Law Commons^™

State Sovereign Immunity And Intellectual Property: An Evaluation Of The Trademark Remedy Clarification Act’S Attempt To Subject States To Suit In Federal Courts For Trademark Infringements Under The Lanham Act, Jennifer L. Fessler

University of Massachusetts Law Review

There are two things that can be learned from this paper. First, the analytical framework developed by the Court in City of Boerne is a stringent test that has considerably narrowed Congress’s ability to abrogate state’s Eleventh Amendment immunity through legislation. Second, only half of the battle was won when Congress enacted the Trademark Remedy Clarification Act. Although it met the new requirements the Court placed on legislative efforts in Atascadero, it is not able to meet the requirements that were later set forth in Seminole Tribe. The Rehnquist Court’s holdings indicate the Court’s active pursuit of state’s …

Historical Sketch Of The Indiana University, David Demaree Banta

David Banta (1889-1896)

Historical sketch of Indiana University from its founding until 1889. It is unknown when this piece was written or if it was published.

Supreme Court, Kings County, People V. Chapman, Kerri Grzymala

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Scope Of Precedent, Randy J. Kozel

Michigan Law Review

The scope of Supreme Court precedent is capacious. Justices of the Court commonly defer to sweeping rationales and elaborate doctrinal frameworks articulated by their predecessors. This practice infuses judicial precedent with the prescriptive power of enacted constitutional and statutory text. The lower federal courts follow suit, regularly abiding by the Supreme Court’s broad pronouncements. These phenomena cannot be explained by—and, indeed, oftentimes subvert—the classic distinction between binding holdings and dispensable dicta. This Article connects the scope of precedent with recurring and foundational debates about the proper ends of judicial interpretation. A precedent’s forward- looking effect should not depend on the …

Deal Leaves Court Issues Unresolved, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Coercing Justice? Exploring The "Aspirations And Practice" Of Law As A Tool In Struggles Against Social Inequalities, Karen Schucher

PhD Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of law as a tool in struggles against social inequalities, by tracing the history of Ontario’s human rights legislation and enforcement from the enactment of fair practices statutes in the 1950s through the restructuring of the enforcement regime in 2006. Ontario was the first Canadian province to pass anti-discrimination legislation and to establish a human rights commission enforcement process. This legislation and the commission enforcement process were the models for all other Canadian jurisdictions.

The dissertation approaches the role of law through the framework of tensions between the “aspirations” and the “practices” of law. On …

Lynching And The Law In Georgia Circa 1931: A Chapter In The Legal Career Of Judge Elbert Tuttle, Anne S. Emanuel

Anne S. Emanuel

Elbert Parr Tuttle joined the federal bench in 1954, shortly after the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education. In 1960, he became the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the court with jurisdiction over most of the deep south. As Chief Judge, he forged a jurisprudence that proved effective in overcoming the intransigence and outright rebellion of those who had long denied fundamental constitutional rights to African Americans.

This Essay traces an episode that occurred in 1931, when Tuttle spearheaded an effort to obtain a fair trial for John Downer, a …

1907 Hague Convention Viii Relative To The Laying Of Automatic Submarine Contact Mines, Steven Haines

International Law Studies

This article places 1907 Hague Convention VIII in its historical context, examines its content, summarizes State practice since 1907 (including during the two World Wars) and discusses the Convention’s relevance to contemporary mine warfare. The Convention has inherent shortcomings, has never been strictly applicable in any war since 1907, and is not strictly relevant to anything other than automatic contact mines (effectively excluding modern influence mines). Despite this—and a paucity of substantial State practice since 1945—the conclusion is that the Convention has influenced the customary law on sea-mines. When that custom was combined with other relevant custom (particularly that pertaining …

International Law Applicable To Naval Mines, Chatham House

International Law Studies

This report summarizes the workshop held on February 26–27, 2014 on the law governing the use of naval mines in times of both peace and war. The workshop, organized by Chatham House, the Royal Navy and U.S. Naval War College, brought together a group of international law scholars, operational lawyers and other legal experts in the field. The objective of the workshop was to clarify existing law and identify areas of legal uncertainty to assist States to conduct their operations lawfully.

Reforming High School American History Curricula: What Publicized Student Intolerance Can Teach Policymakers, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This article concerns the way public high schools teach American history under curricula and standards mandated by state law. “We’re raising young people who are, by and large, historically illiterate,” says David McCullough, the dean of American historians.

The article describes three recent nationally publicized incidents in which high school students belittled lynching and the Trail of Tears, evidently without appreciating the episodes’ legal and historical significance to African Americans and Native Americans respectively. Standards and textbooks typically recognize diversity and multiculturalism, but research and surveys indicate that classroom teachers frequently sanitize or avoid discomforting topics that might trigger complaints, …

Queen Of The Underworld: The Biography Of Sophie Lyons (1848-1924), Barbara M. Gray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sophie Lyons was a nineteenth-century American pickpocket, blackmailer, con-woman, and bank robber. She was raised in New York City's underworld, by Jewish immigrant parents who were criminals that trained their children to pick pockets and shoplift. "Pretty Sophie" possessed a rare combination of skill at thievery, intellect, guts and beauty and became the woman Herbert Ashbury described in Gangs of New York as, "the most notorious confidence woman America has ever produced." Newspapers around the world chronicled Sophie's exploits for more than sixty years, because her life read like a novel. Her mentor was another forgotten woman who held a …

Lawyers For Marianne: The Nature Of Discourse On The Entry Of French Women Into The Legal Profession, 1894-1926, Christine Corcos

Christine A. Corcos

No abstract provided.

Intervention In Roman Law: A Case Study In The Hazards Of Legal Scholarship, Peter A. Appel

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

September 11, 2014: National Motto Fails In Allegheny County, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “National Motto Fails in Allegheny County“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Lawyers And Jurists, O.F. Robinson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Radical History - Interview On Hindsight - Citizen In The Republic Of The Arts: Lucien Henry, Terence Irving

Terry Irving

No abstract provided.

‘Labour History And Its Political Role – A New Landscape’, Terence H. Irving

Terry Irving

As I was thinking about what to say today I read an article on Manning Clark and found something that made me pause. It was a description of our venerable journal, Labour History, but characterizing it in terms that none of us would use, at least not in public. Instead of describing our field, our sources or our methods, our long list of illustrious contributors, it said that Labour History was the journal of Australia’s left-wing historians. Well, this was in Wikipedia – but nonetheless it struck me that, yes, this is a truth I am prepared to accept. I’m …

Rediscovering Radical History, Terence Irving

Terry Irving

No abstract provided.

Trademark Law And The Prickly Ambivalence Of Post-Parodies, Charles E. Colman

Charles E. Colman

This Essay examines what I call "post-parodies" in apparel. This emerging genre of do-it-yourself fashion is characterized by the appropriation and modification of third-party trademarks — not for the sake of dismissively mocking or zealously glorifying luxury fashion, but rather to engage in more complex forms of expression. I examine the cultural circumstances and psychological factors giving rise to post-parodic fashion, and conclude that the sensibility causing its proliferation is one grounded in ambivalence. Unfortunately, current doctrine governing trademark parodies cannot begin to make sense of post-parodic goods; among other shortcomings, that doctrine suffers from crude analytical tools and a …

July 19, 2014: The Problem With Capitalism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Problem With Capitalism“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Street Railway Strikes, Collective Violence, And The Canadian State, 1886-1914, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

Street railway strikes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were often accompanied by high levels of public disorder. The challenge to public authorities, however, was not just in the scale of the disorder but also the disjuncture between the behaviour that a significant portion of the working-class community felt was legitimate in the circumstances and what the law tolerated. Public officials confronted with this dilemma had to negotiate between the disparate zones of community and legal toleration. How much disorder would they tolerate before mobilizing the coercive power of the state to protect the right of the street …

July 1, 2014: Another Reason To Hate Religion, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Another Reason to Hate Religion“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Gideon V. Wainwright--From A 1963 Perspective, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Gideon v. Wainwright is more than a “landmark” Supreme Court ruling in the field of constitutional criminal procedure. As evidenced by the range of celebrators of Gideon’s Fiftieth Anniversary (extending far beyond the legal academy) and Gideon’s inclusion in the basic coverage of high school government courses, Gideon today is an icon of the American justice system. I have no quarrel with that iconic status, but I certainly did not see any such potential in Gideon when I analyzed the Court’s ruling shortly after it was announced in March of 1963. I had previously agreed to write an article for …

The Great Power Origins Of Human Rights, Seth Mohney

Michigan Journal of International Law

For years, historians depicted the history of human rights as the inexorable triumph of universal norms. This account underestimates both the historical and contemporary uncertainty surrounding many international human rights. As even casual observers must note, the tale of human rights progress is not littered with beneficent heads of state persuaded to pursue progress by the moral charge of universal norms. Instead, this history’s primary scenes feature struggles among great powers, peoples, and movements advancing diverse interests. Recognizing the complexity of human rights history, a new generation of historians has emphasized that human rights progress is not preordained, but rather …

April 17, 2014: Cowardice And Hypocrisy At Brandeis, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Cowardice and Hypocrisy at Brandeis“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Missing Mcveigh, Michael E. Tigar

Michigan Law Review

The bombing that killed at least 169 people became an event by which time was thereafter measured — at least in Oklahoma. Ninety minutes after the bombing, a state trooper arrested Timothy McVeigh on a traffic charge; within hours, he was linked to the bombing, and the legal process began. Terry Nichols, who had met McVeigh when they were in the army together, was arrested in Herington, Kansas, where he lived with his wife and daughter. The Tenth Circuit chief judge designated Richard Matsch, chief judge for the District of Colorado, to preside over the case. Judge Matsch came to …

Racial Templates, Richard Delgado, Juan F. Perea

Michigan Law Review

This riveting tale of greed, international skullduggery, and behind-the-scenes heroism recounts the events that led up to America’s “wicked war” with Mexico. It depicts how expansionist ambitions in high circles fueled jingoistic propaganda (pp. 25, 34–35, 58), fed a public eager for national muscle flexing (pp. 57, 103, 108), and set the stage for a military skirmish in a disputed region between two rivers (pp. 75–77, 95, 100, 138) that provided the pretext for a savage and short-lived military campaign against the weak new nation of Mexico in which the U.S. Army, under General Scott, marched all the way to …

Some Kind Of Judge: Henry Friendly And The Law Of Federal Courts, Aaron P. Brecher

Michigan Law Review

Uberfans of the federal judiciary owe a lot to David Dorsen. His illuminating biography of Judge Henry Friendly is a fitting tribute to the contributions of a jurist that many consider to be among the finest judges never to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Judicial biography is a difficult genre to do well, and most authors choose to focus on Supreme Court justices. But Henry Friendly, Greatest Judge of His Era is an excellent source of information on Friendly’s life and, far more important, his views on the law and his relationships with some of the most fascinating figures …

A Pragmatic Republic, If You Can Keep It, William R. Sherman

Michigan Law Review

These things we know to be true: Our modern administrative state is a leviathan unimaginable by the Founders. It stands on thin constitutional ice, on cracks between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. It burdens and entangles state and local governments in schemes that threaten federalism. And it presents an irresolvable dilemma regarding democratic accountability and political independence. We know these things to be true because these precepts animate some of the most significant cases and public law scholarship of our time. Underlying our examination of administrative agencies is an assumption that the problems they present would have been bizarre …