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Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Book Review: The Warren Court: Constitutional Decision As An Intrument Of Reform, Dale A. Normington Aug 2015

Book Review: The Warren Court: Constitutional Decision As An Intrument Of Reform, Dale A. Normington

Akron Law Review

Although Americans usually associate the significant events of their political history with the contemporaneous presidential administration, since the appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court the judiciary has wrought more significant changes in our society than have the three administrations who have served during the same period. In the fifteen years since Justice Warren's appointment the Supreme Court has profoundly altered many constitutional doctrines, including those affecting race relations, criminal procedure, and election operations. The controversy surrounding the court's decisions has been sharp.


Book Review: Much Ado About Nothing: The Brethren: Inside The Supreme Court, Richard L. Aynes Jul 2015

Book Review: Much Ado About Nothing: The Brethren: Inside The Supreme Court, Richard L. Aynes

Akron Law Review

With such auspicious beginnings, The Brethren would appear to be a vital and important book which should be included upon the "required" reading list of those who wish to keep abreast of developments involving the Court and the evolution of constitutional law. Unfortunately, for anyone familiar with the decisions of the Court, the high expectations raised by The Brethren will not be met. Even when viewed in the most charitable light, the "insights" into the decision-making process to be gained from The Brethren are slight.2


Litigating Time In America At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Jenni Parrish Jul 2015

Litigating Time In America At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Jenni Parrish

Akron Law Review

Time may have become a television celebrity this season, but telling time is something taken for granted by most people alive in 2002. Telling time however, has not always been as easy, straightforward, and mechanical, as it is today. By the late nineteenth century, there was already sufficient conflict over how to tell time to force Americans to litigate the subject. The courts wrestled with this dilemma while legislatures reluctantly moved toward establishing a uniform method of telling time. Congress did not act until 1918.6 Why did it take so long to legally establish standard time in the United States? …


The Dubitante Opinion, Jason J. Czarnezki Jul 2015

The Dubitante Opinion, Jason J. Czarnezki

Akron Law Review

This short Essay endeavors to shed some light on the use of the term dubitante in judicial opinions and spark discussion as to the merits of the dubitante opinion—What is a dubitante opinion? When was the term first used, and how often is the term used? Who uses it and how? What are the consequences of its use?


A Herculean Task For Judge Hercules: Analytical Avoidance In Iran V. Elahi, Anneliese Gryta Jun 2015

A Herculean Task For Judge Hercules: Analytical Avoidance In Iran V. Elahi, Anneliese Gryta

Akron Law Review

This Comment examines the history, development, and application of the FSIA’s terrorist state attachment exception through the lens of Iran v. Elahi, as well as the larger problems and ramifications which ripple forth from the case. Part II, Sections A, B, and C present the background of the FSIA, the terrorist state exception, explaining the difference between 1610(a)(7) attachment of a foreign state’s property and 1610(b)(2) attachment of the property of an agency or instrumentality of the foreign state. Part III explores the intractable problem of recovery in terrorist state exception cases and the unfortunate foreign policy and constitutional ramifications …


The Ladies' Health Protective Association: Lay Lawyers And Urban Cause Lawyering, Felice Batlan Jun 2015

The Ladies' Health Protective Association: Lay Lawyers And Urban Cause Lawyering, Felice Batlan

Akron Law Review

By examining the LHPA, this Article seeks, however modestly, to extend the Hurstian project. The Article argues that the LHPA, composed of a group of middle-class women interacting with their environment, neighbors, the courts, private businesses, and city and state officials, on a deeply local and quotidian basis, had a significant impact in shaping a multitude of New York City laws and law had a profound affect in creating and molding the work and identity of the organization.


Revival: Toward A Formal Neutrality Approach To Economic Development Transfers To Religious Institutions, Ryan A. Doringo Jun 2015

Revival: Toward A Formal Neutrality Approach To Economic Development Transfers To Religious Institutions, Ryan A. Doringo

Akron Law Review

Part I of this Note explores the contours of the complicated history of the Establishment Clause by examining the creation of the Lemon test and the inconsistencies of the test’s subsequent application. The Note then explores Justice O’Connor’s endorsement modification to that test. Part I concludes with a discussion of the Supreme Court’s move toward embracing a principle formal neutrality. Part II provides a factual history of the transfer at issue and a detailed summary of the District Court’s opinion in Wirtz. Part III of the Note explains that the Constitution does not preclude economic development transfers to religious institutions. …


Looking Back To The Future: The Curmudgeon's Guide To The Future Of Environmental Law, Denis Binder Jun 2015

Looking Back To The Future: The Curmudgeon's Guide To The Future Of Environmental Law, Denis Binder

Akron Law Review

This essay is not intended as a traditional law review article, but as an essay intended to raise questions about the current status and future of Environmental Law in light of the three and one-half centuries of a developmental, exploitative ethos in America.


Power To The People: Restoring The Public Voice In Environmental Law, Albert C. Lin Jun 2015

Power To The People: Restoring The Public Voice In Environmental Law, Albert C. Lin

Akron Law Review

Although the last forty years of environmental law have witnessed some successes, they have also increasingly revealed the limitations of existing laws and regulatory structures. Congress has been unable to pass substantial environmental legislation in recent years, notwithstanding widespread recognition of the need for better tools for responding to climate change, toxic chemicals, non-point source water pollution, and other problems. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has struggled in the wake of limited resources and politicization to effectively use the tools it has, and its rulemaking processes are often dominated by industry and other repeat players. To deal with …


Environmental Law And The Collapse Of New Deal Constitutionalism, Arthur F. Mcevoy Jun 2015

Environmental Law And The Collapse Of New Deal Constitutionalism, Arthur F. Mcevoy

Akron Law Review

This Article, which is a précis for a book in progress about the history of late twentieth-century U.S. environmental law, argues that our modern environmental law is peculiarly a creature of the New Deal. Despite its obvious legacy from common-law nuisance and Progressive regulation, what makes modern environmental law different from anything that came before is the way in which reformers built it out of parts copied from New Deal reform projects: cooperative federalism, the tax-and-spend power, representation-reinforcing, rights trumps, and so on. Environmental law’s history, its character, its accomplishments, and its shortcomings thus entwined with those of the New …


States' Rights, Southern Hypocrisy, And The Crisis Of The Union, Paul Finkelman Jun 2015

States' Rights, Southern Hypocrisy, And The Crisis Of The Union, Paul Finkelman

Akron Law Review

The southern states did not leave the Union because the national government was trampling on their “rights.” The states that left the union never asserted that they were being denied their “states’ rights” —that the national government had obliterated the lines been between national power and state power. Nor did the southern states complain that the national government was too powerful and so it threatened the sovereignty of the state governments. On the contrary, as I set out below, the southern states mostly complained that the northern states were asserting their states’ rights and that the national government was not …


Secession And Breach Of Compact: The Law Of Nature Meets The United States Constitution, Stephen C. Neff Jun 2015

Secession And Breach Of Compact: The Law Of Nature Meets The United States Constitution, Stephen C. Neff

Akron Law Review

This discussion will briefly outline the legal arguments in favour of the secessionist position. The first section will survey four arguments that could, in theory, have been employed but which, in practice, were used either not at all or only marginally. The second section will survey, in greater detail, the principal argument which was advanced in 1860-61: that secession was a lawful remedy available to the Southern states in the face of material breaches of the Constitutional compact of 1787 by the free states. It will be observed that, in this argument, general considerations of natural law and of the …


Still Too Close To Call? Rethinking Stampp's "The Concept Of A Perpetual Union", Daniel W. Hamilton Jun 2015

Still Too Close To Call? Rethinking Stampp's "The Concept Of A Perpetual Union", Daniel W. Hamilton

Akron Law Review

In a classic article in the Journal of American History, which was based on his presidential address to the Organization of American Historians in 1978, the great Civil War historian Kenneth Stampp made the claim that the arguments in favor of the constitutionality of secession made by the Southern states were as strong, if not stronger than the constitutional arguments made, then and now, in opposition to secession. Stampp is to my mind the greatest Civil War historian of the 20th century and his views on secession remain required reading and are cited routinely today. This is not to say …


Symposium: Union And States' Rights: Secession, 150 Years After Sumter, Preface, Neil H. Cogan Jun 2015

Symposium: Union And States' Rights: Secession, 150 Years After Sumter, Preface, Neil H. Cogan

Akron Law Review

A preface to the four papers presented at the Annual Meeting of the Section on Legal History, American Association of Law Schools, held on January 7, 2011, in San Francisco.