Legal History Commons^™

Book Review (Reviewing Louis Fisher's Congress: Protecting Individual Rights), Adeen Postar

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Fisher is currently the Scholar in Residence at the Constitution Project, and is well known for his many years as Senior Specialist on Separation of Powers at the Congressional Research Service and as Specialist in Constitutional Law at the Law Library of Congress. He has extensive experience testifying before Congress on topics that include Congress and the constitution, war powers, executive power and privilege, and several aspects of the federal budget and its processes. He has written numerous books on these topics, including (to name only a few) The President and Congress: Power and Policy (1972); Defending Congress and the …

The Gentleman From Hagerstown: How Maryland Jews Won The Right To Vote, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the early history of Maryland in the context of religious discrimination, specifically in reference to discrimination against those of the Jewish faith, even though the state "was founded as a haven of religious liberty and beacon of toleration." It also highlights a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, Thomas Kennedy, a Christian, as being the leader of the movement to ultimately correct this injustice. Part of the problem were clauses in the state's constitution requiring officeholders to be Christians. Kennedy lost his seat in the House, but didn't give up the battle. Ha had tried several …

Holocaust Deniers Can't Be Ignored: History: As Victims And Witnesses Of World War Ii Die Off, Revisionist Views Of The Nazi Horrors Could Gain Broader Acceptance, Kenneth Lasson

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On trial in an English courtroom, where British historian David Irving has sued American professor Deborah Lipstadt for defamation, is not only the scholars' reputations but history itself. Irving claims that he was libeled by Lipstadt's 1993 book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," in which she called him "one of the most dangerous of the `revisionists'" because, "familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda." But under British law, the burden of proof in defamation is squarely on the defendant, thus making it necessary for Lipstadt …

Twain's Admiration Of Jews Conflicted His Article Of 100 Years Ago Seems Less Flattering Today, Kenneth Lasson

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It's been exactly a hundred years since Mark Twain first revealed himself as an unmitigated admirer of Jewish people. "A marvelous race, by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I suppose." he wrote in "Concerning the Jews," published in March of 1898 by Harper's magazine.

How different after all was Twain from H.L. Mencken, who (after the posthumous publication of his diaries) was attacked as an anti-Semite? As literary critic Joseph Epstein has pointed out, Mencken talked about Jews the way they talked about themselves: "But H.L. Mencken was no anti-Semite. For that he would have …

Passage Of Religious Freedom Act Necessary To Fulfill Maryland's National Leadership Role, Kenneth Lasson

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Three hundred sixty-four years ago this month, two tiny sailing ships arrived near what is now St. Mary's City with the first settlers in Maryland. The Ark and the Dove were sent to the New World by Cecil Calvert. Lord Baltimore had founded his small colony as a haven for those persecuted in England because of their religious beliefs.

On numerous occasions since then - from passage of the Act of Toleration in 1649 to the achievement of full civil liberties for Jews in 1825 to landmark Supreme Court decisions involving the state in the 1960s - Maryland has been …

Religious Freedom And The Church-State Relationship In Maryland, Kenneth Lasson

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Maryland holds the unique and admirable distinction of having been the State whose early history most directly ensured, and whose citizenry was most directly affected by, the first amendment's grant of religious liberty. The Supreme Court's docket is still liberally sprinkled with petitions calling for renewed interpretation of the establishment clause, and Marylanders will soon vote upon a proposed new state constitution with a similar provision - hence, the opportuneness for tracing Maryland's contribution to the cause of toleration and to the principle of church-state separation.

The scope of this article will not extend beyond a sketch of the important …