Legal History Commons^™

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Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) database provides access to information legal, legislative, and regulatory information produced on multiple subjects by the U.S. Government. Content includes congressional bills, congressional committee hearings and prints (studies), reports on legislation, the text of laws, regulations, and executive orders and multiple U.S. Government information resources covering subjects from accounting to zoology.

A Study In Sovereignty: Federalism, Political Culture, And The Future Of Conservatism, Clint Hamilton

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis confronts symptoms of an issue which is eroding at the principles of conservative advocacy, specifically those dealing with federalism. It contrasts modern definitions of federalism with those which existed in the late 1700s, and then attempts to determine the cause of the change. Concluding that the change was caused by a shift in American political identity, the author argues that the conservative movement must begin a conversation on how best to adapt to the change to prevent further drifting away from conservative principles.

Book Review, Ahmed White

Publications

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Skepticism: A Recovery And Preliminary Evaluation, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The aim of this article is to recover and reevaluate the American tradition of constitutional skepticism. Part I consists of a brief history of skepticism running from before the founding to the modern period. My aim here is not to provide anything like a complete description of the historical actors, texts, and events that I discuss. Instead, I link together familiar episodes and arguments that stretch across our history so as to demonstrate that they are part of a common narrative that has been crucial to our self-identity. Part II disentangles the various strands of skeptical argument. I argue that …

Degrees Of Freedom: Building Citizenship In The Shadow Of Slavery, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

By seeing events in the past as part of a dynamically evolving system with a large, but not indefinite, number of degrees of freedom, we can turn our attention to the multiple possibilities for change, and to the ways in which societies that are initially similarly situated may go on to diverge very sharply. Thus it is, I will argue, with societies in the 19th century that faced the challenge of building citizenship on the ruins of slavery.

Corporate Governance Reform And The 'New' Corporate Social Responsibility, Douglas M. Branson

Articles

The history of corporate governance "reform" begins with Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means's "The Modern Corporation and Private Property," first published in 1932. That book posited the "separation of ownership from control," discussed in the first section of this essay.

The subsequent history of corporate governance reform has been the postulation, by academics and others, of solutions to problems posed by the separation of ownership from control.

One subset of proposed reforms, those of the 1970s, formed the "corporate social responsibility movement." During that era, reformers urged governmental intervention which, as a matter of general corporate law, would expand corporate …

Taking Decisions Seriously, Richard D. Friedman

Reviews

The New Deal era is one of the great turning points of American constitutional history. The receptivity of the Supreme Court to regulation by state and federal governments increased dra- matically during that period. The constitutionalism that prevailed before Charles Evans Hughes became Chief Justice in 1930 was similar in most respects to that of the beginning of the twen- tieth century. The constitutionalism that prevailed by the time Hughes’ successor Harlan Fiske Stone died in 1946 is far more related to that of the end of the century. How this transformation occurred is a crucial and enduring issue in …

Enlightenment, Donald J. Herzog

Articles

It's a curious broadside, a work of austere graphics and polite prose far removed from the mischievous engravings and bawdy ballads usually appearing on such sheets. Drawn from an address that 345 printers had signed and 138 had presented to the queen, the original text was committed to parchment "and accompanied by a Copy surperbly printed on white Satin, edged with white Silk Fringe, backed with purple Satin, and mounted in an Ivory Roller with appropriate Devices." Even in the published version, the arch is full of intricately detailed work. The printers took pride in their craftmanship: "This Specimen of …

Chief Justice Hughes' Letter On Court-Packing, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

After one of the great landslides in American presidential history, Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath of office for the second time on January 20, 1937. As he had four years before, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, like Roosevelt a former governor of New York, administered the oath. Torrents of rain drenched the inauguration, and Hughes’ damp whiskers waved in the biting wind. When the skullcapped Chief Justice reached the promise to defend the Constitution, he “spoke slowly and with special emphasis.” The President responded in kind, though he felt like saying, as he later told his aide Sam Rosenman: …

Law And The Experience Of Politics In Late Eighteenth-Century North Carolina: North Carolina Considers The Constitution, Walter F. Pratt

Journal Articles

In 1788, delegates assembled in North Carolina to decide whether to ratify the Constitution. A debate erupted between Federalists and Anti-federalists regarding each Article of the then-drafted Constitution. This Article analyzes the debate, and proposes that the key difference was the function of the role of the law.

The Jury, Seditious Libel And The Criminal Law, Thomas A. Green

Book Chapters

The seditious libel trials of the eighteenth century constitute an important chapter in the history of freedom of the press and the growth of democratic government. While much has been written about the trials and about the administration of the criminal law in eighteenth-century England, little has been said about the relationship between the libel prosecutions and the more pervasive and long-standing problems of the criminal law. We have perhaps gone too far in positing-or simply assuming-a separation between political high misdemeanors and common-run felony cases such as homicide and theft. For there were points of contact between the two: …

The Rights Of Aliens In The 1980'S, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Distrust Of Politics, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

In this Article, Dean Sandalow considers the justifications advanced by those who favor the removal of certain political issues from the political process by extending the reach of judicial review. He begins by examining the distrust of politics in a different context, discussing the proposals made by the Progressives for reforming municipal government, as a vehicle to expose the assumptions underlying the current debate. His comparison of the two historical settings reveals many similarities between the Progressives' reform proposals and the contemporary justiflcations.[or the displacement of politics with constitutional law. Dean Sandalow concludes that the distrust of politics rests not …

The Method Of Electing The President, Thomas M. Cooley, Abram S. Hewitt

Articles

Twice in the history of the United States the nation has been brought to the verge of civil war by difficulties growing out of presidential elections. And yet no system was ever devised with more care to preclude any reasonable complaint.