Legal History Commons^™

A Railway, A City, And The Public Regulation Of Private Property: Cpr V. City Of Vancouver, Douglas C. Harris

Douglas C Harris

The doctrine of regulatory or constructive taking establishes limits on the public regulation of private property in much of the common law world. When public regulation becomes unduly onerous — so as, in effect, to take a property interest from a private owner — the public will be required to compensate the owner for its loss. In 2000, the City of Vancouver passed a by-law that limited the use of a century-old rail line to a public thoroughfare. The Canadian Pacific Railway, which owned the line, claimed the regulation amounted to a taking of its property for which the city …

The Riccobono Seminar Of Roman Law In America: The Lost Years, Timothy G. Kearley

Timothy G. Kearley

From Rome To The Restatement: S.P. Scott, Fred Blume, Clyde Pharr, And Roman Law In Early Twentieth Century America, Timothy G. Kearley

Timothy G. Kearley

Magna Carta Then And Now: A Symbol Of Freedom And Equal Rights For All, Eugene K B Tan, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Jack Tsen-Ta LEE

Magna Carta became applicable to Singapore in 1826 when a court system administering English law was established in the Straits Settlements. This remained the case through Singapore’s evolution from Crown colony to independent republic. The Great Charter only ceased to apply in 1993, when Parliament enacted the Application of English Law Act to clarify which colonial laws were still part of Singapore law. Nonetheless, Magna Carta’s legacy in Singapore continues in a number of ways. Principles such as due process of law and the supremacy of law are cornerstones of the rule of law, vital to the success, stability and …

Administrative Equal Protection: Federalism, The Fourteenth Amendment, And The Rights Of The Poor, Karen M. Tani

Karen M. Tani

Settlers And Immigrants In The Formation Of American Law, Aziz Rana

Aziz Rana

This paper argues that the early American republic is best understood as a constitutional experiment in “settler empire,” and that related migration policies played a central role in shaping collective identity and structures of authority. Initial colonists, along with their 19th century descendants, viewed society as grounded in an ideal of freedom that emphasized continuous popular mobilization and direct economic and political decision-making. However, many settlers believed that this ideal required Indian dispossession and the coercive use of dependent groups, most prominently slaves, in order to ensure that they themselves had access to property and did not have to engage …

Law & Order Made Amusing: A Selection Of Law Books For Children From The Collection Of Morris L. Cohen, Karen S. Beck, Mary Sarah Bilder, Ann Mcdonald, Sharon Hambly O'Connor

Sharon Hamby O'Connor

Exhibition program from a Spring 1998 exhibit presented in the Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room at the Boston College Law Library. The exhibit featured selections from Morris L. Cohen's collection of law books for children.

Law & Order Made Amusing: A Selection Of Law Books For Children From The Collection Of Morris L. Cohen, Karen S. Beck, Mary Sarah Bilder, Ann Mcdonald, Sharon Hambly O'Connor

Sharon Hamby O'Connor

Exhibition program from a Spring 1998 exhibit presented in the Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room at the Boston College Law Library. The exhibit featured selections from Morris L. Cohen's collection of law books for children.

Memory Of A Racist Past — Yazoo: Integration In A Deep-Southern Town By Willie Morris, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Willie Morris was in many ways larger than life. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, he moved with his family to Yazoo City, Mississippi at the age of six months. He attended and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin where his scathing editorials against racism in the South earned him the hatred of university officials. After graduation, he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. He would join Harper’s Magazine in 1963, rising to become the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine’s history. He remained at this post until 1971 when he resigned amid dropping ad sales and a lack of …

Founding Era Conventions And The Constitution's "Convention For Proposing Amendments", Robert G. Natelson

Robert G. Natelson

Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, two thirds of state legislatures may require Congress to call a “Convention for proposing Amendments.” Because this procedure has never been used, commentators frequently debate the composition of the convention and the rules governing the application and convention process. However, the debate has proceeded almost entirely without knowledge of the many multi-colony and multi-state conventions held during the eighteenth century, of which the Constitutional Convention was only one. These conventions were governed by universally-accepted convention practices and protocols. This Article surveys those conventions and shows how their practices and protocols shaped the meaning …

Bad News For John Marshall, David B. Kopel, Gary Lawson

David B Kopel

In Bad News for Professor Koppelman: The Incidental Unconstitutionality of the Individual Mandate, we demonstrated that the individual mandate’s forced participation in commercial transactions cannot be justified under the Necessary and Proper Clause as the Clause was interpreted in McCulloch v. Maryland. Professor Andrew Koppelman’s response, Bad News for Everybody, wrongly conflates that argument with a wide range of interpretative and substantive positions that are not logically entailed by taking seriously the requirement that laws enacted under the Necessary and Proper Clause must be incidental to an enumerated power. His response is thus largely unresponsive to our actual arguments.

Card Check Labor Certification: Lessons From New York, William A. Herbert

William A. Herbert

During the debate over the card check proposal in the Employee Free Choice Act of 2009 (EFCA), there has been a notable lack of discussion about New York’s fifty-year history and experience with card check certification. This article challenges and contradicts much of the prior scholarship and debate over EFCA by examining New York’s development and administration of card check procedures. The article begins with an overview of the history of New York public sector labor relations prior to the establishment of collective bargaining rights. As part of that historical overview, it examines the development of informal employee organization representation, …

Shakespeare's Place In Law-And-Literature, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

Nearly every Anglo-American law school offers a course called Law-and-Literature. Nearly all of these courses assign one or more readings from Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Why study Shakespeare in law school? That is the question at the heart of these courses. Some law professors answer the question in terms of cultivating moral sensitivity, fine-tuning close-reading skills, or practicing interpretive strategies on literary rather than legal texts. Most of these professors insist on an illuminating nexus between two supposedly autonomous disciplines. The history of how Shakespeare became part of the legal canon is more complicated than these often defensive, syllabus-justifying declarations allow. This …

Crime And Sacred Spaces In Early Modern Poland, Magda Teter

Magda Teter

This principle of intersection between action and sacredness was shared by both Jews and Christians. Both Christian and Jewish religious elites highlighted differences between sacred. In Catholicism, validation of space required a consecration by a bishop in preparation for the ritual of the Eucharist. Church vessels were viewed as sacred in relation to the Eucharist. The Eucharist defined levels of sacredness. The controversy over the nature of the Eucharist during the Reformation, challenged the notion of Christian sacred place. After the Reformation, in the minds of the church, and in Poland increasingly also in the minds of the secular courts, …

Making Property Productive: Reorganizing Rights To Real And Equitable Estates In Britain, 1660 To 1830, Gary Richardson

Gary Richardson

Between 1660 and 1830, Parliament passed thousands of Acts restructuring rights to real and equitable estates. These estate Acts enabled individuals and families to sell, mortgage, lease, exchange and improve land previously bound by inheritance rules and other legal legacies. The loosening of these legal constraints facilitated the reallocation of land and resources towards higher-value uses. Data reveal correlations between estate Acts, urbanization and economic development during the decades surrounding the Industrial Revolution.

Guilds, Laws, And Markets For Manufactured Merchandise In Late-Medieval England, Gary Richardson

Gary Richardson

The prevailing paradigm of medieval manufacturing presumes guilds monopolized markets for durable goods in late-medieval England. The sources of the monopolies are said to have been the charters of towns, charters of guilds, parliamentary statutes, and judicial precedents. This essay examines those sources, demonstrates they did not give guilds legal monopolies in the modern sense of the word, and replaces that erroneous assumption with an accurate description of the legal institutions underlying markets for manufactures in medieval England.

Clueless: The Misuse Of Batf Firearms Tracing Data, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

Sometimes the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms traces the registered sales history of a gun which was used in a crime, or which has been seized by the police. Traced guns are not representative of the broader universe of crime guns. Accordingly, drawing public policy conclusions based on tracing data is unwise.