This statutory material leaves the common law in full force wherever it is either silent on the particular point or merely restates the preexisting rule. Those sections which produce results different from those found under the unwritten law leave the latter in the realm of matters having historical interest only, as far as the law of this state is concerned. The purpose of this undertaking is to depict the present law of Tennessee on …

State Constitutional Conventions And State Legislative Power, Walter F. Dodd

Vanderbilt Law Review

The State of Tennessee faces a serious problem in that it badly needs changes in its Constitution of 1870 and finds it substantially impossible to make such changes by means of proposed amendments by the two houses of its General Assembly. The requirements (1) that legislative proposal be by a majority of all members of the two houses and that it be agreed to by two thirds of the General Assembly then next chosen, and (2) that approval of a proposed amendment be "by a majority of all the citizens of the State, voting for Representatives," ' substantially defeat possibility …

The Violation Of A Municipal Ordinance As A Crime, Stanley D. Rose

Vanderbilt Law Review

The county of Winnebago passed such an ordinance and McDonald was charged with a violation of it. McDonald demanded a jury, and Judge Schniege of the municipal court ordered it. Because no provision for a jury trial was in the ordinance, Keefe, the county district attorney, petitioned the circuit court for a writ of prohibition to prevent the enforcement of the municipal court's order for a jury trial. The circuit court denied the petition. On appeal, the supreme court reversed this denial. Judge Fairchild based his decision on the following chain of reasoning:

1. The power to define crimes is …