Law Commons^™

The Letter Of Richard Wyche: An Interrogation Narrative, Christopher G. Bradley

Christopher Bradley

This is a translation, with introduction, of the Letter of Richard Wyche—one of only two heresy interrogation narratives from medieval England written from the perspective of the accused heretic. The Letter is an autobiographical account of Richard Wyche’s interrogation, in 1402-1403, at the hands of church officials. Wyche originally composed the Letter in (Middle) English but it survives only in a Latin translation, alongside other forbidden texts in a manuscript now in Prague. Wyche wrote and covertly sent away this Letter to an audience of intimates sympathetic to the cause (the so-called Wycliffite or Lollard heresy) before his interrogations ended. …

What Notice Did, Jessica Litman

Jessica Litman

In this article, I explore the effect of the copyright notice prerequisite on the law's treatment of copyright ownership. The notice prerequisite, as construed by the courts, encouraged the development of legal doctrines that herded the ownership of copyrights into the hands of publishers and other intermediaries, notwithstanding statutory provisions that seem to have been designed at least in part to enable authors to keep their copyrights. Because copyright law required notice, other doctrinal developments were shaped by and distorted by that requirement. The promiscuous alienability of U.S. copyrights may itself have been an accidental development deriving from courts' constructions …

Understanding Crime Under Capitalism: A Critique Of American Criminal Justice And Introduction To Marxist Jurisprudence, Steven E. Gilmore

Steven E Gilmore

James Wilson And The Moral Foundations Of Popular Sovereignty, Ian C. Bartrum

Ian C Bartrum

This paper explores the moral philosophy underlying the constitutional doctrine of popular sovereignty. In particular, it focuses on the Scottish sentimentalism that informed James Wilson’s understanding of that doctrine. Wilson, a transplanted Scotsman, was perhaps the nation’s preeminent lawyer in the middle 1780s. He was one of the most important delegates to the Constitutional Convention, one of the nation’s first law professors, and served as Associate Justice on the first Supreme Court. In these capacities, he developed the most sophisticated and coherent account of popular sovereignty among the founding generation. My initial effort is to enrich our understanding of Wilson’s …

Just Cause Discipline For Social Networking In The New Gilded Age: Will The Law Look The Other Way?, William A. Herbert, Alicia Mcnally

William A. Herbert