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Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

Fundamental Tendencies In Modern Jurisprudence, Rudolf Stammler

Michigan Law Review

The reception of Roman law presented new problems to jurisprudence.

At the end of the fifteenth century the reception of Roman law and canon law, together with the Lombard feudal law, was complete throughout the entire continent of Europe.

As a matter of fact, Roman law had come northward in the East from Constantinople at the same time that it was coming into Germany from the South and West; but that is for our question of no particular importance. The chief point is that everywhere there was the need of becoming familiar with this foreign law, so far as that …

Rights Of Finders, Ralph W. Aigler

Michigan Law Review

Much of the confusion and uncertainty in the law regarding the topic indicated above is due to a failure to distinguish between several types of situations and to appreciate the applicability of certain fundamental principles. The words "lost" and "find" are used in such widely varying senses that the all too common method of reaching a conclusion by first applying a name to a thing or situation has 'in this particular field led to special difficulty.

Constitutional Law--Equal Protection Of The Laws--Imposition Of Penalties On Common Carriers For Fialure To Settle Claims

Michigan Law Review

A Nebraska statute provided that common carriers should settle properly presented claims for loss of and damage to freight within sixty days from the presentation thereof, and in case such settlement was not made and more was recovered in a subsequent suit than had been tendered by the carrier, the amount found due should carry as a penalty seven per cent interest from the presentation of the claim and reasonable attorney's fees. In case of appeal, an additional attorney's fee might be included if the plaintiff succeeded. The plaintiff company presented a large number of freight claims, which were all …

Search And Seizure--Reasonableness

Michigan Law Review

Prohibition has rendered more than ever acute the problem of law .enforcement. Search for and seizure of contraband liquor as forfeited to the state is a very essential part of enforcement, and there is immediately raised the question: What constitutes a legal search and seizure?

The recent decision of the Michigan Supreme Court in People v. Case (Mich., 1922), 190 N. W. 289, may well serve as a starting point. There, officers without permission and without warrant entered defendant's automobile truck as it stood upon a public fair-ground, searched and found liquor therein, and arrested defendant when he appeared and …

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

Fraudulent Bills Of Lading, Merton L. Ferson

Michigan Law Review

Station agents, without receiving goods, have frequently signed bills of lading purporting to bind their company. When a bill of lading thus issued has been transferred to an innocent purchaser for value, the question arises whether such person may recover against the carrier company. The question is obviously one of the .agent's ability to bind his employer.

The Supreme Court's Adjudication Of Constitutional Issues In 1921-1922, V, Thomas Reed Powell

Michigan Law Review

By the terms of Article III of the Constitution the federal judicial power extends to cases and controversies of various kinds, and it is established that no dispute, even though otherwise cognizable, can be brought before the federal courts unless they are technically a case or a controversy. In illustration of this, Fairchild v. Hughes held that a private citizen with no other interest at stake than his personal opposition to woman suffrage can not bring a bill to restrain the Secretary of State from issuing a proclamation declaring the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Constitutional Law--Police Power, Regulation, And Confiscation

Michigan Law Review

Whether the power be taken away directly, or be deadened and atrophied in its action by adverse criticism and demagogic clamor, when the judiciary no longer feel at liberty to construe the provisions of the fundamental Law 'in the light of reason,' constitutional government, in the sense in which it has been understood for a century and a half, will be at an end, and the doctrine of the police power will have been swallowed up in the capacious maw of unrestrained democracy." 27 HARV. L. REV. 316. Mr. Wickersham penned this warning during the period when the swell of …

Challenges To The Array

Michigan Law Review

Trial by jury demands impartial jurors as the indispensable basis for public confidence. And the first requisite for obtaining impartiality is indifference on the part of those who select the jury. This was fully recognized at the common law, and ever since the days when jurors ceased to be witnesses and became triers of facts, it was a good objection to the entire panel that the sheriff was not indifferent between the parties in the selection and summoning of the jury. Prejudice on the part of individual jurors could be met by challenges to the polls, but when favor lurked …

Landowner V. Intruder; Intruder V. Landowner. Basis Of Responsibility In Tort., Leon Green

Michigan Law Review

The struggle of the concept of moral blameworthiness to supplant the primitive notion that a person acts at his peril as a basis of responsibility in the field of tort touches every nook and cranny of the common law. The necessity of making use of the same procedure by which the older concept was developed has proved a great hindrance in the way of a quick and complete conquest by the notion of responsibility based upon fault. Negligence cannot yet claim a complete mastery over trespass in the field of unintended violent harms. Nevertheless, in so far as a change …

The Juristic Philosophy Of Justice Holmes, John C.H. Wu J.D.

Michigan Law Review

Philosophy in the full sense," says William James, "is only man thinking, thinking about generalities rather than about particulars." In the same sense, we may describe juristic philosophy as man thinking about generalities in connection with law.

It is to be noted that I do not say "generalities of law;"--law itself being nothing more than a particular object-matter of knowledge, its generalities are to be handled by general jurisprudence rather than by juristic philosophy. By "generalities in connection with law", I mean the general problems of philosophy considered in relation to the study of law.

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

The Law Book Of The Future, William W. Cook

Michigan Law Review

In an article published in November, 1922, in the American Bar Association Journal on the "Power and Responsibility of the American Bar and its Relations to Democratic Institutions," the author pointed out the achievements of the profession in developing the law to meet the political and industrial needs of the American people. There is still other important work for the profession to do. Blackstone's and Kent's Commentaries have been outgrown and there is an imperative demand for a comprehensive and practical American treatise on all law for the use of law students and lawyers, legislators and the educated classes generally. …

An Inquiry Concerning The Functions Of Procedure In Legal Education, Edson R. Sunderland

Michigan Law Review

Procedure has always been the bête noire of the law school teacher. No other subject has developed such divergent opinions or such endless debates. None recurs with such periodic frequency and in no field of legal pedagogy has discussion seemed so barren of results. Three different general sessions of the Association of American Law Schools during the last ten years have been devoted largely or wholly to the subject of teaching procedure, and yet no substantial progress seems to have been made toward a standardized scheme of treatment. Individual teachers and schools have their individual views and policies, and they …

The Separation Of Powers, John A. Fairlie

Michigan Law Review

One of the characteristics of both national and state governments in the United States is the existence of three separate departments,--the legislative, executive, and judicial, each coordinate and in the main independent of the others. The Constitution of the United States establishes three such departments,--Congress with legislative power, the President with executive power, and the Supreme Court and other United States courts to be established by law, with judicial power. Each of the state constitutions also provides for three similar departments in the state government.

The Supreme Court's Adjudication Of Constitutional Issues In 1921-1922, Iv, Thomas Reed Powell

Michigan Law Review

That contracts between private parties cannot stand in the way of exercises of the police power for the promotion of health, morals and safety is firmly established. This principle was invoked against objection to rent regulation in decisions of the preceding term, and it is reiterated in Edgar A. Levy Leasing Co. v. Siegel. In one of the cases involved in this decision a tenant was relieved of a contract made after the statute was enacted, and the landlord here encountered the further doctrine that "of course, a lease made subsequent to the enactment of a statute cannot be …

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

Is A Municipal Fuel-Yard A "Public Service Plant"?

Michigan Law Review

In Consumers Coal Co. et al. v. City of Lincoln, et al. (Neb. 1922) 18g N. W. 643, the supreme court of Nebraska held that a municipal fuel-yard, selling fuel at retail to the inhabitants of the city, was not a "public service plant" authorized by a section of the city charter which empowered the city to acquire, own and operate gas and electric plants, street railways, telephone plants, "and any and all other public service plants and properties, for the purpose of supplying the city and the inhabitants thereof with such service and public utilities.'' The suit was …

The Law Of Property Act, 1922, Joseph Warren

Michigan Law Review

The English law of property legislation, which has been pending for over two years, was passed June 29 last. It will take effect January 1, 1925. For a century the reform of the law of real property has been a burning question in England-far more so than with us. Judges, lawyers, solicitors, conveyancing experts have all taken an active part. Learned societies have spoken through committees and royal commissions have reported. Piece by piece many of the antiquities have been abolished. But no reform is as far-reaching as the present act. In January, 1919, the Acquisition and Valuation of Land …

The Supreme Court's Adjudication Of Constitutional Issues In 1921-1922, Iii

Michigan Law Review

The conundrum, "When is a tax not a tax?" received in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. the answer: When from the face of the statute it appears that a prohibitory or regulatory penalty has been imposed for a departure from a detailed and specified course of conduct in business. Over the dissent of Mr. Justice Clarke, the court condemned as not an exercise of the federal taxing power a provision in the Revenue Act of 1918 imposing an excise of ten per cent of the net profits on all enterprises employing children under designated ages or in excess of designated …

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

The Supreme Court's Adjudication Of Constitutional Issues In 1921-1922, Ii, Thomas Reed Powell

Michigan Law Review

Questions of discrimination in rates or services arising under the Interstate Commerce Act or some of its amendments came before the court in a number of cases without raising any direct constitutional issues. Such an issue, however, was urged against a refusal of the Interstate Commerce Commission to allow a tap line owned by a Lumber company more than $3 per car as its share of the joint rate for traffic over it and the main line, but in Louisiana & P. B. Ry. Co. v. United States the claim that this restriction was so arbitrary as to deny the …

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

Patents-Judicial Legislation

Michigan Law Review

One Deitch conceived an invention in 1912; Doulett conceived the same idea in 1913; Muther conceived it in January, 1914, and Glines in March, 1914. All filed applications for a patent at about the same time, August, 1914, and interference proceedings were begun to determine the right to a patent. Under the express wording of the Patent Act the answer would seem clear. It provides, R. S. 4886, that "any person who has invented or discovered any new and useful art, * * * not known or used by others in this country, before his invention or discovery thereof, * …

Procedure And Practice Before The Federal Trade Commission, John Leland Mechem

Michigan Law Review

The Federal Trade Commission, now in its eighth year, has successfully withstood the attacks, judicial and political, which threatened at times to destroy it, or, at least, to render it impotent. The act creating it has been held constitutional; its powers and duties have been defined; the present administration has indorsed it; and the public have come to realize its power for good. As its activities have expanded its influence has become definitely felt by the business world. The increasing interest of both business men and members of the profession warrants a brief exposition of the practice before the Commission, …