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Common Law

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University of Michigan Law School

United States

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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

The Invention Of Common Law Play Right, Jessica D. Litman Jan 2010

The Invention Of Common Law Play Right, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

This Article explores playwrights' common law "play right." Since this conference celebrates the 300th birthday of the Statute of Anne, I begin in England in the 17th Century. I find no trace of a common law playwright's performance right in either the law or the customary practices surrounding 17th and 18th century English theatre. I argue that the nature and degree of royal supervision of theatre companies and performance during the period presented no occasion (and, indeed, left no opportunity) for such a right to arise. I discuss the impetus for Parliament's enactment of a performance right statute in 1833, …


The Appropriations Power And Sovereign Immunity, Paul F. Figley, Jay Tidmarsh May 2009

The Appropriations Power And Sovereign Immunity, Paul F. Figley, Jay Tidmarsh

Michigan Law Review

Discussions of sovereign immunity assume that the Constitution contains no explicit text regarding sovereign immunity. As a result, arguments about the existence-or nonexistence-of sovereign immunity begin with the English and American common-law doctrines. Exploring political, fiscal, and legal developments in England and the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this Article shows that focusing on common-law developments is misguided. The common-law approach to sovereign immunity ended in the early 1700s. The Bankers' Case (1690- 1700), which is often regarded as the first modern common-law treatment of sovereign immunity, is in fact the last in the line of English …


Treaties Governing The Succession To Real Property By Aliens, Willard L. Boyd, Jr. May 1953

Treaties Governing The Succession To Real Property By Aliens, Willard L. Boyd, Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Under customary international law no nation has the duty to grant to aliens the right to hold real property. Although international law accords to an alien the privilege of participating in the economic life of the state of his residence, this privilege does not encompass the right to hold real property. The right to succeed to and hold real property is a matter solely within the competence of a nation. It is for each nation exclusively to regulate the acquisition and tenure of real property. National authority in this regard can be traced to the concept that the sovereign may …