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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

The Structure Of Blackstone's Commentaries, Alan Watson Apr 1998

The Structure Of Blackstone's Commentaries, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

Duncan Kennedy's view of Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England as the first systematic attempt to present a theory of the whole common law system is interesting but wrong. Blackstone himself listed his predecessors, "those who have laboured in reducing our laws to a System": Glanville, Bracton, Britton, the author of Fleta, Fitzherbert, Brook, Lord Bacon, Sir Edward Coke, Dr. Cowell, Sir Henry Finch, Dr. Wood, Sir Matthew Hale. Certainly their arrangements are not free from defects. In particular, as Blackstone pointed out, the arrangement of Fitzherbert and Brook was alphabetical, and Bacon purposely avoided any regular …


The National Notary Association: A Historical Profile, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 971 (1998), Milton G. Valera Jan 1998

The National Notary Association: A Historical Profile, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 971 (1998), Milton G. Valera

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.


"Public Use" And The Independent Judiciary: Condemnation In An Interest-Group Perspective, Donald J. Kochan Dec 1997

"Public Use" And The Independent Judiciary: Condemnation In An Interest-Group Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Article reexamines the doctrine of public use under the Takings Clause and its ability to impede takings for private use through an application of public choice theory. It argues that the judicial validation of interest-group capture of the condemnation power through a relaxed public use standard in Takings Clause review can be explained by interest group politics and public choice theory and by institutional tendencies inherent in the independent judiciary. Legislators can sell the eminent domain power to special interests for almost any use, promising durability in the deal given the low probability that the judiciary will invalidate it …