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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
That Elusive Consensus: The Historiographic Significance Of William E. Nelson's Works On Judicial Review, Mark Mcgarvie
That Elusive Consensus: The Historiographic Significance Of William E. Nelson's Works On Judicial Review, Mark Mcgarvie
Chicago-Kent Law Review
This essay provides a historiographical context for Nelson’s work on judicial review. It argues that Nelson’s integration of intellectual and legal history not only rebutted the instrumentalist historiography that prevailed when he undertook his work on Marshall and judicial review, but also fostered an appreciation of the need to place legal actors in the intellectual context in which they acted. Highlighting the influence of Bernard Bailyn’s pathfinding work on popular sovereignty upon Nelson’s development of his consensus theory, the essay contends that Nelson’s work changed the course of academic readings of Marshall’s jurisprudence to be consistent with a broader acceptance …
Rejecting The Legal Process Theory Joker: Bill Nelson's Scholarship On Judge Edward Weinfeld And Justice Byron White, Brad Snyder
Rejecting The Legal Process Theory Joker: Bill Nelson's Scholarship On Judge Edward Weinfeld And Justice Byron White, Brad Snyder
Chicago-Kent Law Review
My contribution to this tribute places Bill Nelson’s scholarship about Judge Edward Weinfeld and Justice Byron White within several contexts. It is a personal history of Nelson the law student, law clerk, and young scholar; an intellectual history of legal theory since the 1960s; an examination of the influence of legal theory on Nelson’s scholarship based on his writings about Weinfeld and White; and an example of how legal historians contend with the subject of judicial reputation. Nelson was one of many former Warren Court and Burger Court clerks who joined the professoriate and rejected the legal process theory that …
A Response: The Impact Of War On Justice In The History Of American Law, William E. Nelson
A Response: The Impact Of War On Justice In The History Of American Law, William E. Nelson
Chicago-Kent Law Review
The foundational claim of this essay is that judges at most points in time should act with restraint and should not attempt to resolve contested issues of policy. They should incorporate new policies into the law only when the polity as a whole has already adopted a particular policy or when it is in the process of adopting one. The essay then maintains that there have been three periods in American history—the Revolution and the subsequent decades of constitution-making, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and World War II and its aftermath—when the American public as an entity did adopt policies …