Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Legal History Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Selected Works

2018

Discipline
Keyword
Publication

Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Legal History

The War(S) On Christmas In The Law Books, Kurt X. Metzmeier Nov 2018

The War(S) On Christmas In The Law Books, Kurt X. Metzmeier

Kurt X. Metzmeier

This piece takes a reference to a December 25, 1823, session of the Kentucky Senate as a starting point to discuss the legal history of Christmas in America and specifically Kentucky from the Puritan era when it was banned, to the early 1800s when it was officially ignored, to the late 19th century when it was raised to a legal holiday (and when many of the day's tradition were created).

Go to article

Kentucky Criminal Law Reform In The Age Of Aquarius, Kurt X. Metzmeier Aug 2018

Kentucky Criminal Law Reform In The Age Of Aquarius, Kurt X. Metzmeier

Kurt X. Metzmeier

In Kentucky criminal law, it is useful to divide legal history into two broad eras: the years before the 1970s and those after that pivotal decade of reforms. The 1970s brought a new court system, a dramatic bail reform law which criminalized the hated bail-bondsmen and even a new court house. However, for the modern case law researcher the most significant change was the adoption of a statutory penal code—a code that marked a break between the two centuries of common-law crimes that preceded 1974 and the four decades afterwards.

Go to article

Building A Regime Of Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1840-1945, Felice Batlan Aug 2018

Building A Regime Of Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1840-1945, Felice Batlan

Felice J Batlan

H-Pad is happy to announce the release of its sixth broadside. In “Building a Regime of Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1840-1945,” Felice Batlan traces a century of U.S. government laws, policies, and attitudes regarding immigration. The broadside explores how ideas about race, class, religion, and the Other repeatedly led to laws restricting the immigration of those who members of Congress, the President, and the U.S. public considered inferior and/or a threat.

Go to article

A New Philosophy In The Supreme Court, Robert M. Sanger Aug 2018

A New Philosophy In The Supreme Court, Robert M. Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

This is a positive article about the soon-to-be-newlyminted United States Supreme Court. No, this is not written by a guest columnist and, yes, the present author still holds progressive views regarding criminal justice. Assuming the Supreme Court and other branches of government continue to function – even if in less than an optimal fashion – we, as lawyers, have to work with what we have. We have a conservative Supreme Court with, presumably, conservative principles, and that is with which we must work. One of the characteristics often seen in individual Supreme Court Justices is the tendency to rise above …

Go to article

Eckart Otto, Das Deuteronomium: Politische Theologie Und Rechtsreform In Juda Und Assyrien, Steven W. Holloway Jun 2018

Eckart Otto, Das Deuteronomium: Politische Theologie Und Rechtsreform In Juda Und Assyrien, Steven W. Holloway

Steven W Holloway

No abstract provided.

Go to article

Collaborative Divorce: What Louis Brandeis Might Say About The Promise And Problems?, Susan Saab Fortney Jun 2018

Collaborative Divorce: What Louis Brandeis Might Say About The Promise And Problems?, Susan Saab Fortney

Susan S. Fortney

If you ask legal ethics scholars what they remember about Louis D. Brandeis's judicial confirmation hearings, most would point to the manner in which he responded to questions about his representation of persons with perceived conflicts of interest. Louis Brandeis responded to challenges by stating that he was "counsel for the situation. Some use this comment when examining problems associated with a single lawyer representing multiple clients in the same transaction. Others believe that Brandeis may have been referring to a type of intermediary role in which lawyers attempt to adjust the rights and interests of multiple clients with potentially …

Go to article

The Riccobono Seminar Of Roman Law In America: The Lost Years, Timothy G. Kearley May 2018

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

Timothy G. Kearley

The Riccobono Seminar was the preeminent source of intellectual support for Romanists in the U.S. during the middle of the twentieth century. In the course of the Seminar's existence, many of the era's greatest Roman law scholars gave presentations at the Riccobono Seminar. The Seminar's history after it came under the aegis of the Catholic University of America in 1935 has been readily available, but not so for the earliest years of 1930-35, when it moved among several law schools in the District of Columbia. This paper uses archival information and newspaper articles to describe the Seminar's activities in these …

Go to article

The Architecture Of Law: Building Law In The Classical Tradition, Brian M. Mccall May 2018

The Architecture Of Law: Building Law In The Classical Tradition, Brian M. Mccall

Brian M McCall

The Architecture of Law explores the metaphor of law as an architectural building project, with eternal law as the foundation, natural law as the frame, divine law as the guidance provided by the architect, and human law as the provider of the defining details and ornamentation. Classical jurisprudence is presented as a synthesis of the work of the greatest minds of antiquity and the medieval period, including Cicero, Artistotle, Gratian, Augustine, and Aquinas; the significant texts of each receive detailed exposition in these pages.
Along with McCall’s development of the architectural image, he raises a question that becomes a running …

Go to article

Indefinite Detention, Colonialism, And Settler Prerogative In The United States, Natsu Taylor Saito May 2018

Indefinite Detention, Colonialism, And Settler Prerogative In The United States, Natsu Taylor Saito

Natsu Taylor Saito

The primacy accorded individual civil and political rights is often touted as one of the United States' greatest achievements. However, mass incarcerations of indefinite duration have occurred consistently throughout U.S. history and have primarily targeted people of color. The dominant narrative insists that the United States is a political democracy and portrays each instance of indefinite detention in exceptionalist terms. This essay argues that the historical patterns of indefinite detention are better explained by recognizing the United States as a settler colonial state whose claimed prerogative to expand its territorial reach and contain/control populations over which it exercises jurisdiction inevitably …

Go to article

Introduction: Globalization, Power, States, And The Role Of Law, Frank J. Garcia Mar 2018

Introduction: Globalization, Power, States, And The Role Of Law, Frank J. Garcia

Frank J. Garcia

On October 12, 2012 the Boston College Law Review and the Boston College International and Comparative Law Review held a joint Symposium entitled, “Filling Power Vacuums in the New Global Legal Order.” In three panel discussions and a keynote address by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a lively discourse on the impact of globalization on state power, the law, and the law’s ability to both reallocate and effectively restrain power ensued. This Introduction, and the works that follow in this symposium issue, document that discourse.

Go to article

Social Contract Neutrality And The Religion Clauses Of The Federal Constitution, Gregory S. Sergienko Mar 2018

Social Contract Neutrality And The Religion Clauses Of The Federal Constitution, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

'Neutrality' has become the slogan that the Supreme Court uses for judging all claims of freedom of religion whether under the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause. However, the word 'neutrality' conceals the Court's inconsistent use of the concept. Thus, in Rosenberger v. Rectors of the University of Virginia, the recent debate about funding for religious publications, both the majority and the dissent asserted that only their approach was truly neutral. This inconsistency in the meaning of neutrality in the religion clauses is merely part of a general inconsistency in the Court's treatment of the religion clauses. Some of …

Go to article

Foreword: “Law As . . .” Iii—Glossolalia: Toward A Minor (Historical) Jurisprudence, Christopher Tomlins Feb 2018

Foreword: “Law As . . .” Iii—Glossolalia: Toward A Minor (Historical) Jurisprudence, Christopher Tomlins

Christopher Tomlins

No abstract provided.

Go to article

Poverty, The Great Unequalizer: Improving The Delivery System For Civil Legal Aid, Latonia Haney Keith Jan 2018

Poverty, The Great Unequalizer: Improving The Delivery System For Civil Legal Aid, Latonia Haney Keith

Latonia Haney Keith

Civil justice issues in the United States bring with them no guarantee of legal counsel, yet the civil legal system is still designed to require an attorney in almost all situations. Given the ever-growing costs of legal representation, how then are the legal needs of the poor met? The author calls this phenomenon the “justice gap” and addresses the issue of an access to justice gap and proposes a potential solution.

This article examines the existence of the “justice gap,” wherein the poor face substantial barriers that hinder them from receiving the same legal protections as wealthier Americans. It goes …

Go to article

The Supreme "Courts" Of The Roman Empire, C.G. Bateman Jan 2018

The Supreme "Courts" Of The Roman Empire, C.G. Bateman

C.G. Bateman

Question
Why and how did Constantine go further than merely tolerating Christianity, and put himself at the head of their affairs and legislate Christian bishops into the position of Roman judges whose decisions were not subject to appeal? What effect did the rescript of 333 have on the meaning of the earlier edict of 318, and why is this important?[1]
 
Constantine, the Roman Emperor from 315-337, was a law-giver who first put the Christian Church in the place of primacy in the organization of the state that it only lost as recently as the seventeenth century; as such, …

Go to article

Formal And Informal Amendment Of The United States Constitution, Richard S. Kay Dec 2017

Formal And Informal Amendment Of The United States Constitution, Richard S. Kay

Richard Kay

This is the United States report submitted for the session on Formal and Informal Constitutional Amendment at the Twentieth Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law to be held in Fukuoka, Japan in July, 2018. The report reviews the rules of Article V of the United States Constitution that sets out the rules for constitutional amendment and it provides a brief chronology of the twenty-eight amendments adopted to date. It notes a number of potential problems of interpretation associated with Article V. The report considers the widely held assumption that the United States Constitution is one of the hardest, …

Go to article

Homestead: A (New) Hope, Thomas E. Simmons Dec 2017

Homestead: A (New) Hope, Thomas E. Simmons

Thomas E. Simmons

A finely-tuned balancing of the free functioning of private and commercial enterprise against a family's interests in shelter and a home is at the heart of homestead exemption laws. In South Dakota's history, this balancing act has been displayed over a 145-year history in the form of legislative enactments, judicial decisions, and referendums. This history illuminates the expression of values against the dynamics of rule-making. A previously published article in this review, Prequel to Homestead, outlined South Dakota's homestead laws under the contemporary statutory framework and also considered the constitutional history of homestead laws leading up to South Dakota's …

Go to article

Whether Or Not Special Expertise Is Needed: Anti-Intellectualism, The Supreme Court, And The Legitimacy Of Law, Sean M. Kammer Dec 2017

Whether Or Not Special Expertise Is Needed: Anti-Intellectualism, The Supreme Court, And The Legitimacy Of Law, Sean M. Kammer

Sean Kammer

No abstract provided.

Go to article