Legal History Commons^™

The Death Penalty As Delineated By The Old Testament: From Adam And Eve To Cain And Abel To Noah And The Flood To Abraham And Sodom To Moses And The Ten Commandments, Biblical Passages Trace The Roots For How Modern Society Deals With The Execution Of Killers, Robert Blecker

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

The Origins Of American Felony Murder Rules, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Contemporary commentators continue to instruct lawyers and law students that England bequeathed America a sweeping default principle of strict liability for all deaths caused in all felonies. This Article exposes the harsh "common law" felony murder rule as a myth. It retraces the origins of American felony murder rules to reveal their modern, American, and legislative sources, the rationality of their original scope, and the fairness of their original application. It demonstrates that the draconian doctrine of strict liability for all deaths resulting from all felonies was never enacted into English law or received into American law. This Article reviews …

The Alley Behind First Street, Northeast: Criminal Abortion In The Nation's Capital 1873-1973, Douglas R. Miller

ExpressO

The thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade found our country no less divided over abortion than it was during the era of its prohibition. As the bitter struggle over judicial nominations throughout the present administration suggests, abortion’s future remains at the forefront of American political debate.

In their push for increased limitations, abortion opponents generally overlook the historical consequences of prohibition. Abortion rights proponents often invoke history in their opposition to new restrictions, but tend to do so superficially, and only in a manner that supports their position.

This article attempts a more complex study of criminal abortion’s legal and …

Fifteen Famous Supreme Court Cases From Georgia, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

John Inscoe, UGA professor of history and editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia, invited Hosch Professor Dan T. Coenen to contribute a series of essays on the most significant U.S. Supreme Court cases that originated in the state of Georgia. This article, which proposes an unranked top 15 list, is built on this work.

Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas

Michigan Law Review

George Fisher's new book, Plea Bargaining's Triumph, is really three books in one. The first part is a careful, detailed explanation of how and why plea bargaining exploded in Middlesex County, Massachusetts in the nineteenth century. This part is the fruit of an impressive amount of original research in Massachusetts court records and newspaper archives. The second part of the book looks more broadly at other academic histories of plea bargaining in England, California, and New York. It explains how the forces that produced plea bargaining in Middlesex County likewise contributed to plea bargaining's rise elsewhere. The final part …

Deportations, Removals And The 1996 Immigration Acts: A Modern Look At The Ex Post Facto Clause, Lupe S. Salinas

ExpressO

The article addresses the punitive aspects of the deportation procedures as impacted by the 1996 Immigration Acts. When faced with the precedents in the field, that deportation is a civil procedure, federal courts conclude that the Ex Post Facto Clause does not apply. However, the article draws upon common law and other historical bases for the conclusion that a modern view should hold that conviction-related removals are punitive and subject to ex post facto analysis.

Time Travel, Hovercrafts, And The Fourth Amendment: If James Madison Could Have Seen The Future, George C. Thomas

ExpressO

Recent historical work has raised the intriguing possibility that the Framers meant to accomplish only one goal in the Fourth Amendment: to forbid general warrants. On this historical account, the first clause stating a right of the people to be "free from unreasonable searches and seizures" is merely declaratory of the principle that led the Framers to ban general warrants. Rephrased to be true to this history, the Fourth Amendment would say: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against general warrants shall not be violated, and no general warrants shall issue." …

Citizens Of An Enemy Land: Enemy Combatants, Aliens, And The Constitutional Rights Of The Pseudo-Citizen, Juliet P. Stumpf

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Botched Hanging Of William Williams: How Too Much Rope And Minnesota’S Newspapers Brought An End To The Death Penalty In Minnesota, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

This article describes Minnesota's last state-sanctioned execution: that of William Williams, who was hanged in 1906 in the basement of the Ramsey County Jail. Convicted of killing a teenage boy, Williams was tried on murder charges in 1905 and was put to death in February of the following year. Because the county sheriff miscalculated the length of the rope, the hanging was botched, with Williams hitting the floor when the trap door was opened. Three deputies, standing on the scaffold, thereafter seized the rope and forcibly pulled it up until Williams - fourteen and half minutes later - died by …

Interview With Michael Levy, Christina Fahmy, Michael Levy, Legal Oral History Project, University Of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Legal Oral History Project

For transcript, click the Download button above

Michael Levy (L '69) is the Chief of Computer Crimes at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He has served in the U.S. Department of Justice since 1980 with two one-year excursions into private practice. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s office, Mr. Levy worked as a Public Defender and as an Assistant District Attorney in Philadelphia and as an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He also had his own law practice for four years.

Brief Amici Curiae Of Legal Historians Listed Herein In Support Of The Petitioners, Rasul V. Bush, Nos. 03-334 & 03-343 (U.S. Jan. 14, 2004), James Oldham

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Nietzsche In Law's Cathedral: Beyond Reason And Postmodernism, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

Nietzsche had very little to say about law and what he did say is fragmentary and sporadic. Nietzsche's philosophy, however, offers a basis for theorizing about law. I use Nietzsche's important works to interpret two major movements in legal thought. The first part of the paper examines how Nietzsche's philosophy augments our understanding of deontological theories about the law. Nietzsche produced a substantial ethical theory. The second part of the paper examines how Nietzsche's philosophy helps us to understand law and economics. Nietzsche had a great deal to say about the intellectual predecessor to law and economics, utilitarianism, and his …

A Different Kind Of Labor Law: Vagrancy Law And The Regulation Of Harvest Labor, 1913-1924, Ahmed A. White

Publications

No abstract provided.

Remaining Silent: A Right With Consequences, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 649 (2004), Jeffrey D. Waltuck

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Facing The Challenge: Corruption State Capture And The Role Of Multinational Business, 37 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1181 (2004), Nikolay A. Ouzounov

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Domestic Security Enhancement Act Of 2003: A Glimpse Into A Post-Patriot Act Approach To Combating Domestic Terrorism, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 327 (2004), Timothy Scahill

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Home And Homelessness In The Middle Of Nowhere, William I. Miller

Book Chapters

In Iceland one must have a home; it is an offense not to-in some circumstances, a capital offense. A sturdy beggar was liable for full outlawry, which meant he could be killed with impunity. The laws are hard on vagrants. Fornication with a beggar woman was unactionable; it was lawful to castrate a vagabond, and he had no claim if he were injured or killed during the operation. One could take in beggars solely for the purpose of whipping them, nor was one to feed or shelter them at the Thing on pain of lesser outlawry. Their booths at the …

The Virtues Of Uncertainty In Law: An Experimental Approach, Tom Baker, Alon Harel, Tamar Kugler

All Faculty Scholarship

Predictability in civil and criminal sanctions is generally understood as desirable. Conversely, unpredictability is condemned as a violation of the rule of law. This paper explores predictability in sanctioning from the point of view of efficiency. It is argued that, given a constant expected sanction, deterrence is increased when either the size of the sanction or the probability that it will be imposed is uncertain. This conclusion follows from earlier findings in behavioral decision research and the results of an experiment conducted specifically to examine this hypothesis. The findings suggest that, within an efficiency framework, there are virtues to uncertainty …

Rethinking Crime Legislation: History And Harshness, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is a truth about the criminal law that scholars evade as much as they criticize: the criminal law is produced by legislators (rather than the experts). The author states she does not know of any way to make law in a democracy other than through the voters' representatives. And, yet, it is the standard pose of the criminal law scholar to denigrate legislatures and politicians as vindictive, hysterical, or stupid. All of these things may be true but name-calling is a poor substitute for analysis. As in constitutional law, so too in criminal law, it is time to put …

Crimesong: Some Murder Ballads And Poems Revisited, Richard H. Underwood, Carol J. Paris

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This short Article, by a law professor and a law librarian, was written because of our personal interest in the old ballads, and because of the professor's desire to spice up the “meals-ready-to-eat” diet of problems and cases fed to students in law school courses. But more than anything else, this Article was written for the fun of it. To the extent that we appear to be advancing the occasional high-sounding hypothesis, we want the reader to understand that our speculations are offered only as an invitation to the sociologists, musicologists, and historians. Our backgrounds are limited, and we do …