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Legal History Commons

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Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Judge James A. Wynn, Originalism, And The Juridical/Judicial Role, Michael E. Tigar Jan 2022

Judge James A. Wynn, Originalism, And The Juridical/Judicial Role, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Empty Chair: Reflections On An Absent Justice, Jennifer L. Behrens Jan 2020

The Empty Chair: Reflections On An Absent Justice, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines a January 1888 letter to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Morrison Waite from Associate Justice Stanley Matthews. Justice Matthews requested time away from the notoriously overworked Court’s session in order to attend the funeral of Dr. Peter Parker, renowned medical missionary and diplomat. The piece presents biographical sketches of Justice Matthews and Dr. Parker, and considers the historical context of the potential absence on the late nineteenth-century Court’s operations.


Empty Chairs, Jennifer L. Behrens Jan 2020

Empty Chairs, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Finding Law, Stephen E. Sachs Jan 2019

Finding Law, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

That the judge's task is to find the law, not to make it, was once a commonplace of our legal culture. Today, decades after Erie, the idea of a common law discovered by judges is commonly dismissed -- as a "fallacy," an "illusion," a "brooding omnipresence in the sky." That dismissive view is wrong. Expecting judges to find unwritten law is no childish fiction of the benighted past, but a real and plausible option for a modern legal system.

This Essay seeks to restore the respectability of finding law, in part by responding to two criticisms made by Erie and …


The Emergence Of The American Constitutional Law Tradition, H. Jefferson Powell Jan 2019

The Emergence Of The American Constitutional Law Tradition, H. Jefferson Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Practice And Precedent In Historical Gloss Games, Joseph Blocher, Margaret H. Lemos Jan 2016

Practice And Precedent In Historical Gloss Games, Joseph Blocher, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Joseph Story, Ralf Michaels Jan 2016

Joseph Story, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Joseph Story (1779-1845) was one of the greatest and most influential American lawyers of all time. Both as a Supreme Court Justice and as a professor at Harvard Law School, his work and thought were, and still are, of great importance. Today’s private international law would look different without him, both in the United States and in the rest of the world. At the same time, his approach to the field cannot be properly understood unless placed within his broader work on law, and the specific American background against which it was developed.


The Pragmatic Court: Reinterpreting The Supreme People’S Court Of China, Taisu Zhang Jan 2012

The Pragmatic Court: Reinterpreting The Supreme People’S Court Of China, Taisu Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the institutional motivations that underlie several major developments in the Supreme People's Court of China's recent policy-making. Since 2007, the SPC has sent off a collection of policy signals that escapes sweeping ideological labeling: it has publically embraced a populist view of legal reform by encouraging the use of mediation in dispute resolution and popular participation in judicial policy-making, while continuing to advocate legal professionalization as a long-term policy objective. It has also eagerly attempted to enhance its own institutional competence by promoting judicial efficiency, simplifying key areas of civil law, and expanding its control over lower …


Introduction, Paul Finkelman Jan 2012

Introduction, Paul Finkelman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Conflicted Assumptions Of Modern Constitutional Law, H. Jefferson Powell Jan 2011

The Conflicted Assumptions Of Modern Constitutional Law, H. Jefferson Powell

Faculty Scholarship

Contribution to Symposium - The Nature of Judicial Authority: A Reflection on Philip Hamburger's Law and Judicial Duty


Checks And Balances: Congress And The Federal Court, Paul D. Carrington Jan 2006

Checks And Balances: Congress And The Federal Court, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

This essay was published as a chapter in Reforming the Supreme Court: Term Limits for Justices (Paul D. Carrington & Roger Cramton eds, Carolina Academic Press 2006). Its point is that Congress has long neglected its duty implicit in the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers to constrain the tendency of the Court, the academy and the legal profession to inflate the Court's status and power. The term "life tenure" is a significant source of a sense of royal status having not only the adverse cultural effects noted by Nagel, but also doleful effects on the administration and enforcement of …


Original Understanding And The Constitution, Michael E. Tigar Jan 1988

Original Understanding And The Constitution, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.