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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

The Creativity Of The Common-Law Judge: The Jurisprudence Of William Mitchell, Charles J. Reid Jr. Jan 2003

The Creativity Of The Common-Law Judge: The Jurisprudence Of William Mitchell, Charles J. Reid Jr.

William Mitchell Law Review

Mitchell's presence graced the Minnesota Supreme Court for nearly nineteen years, from 1881 to 1900. His output was prodigious. He produced nearly 1600 judicial opinions. It has been estimated “that excluding Sundays, and allowing a month in each year for vacation, Judge Mitchell wrote one opinion in every three days for nineteen years.” Indeed, “[i]n point of numbers, his opinions exceed those of any other justice of the Supreme Court of his state, or the nation.” It is one aspect, perhaps the central aspect, the unifying theme of this prolific body of work, that is the focus of this essay: …


Obligations Impaired: Justice Jonathan Jasper Wright And The Failure Of Reconstruction In South Carolina, Caleb A. Jaffe Jan 2003

Obligations Impaired: Justice Jonathan Jasper Wright And The Failure Of Reconstruction In South Carolina, Caleb A. Jaffe

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Part I of this article, on the historiography of South Carolina Reconstruction, explains the difficulty scholars have had in uncovering the documentary history of Reconstruction, and outlines the development of historical interpretations of Reconstruction from the Nineteenth century Redeemer-era accounts to the revisionists of the 1970's. Part II provides brief biographies of both Justice Wright and William James Whipper. Parts III and IV track the different approaches of Whipper and Wright on two vital issues of their day: (1) whether to repudiate all private debts relating to slavery; and (2) how to construct a homestead law to protect cash-poor landowners. …