Law Commons^™

The Limits Of Deliberation About The Public's Values, Mark Seidenfeld

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Public's Law: Origins and Architecture of Progressive Democracy by Blake Emerson.

The Republic In Long-Term Perspective, Richard Primus

Michigan Law Review Online

Every system of government eventually passes away. That's a feature of the human condition. The United States has been an unusually stable polity by the standards of world civilizations, and for that stability Americans should be deeply grateful. But no nation is exempt from the basic forces of history. It is not reasonable to think that the constitutional republic we know will last forever. The question is when it will meet its end-in our lifetimes, or in our grandchildren's, or centuries later. Given the stable conditions that living Americans were socialized to expect, the dominant intuition is probably something like …

Reassessing American Democracy: The Enduring Challenge Of Racial Exclusion, Johanna Kalb, Didi Kuo

Michigan Law Review Online

American democracy is in trouble. Since the 2016 election, a sizable literature has developed that focuses on diagnosing and assessing the state of American democracy, most of which concludes that our system of government is in decline.[2] These authors point to the rise in party polarization, the increasingly bipartisan abandonment of the norms of the democratic process, the rise of populism, the degradation of the public sphere, and the proliferation of gerrymandered districts and voting restrictions to illustrate the breakdown. And while attributing varying levels of significance to these factors, a common theme is that American democracy, once stable, is …

The Aba Rule Of Law Initiative Celebrating 25 Years Of Global Initiatives, M. Margaret Mckeown

Michigan Journal of International Law

Relying on extensive reports, program documentation, and interviews with important actors in the rule of law movement, this article will explore how one key player in the international-development field—the ABA—has furthered rule of law values through its global programs. The first half of the article surveys the ABA’s involvement in rule of law initiatives. Part I explores the origins of the ABA’s work in this field, which date back to the organization’s founding and took shape after the demise of the former Soviet Union. Part II surveys the expansion of the ABA’s programs beyond Eastern Europe to other regions—a growth …

The Jury And Criminal Responsibility In Anglo-American History, Thomas A. Green

Articles

Anglo-American theories of criminal responsibility require scholars to grapple with, inter alia, the relationship between the formal rule of law and the powers of the lay jury as well as two inherent ideas of freedom: freedom of the will and political liberty. Here, by way of canvassing my past work and prefiguring future work, I sketch some elements of the history of the Anglo-American jury and offer some glimpses of commentary on the interplay between the jury—particularly its application of conventional morality to criminal judgments—and the formal rule of law of the state. My central intent is to pose questions …

Facades Of Justice, Norman W. Spaulding

Michigan Law Review

Representing Justice is a book of encyclopedic proportions on the iconography of justice and the organization of space in which adjudication occurs. Professors Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis have gathered a provocative array of images, ranging from the scales of the Babylonian god Shamash-"judge of heaven and earth"-on a 4,200-year-old seal (pp. 18- 19 & fig. 23), and a 600-year-old painting of Saint Michael weighing the souls at the Last Judgment with sword and scales in hand (p. 23 fig. 25) to the tiny Cook County Courthouse in Grand Marais, Minnesota, 110 miles north of Duluth (p. 372 fig. 226), …

Connecting The Dots Between The Constitution, The Marshall Trilogy, And United States V. Lara: Notes Toward A Blueprint For The Next Legislative Restoration Of Tribal Sovereignty, Ann E. Tweedy

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This law review Article examines: (1) the underpinnings of tribal sovereignty within the American system; (2) the need for restoration based on the Court's drastic incursions on tribal sovereignty over the past four decades and the grave circumstances, particularly tribal governments' inability to protect tribal interests on the reservation and unchecked violence in Indian Country, that result from the divestment of tribal sovereignty; (3) the concept of restoration as illuminated by United States v. Lara, and finally (4) some possible approaches to partial restoration.

The Article first evaluates the constitutional provisions relating to Indians and the earliest federal Indian law …

Review Of Trial Of Modernity: Judicial Reform In Early Twentieth Century China, 1901-37, By Xiaoqun Xu, Nicholas C. Howson

Reviews

Observing these significant legal-political debates in the Chinese press and academy in the first decade of the twenty-first century, we might think they concern battles started only in the last decade and a half of Reform-era China. Now Professor Xu Xiaoqun reminds us that these struggles have a much longer pedigree, stretching back to the end of the nineteenth century and China's first fraught encounter with "the West" and one idea of "modernity."

Interrogation Of Detainees: Extending A Hand Or A Boot?, Amos N. Guiora

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The current "war on terror" provides the Bush administration with a unique opportunity to both establish clear guidelines for the interrogation of detainees and to make a forceful statement about American values. How the government chooses to act can promote either an ethical commitment to the norms of civil society, or an attitude analogous to Toby Keith's "American Way," where Keith sings that "you'll be sorry that you messed with the USofA, 'Cuz we'll put a boot in your ass, It's the American Way."

Double-Consciousness In Constitutional Adjudication, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Constitutional theorists are familiar with epistemic and consequentialist reasons why judges might allow their decision making to be shaped by strongly held public opinion. The epistemic approach treats public opinion as an expert indicator, while the consequentialistapproach counsels judges to compromise legally correct interpretations so as not to antagonize a hostile public. But there is also a third reason, which we can think ofas constitutive. In limited circumstances, the fact that the public strongly holds a given view can be one of the factors that together constitute the correct answer to a constitutional question. In those circumstances, what the public …

Global Government Networks, Global Information Agencies, And Disaggregated Democracy, Anne-Marie Slaughter

Michigan Journal of International Law

This essay seeks to broaden our understanding of government networks by placing them in more historical context and by elaborating different types of government networks within and without traditional international institutions. After a brief overview of the literature on transgovernmentalism since the 1970s in Part I, Part H sets forth a typology of three different categories of government networks. Part III then seeks to pinpoint the specific accountability concerns associated with each type. Part IV offers one approach to answering some current accountability concerns by adapting the concept of "information agencies" from the European Union to the global level. This …

Puerto Rico: Cultural Nation, American Colony, Pedro A. Malavet

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article articulates a theory of Puerto Rican cultural nationhood that is largely based on ethnicity. In linking ethnicity and citizenship, it is imperative, however, to avoid the evils of ethnic strife and balkanization, while celebrating rather than imposing difference; community consciousness cannot degenerate into fascism.

Toward A Constitutional Kleptocracy: Civil Forfeiture In America, Stephan B. Herpel

Michigan Law Review

Leonard Levy, the legal historian who has written a number of highly regarded historical studies on various provisions of the United States Constitution, has added to his impressive oeuvre a new study of civil and criminal forfeiture. A License to Steal brings together a discussion of English legal history, a review of a number of Nineteenth Century and late Twentieth Century Supreme Court forfeiture decisions, accounts of actual applications of civil and criminal forfeiture, and a summary and critique of legislative proposals that have been made for reform of the civil forfeiture provisions of the federal drug statute. There is …

Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen

Michigan Law Review

A Review of V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868

Fictions, Fault, And Forgiveness: Jury Nullification In A New Context, David N. Dorfman, Chris K. Iijima

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Recently, critics of the Anglo-American jury system have complained that juries in criminal trials have been ignoring the law, in favor of defendants who claim that they lack criminal responsibility because they are afflicted by the various victimization syndromes now popularized in the mass media. In this Article, Professors Dorfman and Iijima counter this characterization of the "runaway" jury and argue that juries are not ignoring the law, but rather, are exercising a primary power of the jury, to nullify the application of the law when such application to a particular defendant is unjust. The Authors trace the development of …

Cause For Cautious Celebration: Hungarian Post-Communist Environmental Reform, Karen S. Libertiny

Michigan Journal of International Law

In October 1989, the Hungarian Communist regime collapsed and was replaced by a democratic government. This new government was confronted with a visible and grave concern: environmental degradation. In just three years, the new Hungarian government, sometimes of its own impetus, sometimes at the prodding of environmentalists and foreign governments, has taken tremendous steps toward establishing palpable environmental legislation. More importantly, it has created an administrative and information-gathering infrastructure capable of sustaining a cohesive system of environmental protection initiatives. Although the path to further progress is littered with obstacles, this East European country has proven itself a worthy warrior in …

Perestroika African Style: One-Party Government And Human Rights In Tanzania, John Quigley

Michigan Journal of International Law

The one-party systems in Africa have drawn negative reactions from Western States that provide economic aid. The article assesses the one-party system in light of international human rights law and asks whether aid-giving States must consider whether one-party rule in recipient States violates international standards. In this connection, the article asks whether the rights of association and political freedom as developed in Europe can fairly be applied to Africa, given its historical experience.

Justice, Mercy, And Late Medieval Governance, Pat Mccune

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Kingship, Law, and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V by Edward Powell

Self-Determination, Minority Rights, And Constitutional Accommodation: The Example Of The Czech And Slovak Federal Republic, Claudia Saladin

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this note will explore the concepts of self-determination and minority rights in international law and their development over time. This is particularly relevant to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, because these concepts saw their first full flowering in the period during and following the First World War, when those countries gained their independence from the European powers. Part II will discuss the evolution of the constitutional relationship between the Czechs and the Slovaks from the constitution of the first Czechoslovak Republic to the current constitutional reforms of the CSFR. This analysis will show the emerging …

Note, The Death Penalty In Late Imperial, Modern, And Post-Tiananmen China, Alan W. Lepp

Michigan Journal of International Law

This paper seeks to explore the crucial determinants that shape the Chinese legal system's use of the death penalty. Why have the Chinese relied so heavily on execution as a form of sentencing? What factors and conditions account for the major changes in the frequency of China's use of the death penalty? What indigenous traditions are reflected in China's implementation of the death penalty? In order to inquire into the role and function of the legal system in affecting the severity of criminal punishment in China, this study will focus on only those death sentences carried out by the state …

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

The European Community And The Requirement Of A Republican Form Of Government, Jochen Abr. Frowein

Michigan Law Review

The European Community - that is, the factual entity composed of three legally separate communities which has been and still is one of the basic concerns of Eric Stein - cannot be understood without taking into account European history after 1933. As an irony of history, the stage for a new beginning was set by the man who destroyed the old Europe and who was the reason that so many academics left the "old country" for the new world. This new start was not only influenced by the determination of those Europeans who had lived through the darkness to overcome …

Socialism And Federation, John N. Hazard

Michigan Law Review

Federal structures are often established by national founders to manage intractable problems created over generations, if not centuries, by the migration of peoples. Military and economic pressures may stimulate union to assure survival, but ethnic, racial or religious tensions sometimes hamper draftsmen who sense the need for unity. Federation has often been the modem solution to the conflict between the need for unity and the desire for autonomy felt by groups fearing the loss of identity.

Popular Justice: A History Of American Criminal Justice, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Popular Justice: A History of American Criminal Justice by Samuel Walker

Constitutional Interpretation, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

"[We] must never forget," Chief Justice Marshall admonished us in a statement pregnant with more than one meaning, "that it is a constitution we are expounding."' Marshall meant that the Constitution should be read as a document "intended to endure for ages.to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."'2 But he meant also that the construction placed upon the document must have regard for its "great outlines" and "important objects."'3 Limits are implied by the very nature of the task. There is not the same freedom in construing the Constitution as in constructing a …

A Proposed New Federal Intermediate Appellate Court, Charles R. Haworth, Daniel J. Meador

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article begins with an analysis of the recent history of federal appellate court reform efforts. It then focuses on three areas of federal litigation - tax law, patent law, and environmental law - in which there are exceptional needs for uniformity in the law but in which uncertainty in legal doctrine is especially pronounced. To make the law more uniform and predictable in these areas, the article proposes the new intermediate appellate court and sets forth in detail the jurisdiction arid structure of this court. The article concludes by pointing out aspects of this proposal that should make it …

Small Claims Courts: An Overview And Recommendation, Alexander Domanskis

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Small claims courts have been in operation in the United States for over sixty years. They were established to function as inexpensive, efficient, and convenient forums for resolving claims which could not be brought economically in ordinary civil courts because of the costs and delays accompanying ordinary civil court proceedings. Small claims courts also reduce administrative delays by resolving a large volume of claims. For example, the District of Columbia small claims court processed 30,000 claims in 1973. Despite the amount of litigation handled by small claims courts, commentators have expressed much dissatisfaction with their operation and practice. Some commentators …

Judges In The British Cabinet And The Struggle Which Led To Their Exclusion After 1806, Arthur Lyon Cross

Michigan Law Review

Among the anomalies in the queer and devious course of Eng- £ lish constitutional progress few have been more striking than the number of reforms which have been due to the Conservatives.. One of no little significance was brought about during that period of political stagnation-the era of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. This was the exclusion of judges from the Cabinet, as the result of a political struggle in which the forces of opposition, though temporarily defeated, formulated a policy which was destined henceforth to prevail.

Adminsration Of Justice In The Lake Michigan Wilderness, George Pickard

Michigan Law Review

There is a strange and quite unassembled story to be told of the part played by the administration of justice in the development of civilization out of the wilderness that surrounded the great Lake Michigan basin. This vast body of fresh water that now serves as an inter-communicating medium for great centers of modem life, was once only a great separating sea between long reaches of forests, infested with Indian tribes. Here and there were little clusters of cabins, inhabited by an adventurous people, who, within the span of two centuries, were submitted to the successive sways of three great …

English Law Courts At The Close Of The Revolution Of 1688, Arthur L. Cross

Michigan Law Review

In view of the part which the judges played for a4d against the first two STUARTS, and in view of the grievances of the subject under the law as administered in the ordinary courts 2 -to say nothing of the Star Chamber and the High Commission-it was to be expected that, in the great political and religious upheaval resulting from the Puritan Revolution and the ensuing Civil War, the legal edifice could not remain unshaken. As is well known, one of the early acts of the Long Parliament, in the summer of 1641, was to ab6lish the Star Chambei, the …