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Articles 1 - 29 of 29
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
From Grace To Grids: Rethinking Due Process Protections For Parole., Kimberly A. Thomas, Paul D. Reingold
From Grace To Grids: Rethinking Due Process Protections For Parole., Kimberly A. Thomas, Paul D. Reingold
Articles
Current due process law gives little protection to prisoners at the point of parole, even though the parole decision, like sentencing, determines whether or not a person will serve more time or will go free. The doctrine regarding parole, which developed mostly in the late 1970s, was based on a judicial understanding of parole as an experimental, subjective, and largely standardless art—rooted in assessing the individual “character” of the potential parolee. In this Article we examine the foundations of the doctrine, and conclude that the due process inquiry at the point of parole should take into account the stark changes …
Lights Hidden Under Bushel's Case, Thomas A. Green
Lights Hidden Under Bushel's Case, Thomas A. Green
Book Chapters
Some forty years ago, Charlie Donahue created a course which he titled "Law, Morals and Society." Designed for undergraduates, and situated among the offerings of the University of Michigan's interdisciplinary Medieval and Renaissance Collegium, the course reflected the approach to doing history that, as this volume recognizes, Charlie has followed throughout his long and enormously influential career as scholar, teacher, lecturer, and inepressible master of well-timed interventions during conference-panel discussion periods. "LMS" was composed of four units. Charlie, who taught two of them, led off with the legal basis for the deposition of Richard II; I followed with the law …
The Jury And Criminal Responsibility In Anglo-American History, Thomas A. Green
The Jury And Criminal Responsibility In Anglo-American History, Thomas A. Green
Articles
Anglo-American theories of criminal responsibility require scholars to grapple with, inter alia, the relationship between the formal rule of law and the powers of the lay jury as well as two inherent ideas of freedom: freedom of the will and political liberty. Here, by way of canvassing my past work and prefiguring future work, I sketch some elements of the history of the Anglo-American jury and offer some glimpses of commentary on the interplay between the jury—particularly its application of conventional morality to criminal judgments—and the formal rule of law of the state. My central intent is to pose questions …
Reflections On Freedom And Criminal Responsibility In Late Twentieth Century American Legal Thought, Thomas A. Green, Merrill Catharine Hodnefield
Reflections On Freedom And Criminal Responsibility In Late Twentieth Century American Legal Thought, Thomas A. Green, Merrill Catharine Hodnefield
Articles
It is now a commonplace among historians that American criminal jurisprudence underwent a dramatic change something like two-thirds to three-quarters into the last century. Roughly, this development is understood as a shift (or drift) from a more-or-less pure consequentialism to a "mixed theory" wherein retributivism played a major-at times, dominant-role. As the new paradigm remains intact, now approaching a half-century, the development qualifies as a significant historical fact. The fact applies not only to the history of justification for punishment but also to conceptions of the underlying principle of (basis for) responsibility. The two are rightly distinguished: for many scholars …
The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, And Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims Of Domestic Violence, Carolyn B. Ramsey
The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, And Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims Of Domestic Violence, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article presents a hypothesis suggesting how and why the criminal justice response to domestic violence changed, over the course of the twentieth century, from sympathy for abused women and a surprising degree of state intervention in intimate relationships to the apathy and discrimination that the battered women' movement exposed. The riddle of declining public sympathy for female victims ofintimate-partner violence can only be solved by looking beyond the criminal law to the social and legal changes that created the Exit Myth. While the situation that gave rise to the battered womens movement in the 1970s is often presumed to …
Rape And The Querela In Italy: False Protection Of Victim Agency, Rachel A. Van Cleave
Rape And The Querela In Italy: False Protection Of Victim Agency, Rachel A. Van Cleave
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Essay describes the history of the querela in Italy and explores the controversy surrounding the decision to maintain this institution. In addition, this Essay questions the degree to which the querela can protect victim agency when the attitudes of judges and lawyers in the Italian criminal justice system reflect persistent rape myths.
Function Over Form: Reviving The Criminal Jury's Historical Role As A Sentencing Body, Chris Kemmitt
Function Over Form: Reviving The Criminal Jury's Historical Role As A Sentencing Body, Chris Kemmitt
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Article argues that the Supreme Court, as evinced by its recent spate of criminal jury decisions, has abandoned the criminal jury known to the Founders and, in so doing, has severely eroded the protections intended to inhere in the Sixth Amendment jury trial right. It then proposes one potential solution to this problem.
According to the Supreme Court, this recent line of cases has been motivated by the need to preserve the "ancient guarantee" articulated in the Sixth Amendment under a new set of legal circumstances. Unfortunately, the Court misinterprets the ancient guarantee that it is ostensibly attempting to …
Roman Rape: An Overview Of Roman Rape Laws From The Republican Period To Justinian's Reign, Nghiem L. Nguyen
Roman Rape: An Overview Of Roman Rape Laws From The Republican Period To Justinian's Reign, Nghiem L. Nguyen
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
The modern Western crime of rape is commonly defined as "[u]nlawful sexual activity (esp. intercourse) with a person (usu. a female) without consent and usu. by force or threat of injury," and it is often seen as an assault of the person's body and a violation of self-autonomy. However, this differs significantly from the conception of rape in ancient Rome. In fact, "there is no single word in... Latin with the same semantic field as the modern English word 'rape.'” For the Romans, the act of rape was covered under a variety of legal terms, but each of those words …
Ghosts Of Alabama: The Prosecution Of Bobby Frank Cherry For The Bombing Of The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Donald Q. Cochran
Ghosts Of Alabama: The Prosecution Of Bobby Frank Cherry For The Bombing Of The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Donald Q. Cochran
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Perhaps no other crime in American history has shocked the conscience of America like the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. In May of 2002- almost thirty-nine years after the bombing- Bobby Frank Cherry was brought to trial for the murders of Addie, Carole, Cynthia, and Denise. He was the last person to be tried for the bombing. As an Assistant United States Attorney in Birmingham, Alabama it was my privilege to be a part of the prosecution team that brought Cherry to justice. This Article tells the story of that prosecution and explores the …
Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen
Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen
Michigan Law Review
A Review of V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868
The Romance Of Revenge: Capital Punishment In America, Samuel R. Gross
The Romance Of Revenge: Capital Punishment In America, Samuel R. Gross
Articles
On February 17, 1992, Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive terms of life imprisonment for killing and dismembering 15 young men and boys (Associated Press 1992a). Dahmer had been arrested six months earlier, on July 22, 1991. On January 13 he pled guilty to the fifteen murder counts against him, leaving open only the issue of his sanity. Jury selection began two weeks later, and the trial proper started on January 30. The jury heard two weeks of testimony about murder, mutilation and necrophilia; they deliberated for 5 hours before finding that Dahmer was sane when he committed these …
Review Of Kingship, Law And Society: Criminal Justice In The Reign Of Henry V, Thomas A. Green
Review Of Kingship, Law And Society: Criminal Justice In The Reign Of Henry V, Thomas A. Green
Reviews
Edward Powell's splendid study of Henry V's strategy for keeping peace among magnate and gentry factions represents an important contribution to the history of criminal justice. After providing a panoramic view of the machinery of criminal justice, Powell analyzes the extent to which that machinery was effective as between the Crown, at the center, and the upper echelons of society in the provinces. His conclusion, not surprisingly, is that the regular processes of common-law criminal administration could not easily be deployed at those levels. But Powell does not let the matter drop there. Kingship, Law, and Society presents a lucid …
Crime And The Courts In England 1660-1800, Frank C. Shaw
Crime And The Courts In England 1660-1800, Frank C. Shaw
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800 by J.M. Beattie
The Trials Of Israel Lipski, Blaine G. Renfert
The Trials Of Israel Lipski, Blaine G. Renfert
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Trials of Israel Lipski by Martin L. Friedland
Conscience And The Law: The English Criminal Jury, Robert C. Palmer
Conscience And The Law: The English Criminal Jury, Robert C. Palmer
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Verdict According to Conscience by Thomas Andrew Green
Dreams, Prophecy And Sorcery: Blaming The Secret Offender In Medieval Iceland, William I. Miller
Dreams, Prophecy And Sorcery: Blaming The Secret Offender In Medieval Iceland, William I. Miller
Articles
An eminent legal historian once noted that the fundamental problem of law enforcement in primitive societies is that of the secret offender. The Icelandic legal and dispute processing systems depended on a wrongdoer publishing his deed, or at least committing it in an open and notorious manner. No state agencies existed to investigate and discover the non-publishing wrongdoer. But there were strong normative inducements to wrong openly; one's name was at stake. There was absolutely no honor in thievery, only the darkest shame; the ransmadr, on the other hand, suffered no shame for his successful raids, even if he did …
Criminal Justice In Colonial America, 1606-1660, Michigan Law Review
Criminal Justice In Colonial America, 1606-1660, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Criminal Justice in Colonial America, 1606-1660 by Bradley Chapin
Capital Punishment: Criminal Law And Social Evolution, Michigan Law Review
Capital Punishment: Criminal Law And Social Evolution, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Capital Punishment: Criminal Law and Social Evolution by Jan Gorecki
The Jury, Seditious Libel And The Criminal Law, Thomas A. Green
The Jury, Seditious Libel And The Criminal Law, Thomas A. Green
Book Chapters
The seditious libel trials of the eighteenth century constitute an important chapter in the history of freedom of the press and the growth of democratic government. While much has been written about the trials and about the administration of the criminal law in eighteenth-century England, little has been said about the relationship between the libel prosecutions and the more pervasive and long-standing problems of the criminal law. We have perhaps gone too far in positing-or simply assuming-a separation between political high misdemeanors and common-run felony cases such as homicide and theft. For there were points of contact between the two: …
From Pillory To Penitentiary: The Rise Of Criminal Incarceration In Early Massachusetts, Adam J. Hirsch
From Pillory To Penitentiary: The Rise Of Criminal Incarceration In Early Massachusetts, Adam J. Hirsch
Michigan Law Review
While the transition from the old forms of criminal sanction to incarceration was perhaps not, as Jeremy Bentham claimed, "one of the most signal improvements that have ever yet been made in our criminal legislation," one does not overstate to call it a signal development in the history of Anglo-American criminal justice - a development, one may add, that still wants adequate examination, much less explanation. This Article attempts to do both for one sample region: Massachusetts. Though the jurisprudential movement from pillory to penitentiary took place throughout the new American republic, as well as much of western Europe, our …
Popular Justice: A History Of American Criminal Justice, Michigan Law Review
Popular Justice: A History Of American Criminal Justice, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Popular Justice: A History of American Criminal Justice by Samuel Walker
Social Research And The Use Of Medieval Criminal Records, Edward Powell
Social Research And The Use Of Medieval Criminal Records, Edward Powell
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England by James Buchanan Given, and Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348 by Barbara A. Hanawalt
For Capital Punishment, Michigan Law Review
For Capital Punishment, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Book Notice about For Capital Punishment by Walter Berns
The Rise Of Prisons And The Origins Of The Rehabilitative Ideal, Carl E. Schneider
The Rise Of Prisons And The Origins Of The Rehabilitative Ideal, Carl E. Schneider
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic by David J. Rothman
Review Of Crime In England, 1550-1800, Thomas A. Green
Review Of Crime In England, 1550-1800, Thomas A. Green
Reviews
Crime in England, 1550-1800, is the second collection of essays on the social history of crime and the criminal law in early modern England to appear in recent years. Together with the essays in Albion's Fatal Tree (1975),' these offerings advance our knowledge of the subject considerably. To be sure, as G. R. Elton cautions, there are methodological problems in a field so new, and Elton's "Introduction" will serve as an excellent starting point for readers concerned with such matters. We must nevertheless recognize the accomplishments of the new school of socio-legal historians. The essays in this volume deal with …
Review Of Crime And Public Order In England In The Later Middle Ages, Thomas A. Green
Review Of Crime And Public Order In England In The Later Middle Ages, Thomas A. Green
Reviews
Slowly but surely the history of English criminal law is being rewritten. Abundant monographs, articles and introductions to texts have appeared in the past couple of decades; many more are on the way. Work has gone ahead on the substantive law of crimes, on the procedures of the criminal law and its institutions andmore tentatively-on the social history of English criminal law. While medievalists have led the way, work is now being undertaken by early modern and modern historians as well.
Review Of The King's Pardon For Homicide To A.D. 1307, Thomas A. Green
Review Of The King's Pardon For Homicide To A.D. 1307, Thomas A. Green
Reviews
NAOMI D. Hurnard's The King's Pardon for Homicide before AD 1307 is significant and instructive for both legal and social historians. The author has painstakingly pieced together the available evidence from a variety of classes of mediaeval English public records to achieve a clear statement of the law of excusable homicide, i.e., non-felonious but requiring a royal pardon. She has lucidly presented the procedure which marks out the legal life story of persons deserving pardon, from the pardonable slaying to the formal proclamation of the king's peace. But she has also accomplished much more. Through careful and generally sound use …
Societal Concepts Of Criminal Liability For Homicide In Medieval England, Thomas A. Green
Societal Concepts Of Criminal Liability For Homicide In Medieval England, Thomas A. Green
Articles
THE early history of English criminal law lies hidden behind the laconic formulas of the rolls and law books. The rules of the law, as expounded by the judges, have been the subject of many studies; but their practical application in the courts, where the jury of the community was the final and unbridled arbiter, remains a mystery: in short, we know little of the social mores regarding crime and crimi- nals. This study represents an attempt to delineate one major aspect of these societal attitudes. Its thesis is that from late Anglo-Saxon times to the end of the middle …
The Courts Of Judea, Jerome C. Knowlton
The Courts Of Judea, Jerome C. Knowlton
Articles
The study of Jewish jurisprudence has become interesting during the past ten years through the efforts of some painstaking scholars, who have not been burdened with any particular dogma, but have been actuated by a true Christian spirit. They have been close students of those portions of the Talmud which throw light on the jurisprudence of the Jews.