Legal History Commons^™

The Organization Of The Probate Court In America: I, Lewis M. Simes, Paul E. Basye

Michigan Law Review

This is a study of contemporary American legislation concerning probate courts, with particular reference to their jurisdiction over the probate of wills and the administration of estates of deceased persons.

By the term "probate courts" is meant all judicial tribunals which exercise such jurisdiction. As will subsequently appear, they are otherwise variously designated as surrogates' courts, orphans' courts, prerogative courts, courts of ordinary and county courts. In one state all the functions of probate and administration are exercised by courts of chancery. In other states, chancery has concurrent jurisdiction over many of these functions. Sometimes the register of probate exercises …

Unreported Michigan Supreme Court Opinions, 1836-1843, Clark F. Norton

Michigan Law Review

It is a commonly known fact that, although Michigan was admitted to the Union in 1837 (many of her citizens had claimed statehood for more than a year prior to her formal admission), few opinions of the state supreme court written before 1843 have ever been published. Why a period of almost ten years should have elapsed before the first volume of state reports was issued in 1846 ( with the exception of two volumes of chancery reports), or why the early reporters seem, from a casual examination, to have neglected decisions of the court before 1843, or what happened …

Italian Administrative Courts Under Fascism, Paul B. Rava

Michigan Law Review

Observers not wholly familiar with the administration of the present government of Italy are generally surprised by the fact that the Council of State, the supreme administrative court, is still an operating body after more than eighteen years of blackshirt revolution and domination. It seems strange that a dictator should have preserved this agency, which was established in order to bring justice into public administration, and which rapidly became the principal guardian of individual rights against administrative arbitrariness. One asks how the Council of State can, in a totalitarian state, continue to exercise its functions of administrative court and of …

Transactions Of The Supreme Court Of The Territory Of Michigan: A Review, Francis S. Philbrick

Michigan Law Review

Of the colonial documents that record the legal origins of our original states, those of Maryland have been published in relatively generous but still inadequate number, while collections for other states are still scantier. A sampling is all that a multiplicity of destructive agents have left us as a possibility. The hope, however, has recently become permissible that an awakened interest among lawyers may secure us, for publication, an expert sampling in place of that made by fire, vermin, mould, and official neglect in leaving us the records still surviving, and that lawyers may also give us proper editions of …

Circuit Courts And The Nisi Prius System: The Making Of An Appellate Court, William Wirt Blume

Michigan Law Review

Judicial systems organized under the influence of the English tradition have exhibited a tendency to pass through four stages of development. (1) In the first stage the highest court (not taking into consideration legislative bodies) has final appellate jurisdiction and a superior original jurisdiction, civil and criminal. The court is composed of three or more judges who sit in bank for the trial of cases. The judges may sit at a central place or go on circuit throughout the territory. (2) In the second stage the highest court has both original and appellate jurisdiction but does not undertake to try …

Prohibition - Is The Writ Of Prohibition A Prerogative Writ?, Russel T. Walker

Michigan Law Review

The writ of prohibition originally issued from the king's temporal courts to the ecclesiastical courts to prevent any usurpation of jurisdiction of the king's courts by the spiritual courts. Prohibition has been classed as one of the prerogative writs, that is, a writ issued by the extraordinary power of the sovereign to interfere with private rights in order to preserve the prerogatives and franchises of the state. The writ of prohibition differed historically from the other prerogative writs in that its issuance was not discretionary with the court, but rather it was held to issue as a matter of right …

Constitutional Law - Federal Courts - Law To Be Applied In Cases Of Diversity Of Citizenship - Swift V. Tyson Overrule, Frank B. Stone

Michigan Law Review

A recent personal injury case, Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, arose in the federal district court, based upon diversity of citizenship, in which the defendant urged that state judicial decisions of Pennsylvania, the locus delicti, imposed no liability on it for negligence to trespassers. The plaintiff denied that such was the Pennsylvania law and alternatively replied that the issue of law was one to be determined by the federal court without regard to the law of Pennsylvania. On April 25, 1938, a verdict for the plaintiff was unanimously set aside by the Supreme Court. Two members, Justices Butler and McReynolds, …

Comment Upon Failure Of Accused To Testify, Robert P. Reeder

Michigan Law Review

Last year the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association adopted resolutions declaring that when the defendant in a criminal trial does not testify the prosecution should be permitted to comment upon that fact. They urged the overthrow of a rule of law which have prevailed in the federal courts ever since accused persons were first permitted to give testimony, over fifty years ago, and which has governed the courts of forty-two out of the forty-eight states. The discussions which preceded the adoption of the resolutions have been published. In them the advocates of the change do not show …

Federal Injunction Against Proceedings In State Courts: The Life History Of A Statute, Edgar Noble Durfee, Robert L. Sloss

Michigan Law Review

The Judicial Code provides, in section 265, that "the writ of injunction shall not be granted by any court of the United States to stay proceedings in any court of a State," except where authorized by the Bankruptcy Act. This provision, minus the bankruptcy exception, first appeared in an act of 1793, amending the Judiciary Act of 1789. We know next to nothing of the parliamentary history of this statute. We do, however, know that the basic political issue in the framing of the Constitution was that of states' rights, the question how far the new government should be a …

Old English Local Courts And The Movement For Their Reform, Arthur Lyon Cross

Michigan Law Review

The first Reform Bill of 1832 was at once a symptom and a further cause of momentous changes in English institutions, political and legal, to say nothing of social and ecclesiastical. Many of these were brought about as the result of patient and competent investigations of royal commissions which, though not unknown before the third decade of the nineteenth century, were active to an extent hitherto unheard of during that notable epoch of reform. While a few men of law were among the forward spirits, the bulk of the advance guard were laymen. As a rule judges, barristers and attorneys …

The Book Of English Law

Michigan Law Review

A Review of THE BOOK OF ENGLISH LAW By Edward Jenks.

Judicial System Of Michigan Under Governor And Judges, W L. Jenks

Michigan Law Review

When the Territory of Michigan came into existence July i, 1805, it found a system of jurisprudence in operation which had been adopted by the Governor and Judges of the Northwest Territory from the laws of Pennsylvania, due no doubt, to the fact that Gov. Arthur St. Clair had lived some years in that State, had been a member of its Board of Censors, a magistrate, and was familiar with its judicial system which provided a-Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace in each county composed of Justices of the Peace, a Court of Common Pleas in each County, …

Some Aspects Of Fifteenth Century Chancery, Willard T. Barbour

Articles

IT is now more than thirty years since Justice Holmes in a brilliant and daring essay set on foot an inquiry which has revealed the remote beginnings of English equity. Equity and common law originated in one and the same procedure and existed for a long time, not only side by side, but quite undifferentiated from each other. Their origin is to be found in the system of royal justice which the genius of Henry II converted into the common law; but this royal justice was in the beginning as much outside of, or even antagonistic to, the ordinary judicial …

English Law Courts At The Close Of The Revolution Of 1688, Arthur L. Cross

Michigan Law Review

In view of the part which the judges played for a4d against the first two STUARTS, and in view of the grievances of the subject under the law as administered in the ordinary courts 2 -to say nothing of the Star Chamber and the High Commission-it was to be expected that, in the great political and religious upheaval resulting from the Puritan Revolution and the ensuing Civil War, the legal edifice could not remain unshaken. As is well known, one of the early acts of the Long Parliament, in the summer of 1641, was to ab6lish the Star Chambei, the …

Extension Of Judicial Review In New York, Edward S. Corwin

Michigan Law Review

There are several reasons why it should be worth while to investigate the operation of the most unique of American governmental institutions in the most important state of the Union. For one thing, in the person of Chancellor KZN" New York furnished one of the founders of American Constitutional Law, while at the same time it was KzNT's fame that early gave New York decisions the importance they still retain in great part in the field of citation and precedent. Again it was YNT'S influence that inclined the fresh shoot of constitutional jurisprudence in New York in a conservative direction, …

The Attaint, John M. Zane

Michigan Law Review

The assize of novel disseisinoriginally lay against the disseisor in possession in favor of the disseisee, and was soon extended to the heir of -the disseisee, but not against the heir or grantee of the disseisor. But the disseisor might be dead or might have conveyed the land, and in such a case the disseisee would be driven to the writ of right with iis delays and chance of battle. But the cases where the defendant had come into possession under a lawful title which was limited in time and had ceased to exist, i.. e., cases where there was …

The Attaint, John M. Zane

Michigan Law Review

The practice of attainting a jury was the method by which for centuries the English law corrected an erroneous finding of fact by the body of men who, in course of time, came to be called a jury. Today this necessary corrective of judicial administration is very inadequately performed by the judge or judges presiding over the trial. The proceeding is now called a motion for a new trial. The new trial is inadequate for the reason that it does not, as did the attaint, substitute a correct verdict for the one given. It merely reverses or sets aside the …

The Relation Of The Federal And The State Judiciary To Each Other, Horace R. Lurton

Michigan Law Review

In the very cordial invitation extended to me by the distinguished President of your Bar Association to participate in the observance of this occasion it was urged that I should make a short address upon the relations of the Federal and State Judiciary to each other. As a reason for my taking this particular subject it was suggested by him that I had had the advantage of a considerable service under both systems.

Reports Of Cases Determined In The Court Of Chancery Of The State Of Michigan, E. Burke Harrington, Thomas M. Cooley

Books

Originally published in 1845, covers cases from 1836-1842. Cited as: Harr. Ch. (2ed) and commonly known as Harrington's chancery reports.

From the Preface to the Second Edition: "Harrington's Reports having been for some time out of print, the undersigned ... has taken charge of a new edition....

"Some improvement ... has been introduced, particularly in the head notes... The original paging has been preserved, for the convenience in tracing former references." Thomas M. Cooley, Ann Arbor, October 1872.