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Legal History Commons

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Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Rabban's Law's History, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Mar 2013

Rabban's Law's History, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a brief review of David Rabban's new book: Law's History: American Legal Thought and the Transatlantic Turn to History (Cambridge, 2013).


The Classical American State And The Regulation Of Morals, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Feb 2013

The Classical American State And The Regulation Of Morals, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The United States has a strong tradition of state regulation that stretches back to the Commonwealth ideal of Revolutionary times and grew steadily throughout the nineteenth century. But regulation also had more than its share of critics. A core principle of Jacksonian democracy was that too much regulation was for the benefit of special interests, mainly wealthier and propertied classes. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War provided the lever that laissez faire legal writers used to make a more coherent Constitutional case against increasing regulation. How much they actually succeeded has always been subject to dispute. …


Lost Options For Mutual Gain? The Layperson, The Lawyer, And Dispute Resolution In Early America, Carli N. Conklin Jan 2013

Lost Options For Mutual Gain? The Layperson, The Lawyer, And Dispute Resolution In Early America, Carli N. Conklin

Faculty Publications

In 1786, legal reform activist Benjamin Austin undertook a campaign to promote the use of arbitration over litigation as the primary method of dispute resolution in Massachusetts. Although supported by a groundswell of anti-lawyer sentiment, Austin ultimately failed in securing the triumph of arbitration. Exploring Austin's pamphlet campaign in its historical context not only provides us with a snapshot of the arguments for and against dispute resolution in early America, but also serves as a corrective to the prevailing accounts of arbitration in American legal history. This article explores the context and content of Austin's pamphlet campaign and its implications …


Scaled Legislation & The Legal History Of The Common Good, Jill M. Fraley Jan 2013

Scaled Legislation & The Legal History Of The Common Good, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

None available.


American Gangsters: Rico, Criminal Syndicates, And Conspiracy Law As Market Control, Benjamin Levin Jan 2013

American Gangsters: Rico, Criminal Syndicates, And Conspiracy Law As Market Control, Benjamin Levin

Publications

In an effort to reexamine legal and political decisions about criminalization and the role of the criminal law in shaping American markets and social institutions, this Article explores the ways in which criminal conspiracy laws in the United States have historically been used to subdue nonstate actors and informal markets that threatened the hegemony of the state and formal market. To this end, the Article focuses primarily on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) as illustrative of broader trends in twentieth-century criminal policy. Enacted in 1970, RICO provides criminal sanctions for individuals engaged in unacceptable organized activities and …


Teaching American Legal History In A Law School, Peter D. Garlock Jan 2013

Teaching American Legal History In A Law School, Peter D. Garlock

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Professor Peter Garlock describes his legal history course.


Legal History In Context, Logan E. Sawyer Iii Jan 2013

Legal History In Context, Logan E. Sawyer Iii

Scholarly Works

The author examines the teaching methodologies involved in historical education and legal education.


A Funhouse Mirror Of Law: The Entailment In Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice, Peter A. Appel Jan 2013

A Funhouse Mirror Of Law: The Entailment In Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice, Peter A. Appel

Scholarly Works

In this Essay, I will first outline the general development of different means used to hold property and keep it within a family in England. This discussion must of necessity be brief and schematic, and therefore readers should not rely on it as a completely accurate, nuanced, and detailed discussion of the historical development of English land law. I will then examine what Austen has to say about Longbourn, the principal property in Pride and Prejudice, which leads me to conclude that Austen probably conceived of Longbourn as being entailed and not secured under a strict settlement. I will also …


Pauli Murray And The Twentieth-Century Quest For Legal And Social Equality, Serena Mayeri Jan 2013

Pauli Murray And The Twentieth-Century Quest For Legal And Social Equality, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Fun Of Teaching American Legal History, Geoffrey R. Watson Jan 2013

The Fun Of Teaching American Legal History, Geoffrey R. Watson

Scholarly Articles

I teach a pair of two-credit legal history courses: History of Early American Law and History of Modern American Law. I teach a variety of other courses, but none is more fun to teach than legal history.


Teaching Legal History In The Age Of Practical Legal Education, Douglas E. Abrams Jan 2013

Teaching Legal History In The Age Of Practical Legal Education, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Historian Henry Steele Commager said, “History is useful in the sense that art is useful--or music or poetry or flowers; perhaps even in the sense that religion and philosophy is useful .... For without these things life would be poorer and meaner.” For law students who anticipate a career representing private and public clients and participating in public discussion, however, study of legal history carries rewards beyond intellectual stimulation and personal satisfaction. Law students contemplating client representation should ponder Justice Holmes's advice that “[h]istory must be a part of the study [of law], because without it we cannot know the …


The Anomaly Of Executions: The Cruel And Unusual Punishments Clause In The 21st Century, John Bessler Jan 2013

The Anomaly Of Executions: The Cruel And Unusual Punishments Clause In The 21st Century, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes the anomaly of executions in the context of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. While the Supreme Court routinely reads the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause to protect prisoners from harm, the Court simultaneously interprets the Eighth Amendment to allow inmates to be executed. Corporal punishments short of death have long been abandoned in America’s penal system, yet executions — at least in a few locales, heavily concentrated in the South — persist. This Article, which seeks a principled and much more consistent interpretation of the Eighth Amendment, argues that executions should be declared unconstitutional as …