Law Commons^™

Legal Aid 1900 To 1930: What Happened To Law Reform?, Mark Spiegel

Mark Spiegel

The Paradox Of Parliamentary Supremacy: Delegation, Democracy And Dictatorship In Germany And France, 1920s-1950s, Peter Lindseth

Peter L. Lindseth

No abstract provided.

Land And Law In The Age Of Enterprise: A Legal History Of Railroad Land Grants In The Pacific Northwest, 1864-1916, Sean Kammer

Sean Kammer

Federal land subsidies to railroad corporations comprised an important part of the federal government’s policies towards its western land domain in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. In all, Congress granted over a hundred million acres to railroad corporations to subsidize construction of a transcontinental railway network. Long after the last such grant in 1871, these land grants continued to incite political contests in Congress and state legislatures and legal disputes in communities across the West. By the end of the century, railroad corporations had become manifestations not just of the threatening growth of corporate power in the United …

Appeals To The Privy Council From The American Colonies: An Annotated Digital Catalogue, Mary Bilder, Sharon O'Connor

Sharon Hamby O'Connor

In recognition of the three-hundred anniversary of the accession of George I, the Ames Foundation announces a new electronic resource: Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Plantations: An Annotated Digital Catalogue. For the first time in centuries, the site makes accessible the important appellate cases that helped to define constitutional law before the creation of the United States Supreme Court.

The British Privy Council heard appeals from the 13 colonies that became the United States and from the other colonies in Canada and the Caribbean. Over 800 cases were appealed from the colonial supreme courts. Nearly one-third of …

America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions Of Power And Community, Robert Tsai

Robert L Tsai

The U.S. Constitution opens by proclaiming the sovereignty of all citizens: "We the People." Robert Tsai's gripping history of alternative constitutions invites readers into the circle of those who have rejected this ringing assertion--the defiant groups that refused to accept the Constitution's definition of who "the people" are and how their authority should be exercised. America's Forgotten Constitutions is the story of America as told by dissenters: squatters, Native Americans, abolitionists, socialists, internationalists, and racial nationalists. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Tsai chronicles eight episodes in which discontented citizens took the extraordinary step of drafting a new constitution. He examines …

Making Claims: Indian Litigants And The Expansion Of The English Legal World In The Eighteenth Century, Arthur Fraas

Arthur Mitchell Fraas

This paper explores the British Imperial legal world of the mid-eighteenth century. Within this period, the previously confined spaces of English law and legal institutions became open to an ever widening set of legal subjects, both people as well as places. The paper focuses on what was at the time perhaps England’s most remote and murkily defined legal space, the East India Company (EIC) settlements at Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. The paper shows how a series of legal actors: metropolitan judges, Indian litigants and elite lawyers, first bridged the legal worlds of England and the subcontinent. I argue that by …

De Recto, De Jure, Or De Facto: Another Look At The History Of U.S./Tribal Relations, Marren Sanders

Marren Sanders

The history of relations between the United States and Native nations is often divided by scholars into specific eras defined by the Congressional policy in force at the time. Each federal policy had profound consequences for tribes and their sovereign ability to manage their lands and resources. This article surveys the history of U.S./tribal relations through the lens of the Professors Joseph Kalt and Joseph William Singer’s scheme of tribal sovereignty. Part I looks at how tribal sovereign rights to manage their people, lands, and resources have been recognized in varying degrees since the time of first contract with European …

A New Introduction To American Constitutionalism, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

A New Introduction to American Constitutionalism is the first text to study the entirety of American constitutionalism, not just the traces that appear in Supreme Court decisions. Mark A. Graber both explores and offers original answers to such central questions as: What is a Constitution? What are fundamental constitutional purposes? How are constitutions interpreted? How is constitutional authority allocated? How do constitutions change? How is the Constitution of the United States influenced by international and comparative law? and, most important, How does the Constitution work? Relying on an historical/institutional perspective, the book illustrates how American constitutionalism is a distinct form …

Baker V. State And The Promise Of The New Judicial Federalism, Charles Baron, Lawrence Friedman

Charles H. Baron

In Baker v. State, the Supreme Court of Vermont ruled that the state constitution’s Common Benefits Clause prohibits the exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and protections of marriage. Baker has been praised by constitutional scholars as a prototypical example of the New Judicial Federalism. The authors agree, asserting that the decision sets a standard for constitutional discourse by dint of the manner in which each of the opinions connects and responds to the others, pulls together arguments from other state and federal constitutional authorities, and provides a clear basis for subsequent development of constitutional principle. This Article explores …

The Anniversaries Of The Right To Counsel And Thecreation Of The Public Defender’S Office,, Robert Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

There has been much celebration this year of the 50th Anniversary of the Gideon decision1 rendered by the United States Supreme Court in March of 1963. Gideon guaranteed that indigent persons accused of crime would be entitled to representation. It has been said for some time now, that the full promise of Gideon has never been realized. Nevertheless, the right to counsel in criminal cases is an important constitutional right.

2013 also marks the 120th Anniversary of the first public proposal of a public defender system which was introduced in Chicago in 1893. It also marks the 99th anniversary of …

American Constitutionalism: Volume I: Structures Of Government, Howard Gillman, Mark Graber, Keith Whittington

Mark Graber

Constitutionalism in the United States is not determined solely by decisions made by the Supreme Court. Moving beyond traditional casebooks, renowned scholars Howard Gillman, Mark A. Graber, and Keith E. Whittington take a refreshingly innovative approach in American Constitutionalism. Organized according to the standard two-semester sequence--in which Volume I covers institutions and Volume II covers Rights and Liberties-- this text is unique in that it presents the material in a historical organization within each volume, as opposed to the typical issues-based organization.

Life Cycles Of American Legal History Through Bob Dylan's Eyes, Laurie Serafino

Laurie B. Serafino

This article discusses how America's passage through cycles of change that correlate to patterns of discrimination and revolution, as illustrated in the lyrics of Bob Dylan, is represented in American law. It examines, from a legal perspective, Bob Dylan's ideas on social policy and change, and identifies periods in American history during which the nation was "put on the cross, died, and was resurrected."

This examination emphasizes certain key players in U.S. history, who were admired by Dylan for being honorable and fair, standing up for the underdog, and fighting hard against their enemies. These key players include Thaddeus Stevens, …

Encyclopedia Of The Supreme Court Of The United States, David Tanenhaus, Kay Kindred, Felice Batlan, Alfred Brophy, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

This 5-volume set focuses on the substance of American law, the processes that produce its legal principles, and the history of the Supreme Court, from its creation to the present. One of the encyclopedia's distinguishing themes is the examination of case law, the essential texts that form the backbone of legal and pre-legal study in the United States. Overview essays address the history of such topics as citizenship, due process, Native Americans, racism, and contraception, emphasizing the social context of each and the social and political pressures that shaped interpretation. This approach plays directly into the cutting-edge field known as …

Changing The People: Legal Regulation And American Democracy, Tabatha Abu El-Haj

Tabatha Abu El-Haj

The world in which we live, a world in which law pervades the practice of democratic politics – from advance regulation of public assemblies to detailed rules governing elections – is the product of a particular period of American history. Between 1880 and 1930, states and municipalities increased governmental controls over the full range of nineteenth-century avenues for democratic participation. Prior to this legal transformation, the practice of democratic politics in the United States was less structured by law and more autonomous from formal state institutions than it is today. Exposing this history challenges two core assumptions driving the work …

Thurgood Marshall: The Writer, Anna P. Hemingway, Starla J. Williams, Jennifer M. Lear, Ann E. Fruth

Anna P. Hemingway

Brief Of Amicus Curiae Wesley Macneil Oliver In Support Of The Petition For Writ Of Certiorari, Wesley Oliver

Wesley M Oliver

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently held that a lawsuit could proceed against John Ashcroft in his individual capacity for the way he detained material witnesses after the Terror of September 11, 2001. Ashcroft allegedly used those he believed to be terrorist suspects as material witnesses when he lacked adequate suspicion to bring formal charges. All of these “witnesses” otherwise qualified for detention under the federal material witness detention statute. The Ninth Circuit concluded that this “pretextual” use of the material witness detention statute clearly violated the Fourth Amendment as it circumvented the probable cause …

David Hoffman: Life, Letters And Lectures At The University Of Maryland 1821-1837, Bill Sleeman

Bill Sleeman

David Hoffman was a prominent pioneer in the establishment of university-based legal education. He helped to found the University of Maryland Law School in 1816 and was its first professor. His A Course of Legal Study (1817) and Legal Outlines (1829) played a critical role in the development of law school curricula and provided guidance to hundreds of antebellum law students and attorneys.

Resolving Political Questions Into Judicial Questions: Tocqueville's Thesis Revisited, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

This paper explores whether national political questions during the second party system were resolved into questions adjudicated by the Supreme Court of the United States. The essay details an appropriate test for Tocqueville’s thesis, demonstrates that most national political questions that excited Jacksonians were not resolved into judicial questions, and explains why Tocqueville’s thesis does not accurately describe national constitutional politics during the three decades before the Civil War. That most political questions were not resolved into judicial questions during the three decades before the Civil War given common political science claim that “(v)irtually any issue the Court might wish …

James Buchanan As Savior? Judicial Power, Political Fragmentation, And The Failed 1831 Repeal Of Section 25, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

James Buchanan is often credited with being the unlikely savior of judicial review in early Jacksonian America. In 1831, Buchanan, then a representative from Pennsylvania, issued a minority report criticizing the proposed repeal of Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that is generally credited with convincing a skeptical Congress that fundamental constitutional norms required federal judicial oversight of state courts and state legislatures. This paper claims that federalism and political fragmentation were more responsible than James Buchanan for the failed repeal of Section 25, for the maintenance of judicial power in the United States during the transition from …

Portrait Of A Patriot: The Major Legal And Political Papers Of Josiah Quincy Junior, Volume 4, The Law Reports, Part One (1761-1765.), Daniel Coquillette, Neil Longley York

Daniel R. Coquillette

No abstract provided.

Portrait Of A Patriot: The Major Legal And Political Papers Of Josiah Quincy Junior, Volume 5, The Law Reports, Part Two (1765-1772.), Daniel Coquillette, Neil Longley York

Daniel R. Coquillette

No abstract provided.

Select Ecclesiastical Cases From The King's Courts 1272-1307, David Millon

David K. Millon

No abstract provided.

Eloquence And Reason: Creating A First Amendment Culture, Robert L. Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This book presents a general theory to explain how the words in the Constitution become culturally salient ideas, inscribed in the habits and outlooks of ordinary Americans. "Eloquence and Reason" employs the First Amendment as a case study to illustrate that liberty is achieved through the formation of a common language and a set of organizing beliefs. The book explicates the structure of First Amendment language as a distinctive discourse and illustrates how activists, lawyers, and even presidents help to sustain our First Amendment belief system. When significant changes to constitutional law occur, they are best understood as the results …

Portrait Of A Patriot: The Major Political And Legal Papers Of Josiah Quincy Junior. Volume Two, The Law Commonplace Book, Daniel Coquillette, Neil Longley York

Daniel R. Coquillette

No abstract provided.

Portrait Of A Patriot: The Major Political And Legal Papers Of Josiah Quincy Junior. Volume Three, The Southern Journal (1773), Daniel Coquillette, Neil Longley York

Daniel R. Coquillette

No abstract provided.

Georgia's Noble Revolution: Three Governors, Two Armies, The Georgia Supreme Court, And The Gubernatorial Election Of 1946, Lucian E. Dervan

Lucian E Dervan

In 1946, the governor-elect of Georgia died, sparking a constitutional battle that brought a state government to its knees and a state supreme court to the height of its power. As two armies drew up on the streets of Atlanta, fights erupted in the executive offices and two men stood head to head in a battle for the vacant governor's seat. Into this fray, however, came the rule of law in the form of the state courts, and what may have swelled into an armed conflict of unseen proportions in twentieth century American politics ended with the stirring strike of …

Portrait Of A Patriot: The Major Political And Legal Papers Of Josiah Quincy Junior. Volume One, The Political Commonplace Book And The London Journal, Daniel Coquillette, Neil Longley York

Daniel R. Coquillette

No abstract provided.

'Mourning Venice And Genoa': Joseph Story, Legal Education, And The Lex Mercatoria, Daniel Coquillette

Daniel R. Coquillette

No abstract provided.

The Anglo-American Legal Heritage Introductory Materials, Daniel Coquillette

Daniel R. Coquillette

This fascinating book about our legal heritage is copiously illustrated with original materials. From our cultural roots in the Roman law, the Anglo-Saxon dooms, and English feudalism, to modern crises of social revolution and reform. Coquillette's work shows how legal culture is part of what has been called the "seamless web" of history. Most introductory books rely heavily, if not exclusively, on secondary sources. This book, however, provides carefully edited and chosen primary sources and culminates with provocative excerpts of the most recent twentieth century historical criticism. Also included are many useful charts and diagrams, and an extensive bibliography for …

The Boston Legal Aid Society, 1900-1925, Mark Spiegel

Mark Spiegel

This article examines the history of the Boston Legal Aid Society from its founding in 1900 through 1925. In so doing I explore why was Boston Legal Aid started. Depending upon what sources you consult the Boston Legal Aid Society was either the third or fourth legal aid organization started in the United States. The first was New York in 1876 and the second was in Chicago, in the 1880's. My question is why Boston in 1900? What were the forces that led to the founding of this organization at that point in time? Was it part of the effort …