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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

"Airbrushed Out Of The Constitutional Canon": The Evolving Understanding Of Giles V. Harris, 1903-1925, Samuel Brenner Mar 2009

"Airbrushed Out Of The Constitutional Canon": The Evolving Understanding Of Giles V. Harris, 1903-1925, Samuel Brenner

Michigan Law Review

Richard H. Pildes argued in an influential 2000 article that the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Giles v. Harris, which was written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, was the "one decisive turning point" in the history of "American (anti)-democracy." In Giles, Holmes rejected on questionable grounds Jackson W. Giles's challenge to the new Alabama Constitution of 1901-a document which was designed to disfranchise and had the effect of disfranchising African Americans. The decision thus contributed significantly to the development of the all-white electorate in the South, and the concomitant marginalization of southern African Americans. According to Pildes, however, the …


Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, And The Abolition Movement, John D. Bessler Jan 2009

Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, And The Abolition Movement, John D. Bessler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

In 1764, Cesare Beccaria, a 26-year-old Italian, penned . The treatise argued that state-sanctioned executions and torture violate natural law. As we near the 250th anniversary of its publication, author John D. Bessler provides a comprehensive review of the abolition movement, from before Beccaria's time to the present. Bessler reviews Beccaria's influence on Enlightenment thinkers and more importantly, on America's Founding Fathers. The Article also provides an extensive review of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence and then contrasts it with the trend in International Law towards the abolition of the death penalty. It then discusses the current state of the death penalty …


Jurisdiction Without Territory: From The Holy Roman Empire To The Responsibility To Protect, Anne Orford Jan 2009

Jurisdiction Without Territory: From The Holy Roman Empire To The Responsibility To Protect, Anne Orford

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Essay focuses upon one contemporary manifestation of that ongoing battle over the relationship between jurisdiction and control over territory-the emergence and institutionalization of the "responsibility to protect" concept. The idea that States and the international community have a responsibility to protect populations has shaped internationalist debates about conflict prevention, the use of force, and international administration since its development by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2001. The responsibility to protect concept is premised on the notion, to quote former Secretary- General Kofi Annan, that "the primary raison d'être and duty" of every State is …