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Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Book Review: The Once And Future King: The Rise Of Crown Government In America, Ronald D. Rotunda
Book Review: The Once And Future King: The Rise Of Crown Government In America, Ronald D. Rotunda
Ronald D. Rotunda
If you want to understand your own language, learn a foreign tongue. Similarly, if you want to understand the American system of government, learn what our intellectual kin—Great Britain and Canada—have done. As Professor F.H. Buckley notes, “He who knows only his own country knows little enough of that.” He is one of the few people who has thoroughly mastered the legal structure and history of all three countries.
Ex Post Modernism: How The First Amendment Framed Nonrepresentational Art, Sonya G. Bonneau
Ex Post Modernism: How The First Amendment Framed Nonrepresentational Art, Sonya G. Bonneau
Sonya G Bonneau
Nonrepresentational art repeatedly surfaces in legal discourse as an example of highly valued First Amendment speech. It is also systematically described in constitutionally valueless terms: nonlinguistic, noncognitive, and apolitical. Why does law talk about nonrepresentational art at all, much less treat it as a constitutional precept? What are the implications for conceptualizing artistic expression as free speech?
This article contends that the source of nonrepresentational art’s presumptive First Amendment value is the same source of its utter lack thereof: modernism. Specifically, a symbolic alliance between abstraction and freedom of expression was forged in the mid-twentieth century, informed by social and …
The Emergence Of Classical American Patent Law, Herbert Hovenkamp
The Emergence Of Classical American Patent Law, Herbert Hovenkamp
Herbert Hovenkamp
The Emergence of Classical Patent Law
Abstract
One enduring historical debate concerns whether the American Constitution was intended to be "classical" -- referring to a theory of statecraft that maximizes the role of private markets and minimizes the role of government in economic affairs. The most central and powerful proposition of classical constitutionalism is that the government's role in economic development should be minimal. First, private rights in property and contract exist prior to any community needs for development. Second, if a particular project is worthwhile the market itself will make it occur. Third, when the government attempts to induce …
Hegelian Dialectical Analysis Of United States Election Laws, Charles E. A. Lincoln Iv
Hegelian Dialectical Analysis Of United States Election Laws, Charles E. A. Lincoln Iv
Charles E. A. Lincoln IV
This Article uses the dialectical ideas of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1833) in application to the progression of United States voting laws since the founding. This analysis can be used to interpret past progression of voting rights in the US as well as a provoking way to predict the future trends in US voting rights. First, Hegel’s dialectical method is established as a major premise. Second, the general accepted history of United States voting laws from the 1770s to the current day is laid out as a minor premise. Third, the major premise of Hegel’s dialectical method weaves …
The High Price Of Poverty: A Study Of How The Majority Of Current Court System Procedures For Collecting Court Costs And Fees, As Well As Fines, Have Failed To Adhere To Established Precedent And The Constitutional Guarantees They Advocate., Trevor J. Calligan
Trevor J Calligan
No abstract provided.
Beyond The Written Constitution: A Short Analysis Of Warren Court, Thiago Luis Santos Sombra
Beyond The Written Constitution: A Short Analysis Of Warren Court, Thiago Luis Santos Sombra
Thiago Luís Santos Sombra
This essay propose an analysis about how Warren Court became one of the most particular in American History by confronting Jim Crow law, especially by applying the Bill of Rights. In this essay, we propose an analysis of how complex the unwritten Constitution is. Cases like Brown vs. Board of Education will be analyzed from a different point of view to understand the methods of the Court.
Before There Were Mouseholes: Resurrecting The Non-Delegation Doctrine, Joel Hood
Before There Were Mouseholes: Resurrecting The Non-Delegation Doctrine, Joel Hood
Joel Hood
Most people are unaware that James Madison original drafted 17 amendments for the Bill of Rights. Even fewer know that the 16th was an express non-delegation amendment meant to protect the American people:
The powers delegated by the Constitution to the government of the United States, shall be exercised as therein appropriated, so that the Legislative shall never exercise the powers vested in the Executive or Judicial; not the Executive the powers vested in the Legislative or Judicial; nor the Judicial the powers vested in the Legislative or Executive.
There are now over five-hundred federal agencies and departments. Some are …
Free Exercise For Whom? -- Could The Religious Liberty Principle That Catholics Established In Perez V. Sharp Also Protect Same-Sex Couples' Right To Marry?, Eric Alan Isaacson
Free Exercise For Whom? -- Could The Religious Liberty Principle That Catholics Established In Perez V. Sharp Also Protect Same-Sex Couples' Right To Marry?, Eric Alan Isaacson
Eric Alan Isaacson
Recent discussions about the threat that same-sex couples hypothetically pose to the religious freedom of Americans whose religions traditions frown upon same-sex unions have largely overlooked the possibility that same-sex couples might have their own religious-liberty interest in being able to marry. The General Synod of the United Church of Christ brought the issue to the fore with an April 2014 lawsuit challenging North Carolina laws barring same-sex marriages. Authored by a lawyer who represented the California Council of Churches and other religions organizations as amici curiae in recent marriage-equality litigation, this article argues that although marriage is a secular …
From Reynolds To Lawrence To Brown V. Buhman: Antipolygamy Statutes Sliding On The Slippery Slope Of Same-Sex Marriage, Stephen L. Baskind
From Reynolds To Lawrence To Brown V. Buhman: Antipolygamy Statutes Sliding On The Slippery Slope Of Same-Sex Marriage, Stephen L. Baskind
Stephen L Baskind
In 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas (striking Texas’ sodomy law), Justice Scalia predicted in his dissent the end of all morals legislation. If Justice Scalia is correct most, if not all, morals-based legislation may fall. For example, in recent years state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage have fallen to constitutional challenges. Ten years after Lawrence in 2013, a Utah Federal District Court in Brown v. Buhman, though feeling constrained by the 1878 Reynolds case (which rejected a First Amendment challenge to an antipolygamy law), nevertheless at the request of a polygamous family concluded that the cohabitation prong of Utah’s anti-bigamy …
Justice-As-Fairness As Judicial Guiding Principle: Remembering John Rawls And The Warren Court, Michael Anthony Lawrence
Justice-As-Fairness As Judicial Guiding Principle: Remembering John Rawls And The Warren Court, Michael Anthony Lawrence
Michael Anthony Lawrence
This Article looks back to the United States Supreme Court’s jurisprudence during the years 1953-1969 when Earl Warren served as Chief Justice, a period marked by numerous landmark rulings in the areas of racial justice, criminal procedure, reproductive autonomy, First Amendment freedom of speech, association and religion, voting rights, and more. The Article further discusses the constitutional bases for the Warren Court’s decisions, principally the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection and due process clauses.
The Article explains that the Warren Court’s equity-based jurisprudence closely resembles, at its root, the “justice-as-fairness” approach promoted in John Rawls’s monumental 1971 work, A Theory of …
What The Constitution Means By “Duties, Imposts, And Excises”—And “Taxes” (Direct Or Otherwise), Robert G. Natelson
What The Constitution Means By “Duties, Imposts, And Excises”—And “Taxes” (Direct Or Otherwise), Robert G. Natelson
Robert G. Natelson
This Article recreates the original definitions of the U.S. Constitution’s terms “tax,” “direct tax,” “duty,” “impost,” “excise,” and “tonnage.” It draws on a greater range of Founding-Era sources than accessed heretofore, including eighteenth-century treatises, tax statutes, and literary source, and it corrects several errors made by courts and previous commentators. It concludes that the distinction between direct and indirect taxes was widely understood during the Founding Era, and that the term “direct tax” was more expansive than commonly realized. The Article identifies the reasons the Constitution required that direct taxes be apportioned among the states by population. It concludes that …
Does It Matter How One Opposes Memory Bans? A Commentary On Liberte Pour L'Histoire, Robert Kahn
Does It Matter How One Opposes Memory Bans? A Commentary On Liberte Pour L'Histoire, Robert Kahn
Robert Kahn
This paper examines Liberté pour l'Histoire, a group of French historians who led the charge against that nation’s memory laws, in the process raising unique arguments not found elsewhere in the debate over hate speech regulation. Some of these arguments – such as a focus on how the constitutional structure of the Fifth Republic encouraged memory laws – advance our understanding of the connection between hate speech bans and political institutions. Other arguments, however, are more problematic. In particular, Liberté historians struggle to distinguish the Holocaust (which is illegal to deny) from the Armenian Genocide (which is not). The Liberté …
The Classical Constitution, Herbert Hovenkamp
The Classical Constitution, Herbert Hovenkamp
Herbert Hovenkamp
Conservative and libertarian constitutional writers have often pined for return to a "classical" understanding of American federal and state Constitutions. "Classical" does not necessarily mean "originalist" or "interpretivist." Some classical views, such as the attempt to revitalize Lochner-style economic due process, find little support in the text of the federal Constitution or any of the contemporary state constitutions. Rather, constitutional meaning is thought to lie in a background link between constitution formation and classical statecraft. The core theory rests on the assumption of a social contract to which everyone in some initial position agreed. Like any contract, it would …
Nothing To Do With Personhood: Corporate Constitutional Rights And The Principle Of Confiscation, Paul Kens Dr.
Nothing To Do With Personhood: Corporate Constitutional Rights And The Principle Of Confiscation, Paul Kens Dr.
Paul Kens Dr.
In its 2010 decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission the Supreme Court overruled a federal statute that limited a corporation’s ability to pay for political advertising out of its general treasury funds. Those limits, it ruled, violated the corporation’s right to freedom of speech. The case has since become notorious for the widely held belief that, in doing so, the Court declared that corporations are “persons,” possessing the same constitutional rights as flesh and blood human beings. Four years later the Court seemed to expand on this conclusion when it ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that a general …
Dogging Darwin: America's Revolt Against The Teaching Of Evolution, J. Herbie Difonzo, Ruth C. Stern
Dogging Darwin: America's Revolt Against The Teaching Of Evolution, J. Herbie Difonzo, Ruth C. Stern
J. Herbie DiFonzo
Abstract
More than four in ten Americans believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago. American antagonism toward the teaching of evolution is deeply rooted in fundamentalist tradition and an aversion to intellectualism. These forces have combined to demonize Charles Darwin to such an extent that sectarian-based legal and political attacks on evolution show no signs of abating. Darwin’s day in court began in 1925 with the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. It continued into the 21st century with Kitzmiller v. Dover Area Schools. Throughout, the core creationist agenda has remained the same, although an …
The Posse Comitatus And The Office Of Sheriff: Armed Citizens Summoned To The Aid Of Law Enforcement, David B. Kopel
The Posse Comitatus And The Office Of Sheriff: Armed Citizens Summoned To The Aid Of Law Enforcement, David B. Kopel
David B Kopel
Posse comitatus is the legal power of sheriffs and other officials to summon armed citizens to aid in keeping the peace. The posse comitatus can be traced back as least as far as the reign of Alfred the Great in ninth century England. The institution thrives today in the United States; a study of Colorado finds many county sheriffs have active posses. Like the law of the posse comitatus, the law of the office of sheriff has been remarkably stable for over a millennium. This Article presents the history and law of the posse comitatus and the office of sheriff …