Legal History Commons^™

Dilemmas Of Group Autonomy: Residential Associations And Community, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We are a society of groups. De Tocqueville's observation that the principle of association shapes American society remains as valid today as it was in the mid-nineteenth century. For us, as for others, the vita activa is participation in a seemingly limitless variety of groups. The importance of group activity in our national character has strongly influenced the agenda of political questions that recur in American political and legal theory. One of the fundamental normative questions on this agenda concerns the proper relationship between groups and the polity. To what extent should the polity foster connections between associations and the …

Free Exercise In The Free State: Maryland's Role In Religious Liberty And The First Amendment, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

Maryland arguably holds the distinction of being the state whose early history most directly ensured, and whose citizenry was most directly affected by, the First Amendment's protection of religious freedom. Because of its relatively diverse religious population, Maryland stood out as both a champion of tolerance and a hotbed of discrimination for most of its colonial experience. Similarities have been pointed out between the first provincial government in St. Mary's, Maryland, and the American plan under the Constitution, particularly with respect to religious liberty.

This article offers a brief overview of the religious history of Maryland, focuses on important state …

The Politics Of God And The Woman's Vote: Religion In The American Suffrage Movement, 1848-1895, Elizabeth B. Clark

Publications

This thesis examines the role of religion— both liberal and evangelical Protestantism— in the development of a feminist political theory in America during the nineteenth century and how that feminist theory in turn helped to transform American liberalism. Chapter 1 looks for the genesis of women's rights language, not in the republican rhetoric of the Founding Fathers, but in the teachings of liberal Protestantism and its links with laissez-faire economic theory. The antebellum understanding of rights is shown to have encompassed social and civil rights alike, and to have arisen from a vision of the mutual benefits that derived from …

The Supreme Court Of Israel: Formative Years, 1948-1955, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

This article looks at the institutional and jurisprudential development of the Israeli Supreme Court in its early stages.

The New Economic Theory Of The Firm: Critical Perspectives From History, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal Pragmatism In The People's Republic Of China, Xingzhong Yu

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Commentary On “On The Nature Of Bankruptcy”: Bankruptcy And Bargaining, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

At a conference on bargaining, it should not be surprising that there is more than one perspective on the relationship between bankruptcy and bargaining. Dean Jackson and Professor Scott's article emphasizes a hypothetical bargain to be struck by idealized participants in a firm. It explores the relationship between bankruptcy and that bargain. By imagining what that bargain would look like, Jackson and Scott construct new justifications for bankruptcy law's distributional rules. Such a theory, however, is subject to reservations about the depth of insight that can be gained from examination of purely theoretical bargains. Stripped of real-world characteristics, hypothetical bargains …

Central Feud In Njáls Saga., William I. Miller

Book Chapters

Njáls Saga is above all a story of feud, and a complicated one at that. This paper attempts to give sense to those aspects of the feud between the Sigfussons and the people at Bergporshvall most frequently perceived by readers to be glaring weaknesses in a nearly perfect work. I refer to the apparent lack of motivation for the killing of Hoskuldr Hvitanessgodi, an act which has universally appalled critics and commentators of the saga, and the ease with which Mordr Valgardsson is able to "trick" Skarphedinn, a person otherwise characterized by a brutal wit and penetrating intelligence. In what …

The First Integration Of The University Of Maryland School Of Law, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Positivism In The Historiography Of The Common Law, David K. Millon

Scholarly Articles

A great deal of important legal historical scholarship is doctrinal in focus, its objective being to chart the history of substantive common law rules. In this Article, Professor Millon suggests that doctrinal legal history is based implicitly on the modern positivist theory of law as a system of state-endorsed rules designed to resolve disputes in a consistent, predictable manner. He questions the validity of efforts to write the history of the premodern common law from this theoretical point of view.

Focusing on pre-seventeenth century civil cases, he finds that trial procedure seems to have allowed or even encouraged juries to …

The Constitutional Theory Of The Fourth Amendment, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

This Article will, in large part, present its thesis regarding fourth amendment doctrine by employing, as an illustration, a recent application of the current approach by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In United States v. Torres, the Seventh Circuit held video surveillance constitutional and further found that the judiciary had the authority to issue warrants for such a technique. Although welcomed by prosecutors and law enforcement officials, this decision highlights the absurdity of the current interpretation of the reasonableness clause. Moreover, Torres provides a vehicle through which this Article's historical interpretation can be brought into focus under the cold …

A Critical Look At Wyoming Water Law, Mark Squillace

Publications

No abstract provided.

Chapter 4 - Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

The emphasis on freedom or enslavement of the body, and the issues that sprang from that focus, were feminists' contribution to nineteenth-century American liberalism, as well as their link to radical thought. Elizabeth Cady Stanton drew arguments from the realm of political liberty and religious tolerance to make the case for choice in private life. But the vision of individual autonomy in sexual and domestic matters served also as the basis for her definition of citizenship and as a paradigm for relations among citizens and between citizens and the state. Self-ownership was the unifying theme that ran through Stanton's political …

Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth B. Clark

Publications

The emphasis on freedom or enslavement of the body, and the issues that sprang from that focus, were feminists' contribution to nineteenth-century American liberalism, as well as their link to radical thought. Elizabeth Cady Stanton drew arguments from the realm of political liberty and religious tolerance to make the case for choice in private life. But the vision of individual autonomy in sexual and domestic matters served also as the basis for her definition of citizenship and as a paradigm for relations among citizens and between citizens and the state. Self-ownership was the unifying theme that ran through Stanton's political …

Some Reasons For A Restoration Of Natural Law Jurisprudence, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

The growing influence of utilitarianism and legal positivism in American jurisprudence today and the decline of natural law have produced an ominous shift in the foundation of our legal system. This shift is illustrated by various courts' approaches to momentous legal issues of the Twentieth Century such as abortion and euthanasia. Ultimately, legal positivism is unacceptable as a jurisprudential framework because it provides no inherent limits on the power of the state and no basis for determining what is just. In contrast, the natural law provides a jurisprudential framework that both guides and limits the civil law. It therefore is …

Property And Suffrage In The Early American Republic, Robert J. Steinfeld

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Conviction According To Conscience: The Medieval Jurists' Debate Concerning Judicial Discretion And The Law Of Proof, Richard M. Fraher

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Copyright Legislation And Technological Change, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

Throughout its history, copyright law has had difficulty accommodating technological change. Although the substance of copyright legislation in this century has evolved from meetings among industry representatives whose avowed purpose was to draft legislation that provided for the future,6 the resulting statutes have done so poorly. The language of copyright statutes has been phrased in fact-specific language that has grown obsolete as new modes and mediums of copyrightable expression have developed. Whatever copyright statute has been on the books has been routinely, and justifiably, criticized as outmoded.7 In this Article, I suggest that the nature of the legislative process we …

The Development Of The Nineteenth-Century Consensus Theory Of Contract, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

The consensus theory is well known. According to consensus theory, contract is the product of the consensus or "meeting of the minds" of contracting parties; if there is no consensus, there is no contract. Today, even after repeated challenges, consensus theory continues to be important and even essential in many approaches to contract.

The role of the parties' consensus was not always apparent in case law. Until well into the nineteenth century, the most important remedy for breach of contract in both England and America was the action for breach of promise known as "assumpsit." As a result, lawyers typically …

Law, Literature, And The Celebration Of Authority, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Richard Posner's new book, Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation, is a defense of “liberal legalism” against a group of modern critics who have only one thing in common: their use of either particular pieces of literature or literary theory to mount legal critiques. Perhaps for that reason, it is very hard to discern a unified thesis within Posner's book regarding the relationship between law and literature. In part, Posner is complaining about a pollution of literature by its use and abuse in political and legal argument; thus, the “misunderstood relation” to which the title refers. At times, Posner suggests …

The Antitrust Movement And The Rise Of Industrial Organization, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The modern science of industrial organization grew out of a debate among lawyers and economists in the waning years of the nineteenth century. For Americans, the emergent business "trust" provoked a dialogue about how the law should respond. Many of the formal theories of industrial organization, such as the ruinous competition doctrine, the potential competition doctrine, and the post-classical concern about vertical integration, were actually borrowed from the law.

Anglo-American and European economists disputed the proper domain of theory and description in economic analysis. The British approach was exemplified Alfred and Mary Paley Marshall's Economics of Industry, published in …

Mark Tushnet On Liberal Constitutional Theory: Mission Impossible, Frank Goodman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Groundwater Quality Protection: Setting A National Goal For State And Federal Programs, David H. Getches

Publications

No abstract provided.

Water Marketing In Wyoming, Mark Squillace

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Field Of Public Land Law -- A Ten-Year Retrospective, Charles F. Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Land Tenure In The Pacific: The Context For Native Hawaiian Land Rights, Charles F. Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Discovery Vices And Trans-Substantive Virtues In The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sapphire Bound!, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Second-Order Reasons, Uncertainty And Legal Theory, Stephen R. Perry

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Secular Cases In The Church Courts: A Historical Survey, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

When students of legal history think of church courts, they may conjure up thoughts of some odd and obsolete tribunal about which Dickens wrote, while students of popular history may think of the people who burned Joan of Arc. In contrast, when Roman Catholics think of Church courts, they may think of tribunals which do no more than grant marriage annulments, while American Protestants may think of nothing at all. Church courts encompass the whole range of institutions used by different churches, including Jewish communities, for authoritative intervention into affairs of individual church members. Institutions of this kind have had …