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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
The Estate Planning Perils Of 2010 And Beyond, Brett T. Bradford
The Estate Planning Perils Of 2010 And Beyond, Brett T. Bradford
Brett T. Bradford
This paper explores the confusion surrounding the repeal of the federal estate tax for the year 2010. The Economic Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act gradually scaled down the federal estate tax and eventually repealed the tax in 2010. The Act has a sunset provision that would return the tax to a much higher rate than has been seen in recent times. This paper explores the history, intent and purpose of federal estate taxes; the intent and purpose behind the repeal in EGTRAA; and what attempts congress has made to fix the mess.
Commerce In The Commerce Clause: A Response To Jack Balkin, Robert G. Natelson
Commerce In The Commerce Clause: A Response To Jack Balkin, Robert G. Natelson
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The Constitution's original meaning is its meaning to those ratifying the document during a discrete time period: from its adoption by the Constitutional Convention in late 1787 until Rhode Island's ratification on May 29, 1790. Reconstructing it requires historical skills, including a comprehensive approach to sources. Jack Balkin's article Commerce fails to consider the full range of evidence and thereby attributes to the Constitution's Commerce Clause a scope that virtually no one in the Founding Era believed it had.
Color-Blind: Procedure's Quiet But Crucial Role In Achieving Racial Justice, Benjamin V. Madison Iii
Color-Blind: Procedure's Quiet But Crucial Role In Achieving Racial Justice, Benjamin V. Madison Iii
Benjamin V Madison, III
This article explores the role of procedural institutions, both in the Constitution and in other laws related to the judicial system, that promote impartial justice. The article explores the twin principles of human fallibility and the equality of all human beings as the fundamental bases of the judicial system. The role of procedure in enabling federal courts to enforce the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education is a featured part of the article.
John Brown's Constitution, Robert L. Tsai
John Brown's Constitution, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
It will surprise many Americans to learn that before John Brown and his men briefly captured Harper’s Ferry, they authored and ratified a Provisional Constitution. This deliberative act built upon the achievements of the group to establish a Free Kansas, during which time Brown penned an analogue to the Declaration of Independence. These acts of writing, coupled with Brown’s trial tactics after his arrest, cast doubts on claims that the man was a lunatic or on a suicide mission. Instead, they suggest that John Brown aimed to be a radical statesman, one who turned to extreme tactics but nevertheless remained …
The Functions Of Ethical Originalism, Richard A. Primus
The Functions Of Ethical Originalism, Richard A. Primus
Articles
Supreme Court Justices frequently divide on questions of original meaning, and the divisions have a way of mapping what we might suspect are the Justices’ leanings about the merits of cases irrespective of originalist considerations. The same is true for law professors and other participants in constitutional discourse: people’s views of original constitutional meaning tend to align well with their (nonoriginalist) preferences for how present constitutional controversies should be resolved. To be sure, there are exceptions. Some people are better than others at suspending presentist considerations when examining historical materials, and some people are better than others at recognizing when …
A Critical Legal Rhetoric Approach To In Re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation, Lolita Buckner Inniss
A Critical Legal Rhetoric Approach To In Re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation, Lolita Buckner Inniss
Publications
In this paper I apply critical legal rhetoric to the judicial opinion rendered in response to the Defendants' Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs' Second Amended and Consolidated Complaint in 'In Re African American Slave Descendants', a case concerning the efforts of a group of modern-day descendants of enslaved African-Americans to obtain redress for the harms of slavery. The chief methodological framework for performing critical legal rhetorical analysis comes from the work of Marouf Hasian, Jr. particularly his schema for analysis which he calls substantive units in critical legal rhetoric. Critical legal rhetoric is a potent tool for exposing the …