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Full-Text Articles in Law

A Government Of Laws Not Of Precedents 1776-1876: The Google Challenge To Common Law Myth, James Maxeiner Jan 2015

A Government Of Laws Not Of Precedents 1776-1876: The Google Challenge To Common Law Myth, James Maxeiner

James R Maxeiner

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States is a common law country of precedents where, until the 20th century (the “Age of Statutes”), statutes had little role. Digitization by Google and others of previously hard to find legal works of the 19th century challenges this common law myth. At the Centennial in 1876 Americans celebrated that “The great fact in the progress of American jurisprudence … is its tendency towards organic statute law and towards the systematizing of law; in other words, towards written constitutions and codification.” This article tests the claim of the Centennial Writers of 1876 and finds …


The Colonel's Finest Campaign: Robert R. Mccormick And Near V. Minnesota, Eric B. Easton Sep 2007

The Colonel's Finest Campaign: Robert R. Mccormick And Near V. Minnesota, Eric B. Easton

Eric B Easton

This paper documents the collaboration between The Chicago Tribune’s Robert McCormick and attorney Weymouth Kirkland to mobilize the press to carry Near v. Minnesota to the Supreme Court. In an earlier paper, I demonstrated how the press acts as “strategic litigator” to shape the legal environment in which reporters and editors practice their craft. The collaboration discussed in this article established the precedent for monitoring litigation that implicates First Amendment values and deciding whether, when, and how to intervene.