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Full-Text Articles in Fourteenth Amendment

Taxation-Constitutional Limitations On Sales Taxes Feb 1935

Taxation-Constitutional Limitations On Sales Taxes

Michigan Law Review

There are twenty-three states having general sales tax statutes today. For the most part these statutes have been prompted by the recent economic depression as emergency measures. Most of them are license or privilege taxes, and are of two classes: those of the first type are sales taxes in name only, and consist of taxes upon the privilege of engaging in various occupations, of which selling personal property is but one; those of the second type are taxes solely upon the privilege of selling personal property at retail. Such taxes have met with considerable opposition in the form of litigation, …


Constitutional Law - Requirements Of Due Process In State Procedure Jan 1933

Constitutional Law - Requirements Of Due Process In State Procedure

Michigan Law Review

In American Surety Company v. Baldwin the Surety Company complained that the procedure in Idaho deprived it of a hearing upon its liability on a supersedeas bond. After judgment was given on the bond the Surety Company moved to vacate the order and the motion was granted. Baldwin took an appeal from this order to the Supreme Court of Idaho which reversed the trial court. The sole question raised by the motion was whether the trial court had jurisdiction to give judgment. Under the Idaho practice an appeal from the judgment of the court was the proper method to review …


Constitutional Law - Due Process And Equal Protection - Right Of Counsel Dec 1932

Constitutional Law - Due Process And Equal Protection - Right Of Counsel

Michigan Law Review

The Scottsboro cases decided by the Supreme Court at the present term raise several interesting constitutional questions. The judgments were assailed on the ground that they were violative of the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment in three respects: (1) that the negroes were tried by juries from which members of their race were systematically excluded; (2) that they were not accorded a fair, impartial and deliberate trial; (3) that due process was denied because the right of counsel, with the usual incidents of consultation and adequate preparation for trial, was lacking. While the Supreme Court …


Constitutional Law - Due Process-Business "Affected With A Public Interest'' Jun 1932

Constitutional Law - Due Process-Business "Affected With A Public Interest''

Michigan Law Review

Ever since Munn v. Illinois there has been continuous dispute as to what regulation is deprivation of property without due process of law within the prohibition of the Fourteenth Amendment. In this first case Chief Justice Waite, discussing with approval prior statutes regulating the rates of chimney sweeps and of auctioneers, the price of bread, the charges of draymen and of hackneycabs, concluded that, if these might be regulated, surely so important a matter as the rates of the great grain elevators in Chicago might be subjected to regulation. The position taken was expressed by these sentences: "From this it …


Constitutional Law - Freedom Of The Press - Restraints On Publication, Maurice S. Culp Dec 1931

Constitutional Law - Freedom Of The Press - Restraints On Publication, Maurice S. Culp

Michigan Law Review

A recent Supreme Court decision establishes a new concept of freedom of the press, and adds new meaning to the liberty safeguarded by the Fourteenth Amendment. The defendant, Near, was enjoined from publishing his newspaper because it was alleged that the paper was largely devoted to the publication of malicious, scandalous, and defamatory articles about the grand jury, public officials, and others. The injunction was granted pursuant to a statute which made the publication of a malicious, scandalous, or defamatory newspaper, magazine, or periodical a nuisance subject to abatement by injunction. The Supreme Court of the United States decided that …


Constitutional Law-Due Process-Statutory Interpretation As Judicial Legislation Dec 1930

Constitutional Law-Due Process-Statutory Interpretation As Judicial Legislation

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff brought suit in Missouri to enjoin collection of taxes alleged to be discriminatory, basing his claim for equitable relief on the absence of any other remedy. The supreme court of Missouri dismissed the bill, without hearing on the substantive question, on the ground that there existed, under a state statute, an adequate remedy in appeal to the state tax commission. Previously the court had denied, in several cases, that the statute gave such a right, and had allowed equitable relief in one case on that ground. When the decision in the principal case was rendered, it was too late …


Constitutional Law-Usury-Corporations Nov 1930

Constitutional Law-Usury-Corporations

Michigan Law Review

The complainant corporation filed a bill in chancery to set aside the foreclosure of a mortgage on the ground of usury. Public Acts of Michigan, 1927, No. 335, pt. 2, c. 1, sec. 1, and pt. 2, c. 2, sec. 12, amending Public Acts, 1921, No. 84, provided that a corporation could not set up the defense of usury. The complainant contended that this statute was invalid, being class legislation and hence a violation of the "equal protection of the law'' clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution. Held, that the classification was reasonable and did not …


Constitutional Law-Equal Protection-Disparity Of Privilege And Discrimination Mar 1929

Constitutional Law-Equal Protection-Disparity Of Privilege And Discrimination

Michigan Law Review

The equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment provides that no person or class of persons shall be denied the same protection of the laws that others in the same place and under like circumstances enjoy. But it has been said that "equality and not identity of privileges and rights is what is guaranteed to the citizen" by the fourteenth amendment. People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438, 45 Am. Rep. 232. Any law which in terms provides for identity of privileges and rights, but which operates in such a manner as to produce political or economic inequality. because of …


Constitutional Law-Taxation Of Foreign Corporations Dec 1927

Constitutional Law-Taxation Of Foreign Corporations

Michigan Law Review

The constitutional limitations on the power of the states to tax foreign corporations present many intricate questions. In general it may be said that a state may tax foreign corporations the same as it may tax domestic corporations, but subject to the limitations found in the commerce clause and the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. The commerce cause takes certain subjects out of the realm of state taxation altogether. The state cannot directly impose a burden of any sort upon interstate commerce. It cannot even lay an excise on the privilege of doing intrastate business if the basis includes …


Natural Law In American Constitutional Theory, Fowler Vincent Harper Nov 1927

Natural Law In American Constitutional Theory, Fowler Vincent Harper

Michigan Law Review

Natural law has had many meanings and diversified interpretations. Whether in the form of jus naturale, the law of nature, the law of reason, lex naturalis, lex aeterna, natural justice, or due process of law; natural law, in the broadest sense, has evolved as the needs of a particular civilization and the endeavors of its legal scholars have directed. It is significant, however, that as a philosophy of law, natural law continues to thrive, although the particular system which one community constructs may be abandoned by succeeding generations. Periods of growth in the law have been frequently accompanied …


Compulsory Construction Of New Lines Of Railroad, Kenneth F. Burgess May 1922

Compulsory Construction Of New Lines Of Railroad, Kenneth F. Burgess

Michigan Law Review

In the half century of public regulation of railroads in the United States, regulatory legislation has dealt primarily with functions incident to the operation of existing enterprises. The basic concept has been that railroad corporations as common carriers have voluntarily assumed obligations to the public which the public has a right to require to be performed.


Social And Economic Interpretation Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robert Eugene Cushman May 1922

Social And Economic Interpretation Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robert Eugene Cushman

Michigan Law Review

For those who love precision and definiteness the question of the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to social and economic problems remains an irritating enigma. The judicial construction of due process of law and the equal protection of the law has from the first discouraged systematic analysis and defied synthesis. More than one writer has emerged from the study of the problem with a neat and compact set of fundamental principles, only to have the Supreme Court discourteously ignore them in its next case. But paradoxical as it may seem, those who long for a wise and forward-looking solution of …


Due Process And Punishment, Clarence E. Laylin, Alonzo H. Tuttle Apr 1922

Due Process And Punishment, Clarence E. Laylin, Alonzo H. Tuttle

Michigan Law Review

To threaten such a man with punishment," wrote Sir James .LFitzjames Stephen,' "is like threatening to punish a man for not lifting a weight which he cannot move."


Note And Comment, Edgar N. Durfee, Cyril E. Bailey, Edwin B. Stason, William C. O'Keefe, Clyde Y. Morris Apr 1922

Note And Comment, Edgar N. Durfee, Cyril E. Bailey, Edwin B. Stason, William C. O'Keefe, Clyde Y. Morris

Michigan Law Review

The Basis of Relief from Penalties and Forfeitures - The equitable principle of relief from penalties and forfeitures is so far elementary as almost to defy analysis. Many, perhaps most, of the judicial explanations of the principle have based it upon interpretation or construction, appealing to the doctrine that equity regards intent rather than form. Yet a logical application of this doctrine would lead to results very different from those which have actually been arrived at in the decisions. Thus, a stipulation in a mortgage that the mortgagor waives his equity of redemption can hardly be interpreted as meaning that …