Digital Commons Network^™

Constitutional Law--Executive Pardons In The Courts

Michigan Law Review

An interesting conflict between American political theories and early English precedents arose in a recent case involving the jurisdiction of a court of equity to set aside a pardon procured through fraud and deception upon the pardoning power. At the common law any suppression of the truth or suggestion of falsehood in procuring a pardon was held to vitiate it. HAWKINS, B. 2, ch. 37, § 8; 4 BLACK. COMM. 398, 400. The statute of 27 EDW. III, c. 2, provided that where a pardon was granted at any man's suggestion, the fact of such suggestion and the name of …

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

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 …

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

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 …

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 …

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.

Front Matter, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Front Matter for Volume 21, Issue 5 of Michigan Law Review

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 …

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

Books Received

Michigan Law Review

A list of books received by Michigan Law Review

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 …

Criminal Appeals In Southern States

Michigan Law Review

The attitude of American courts of last resort toward criminal convictions in the lower courts would be expected to have a pronounced effect on the number of appeals resorted to and the general respect of lawyers and criminals for decisions in original proceedings. The willingness of our supreme courts to hear appeals on technical and illusory grounds has often been compared most unfavorably, as in 51 AM.. L. REV. 239, with the informality and efficiency of appeals in other Anglo-Saxon countries. See, for example, 7 JOUR. OF CRIM. LAW, 17. Dean Roscoe Pound is quoted in 2 JOUR. OF CRIM. …

Negligence--The Doctrine Of Last Clear Chance

Michigan Law Review

Generally conceded to have originated in the famous donkey case of Davies v. Mann, 10 M. & W. 546, the doctrine of last clear chance has been the subject of infinitely varying judicial interpretations. Indeed, the original case itself seems to be clear neither as to the precise facts nor the reasons for the decision. Suffice it for the purpose of this discussion that the owner who had negligently turned his donkey into the road with its feet fettered was allowed to recover for its death resulting from a collision with a negligently driven wagon. Thus was started on …

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

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.

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. …

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 …

Admission To The Bar--Educational Requirements

Michigan Law Review

The quotation following is a literal transcript from the stenographer's record of the cross-examination of a colored witness by a Greek attorney in a court of record in Michigan.

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 …

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

Workmen's Compensation Acts--Nature Of Action Thereunder A Propos The Extraterritoriality Question

Michigan Law Review

The nature of the right and duty created by Workmen's Compensation Acts has been the subject of considerable discussion by courts and writers, but still defies settlement. The United States district court in Kansas was called upon to decide this question in a recent case involving the application of the Kansas statute of limitations. The court held that an action under the Workmen's Compensation Act was not one entitling the plaintiff to claim the longer period which applied to "an action upon contract, express or implied." Davidson v. Payne, 281 Fed. 544. There is nothing in the nature or …

Front Matter, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Front Matter for Volume 21, Issue 4 of Michigan Law Review

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.

Effect Of Improper Acts After A Lawful Arrest

Michigan Law Review

For our purpose we shall not consider the results which may follow an attempt to arrest, lawful or unlawful, where the party flees or resists; nor those following an illegal arrest which is effected without resistance. In the case of an attempt to arrest there is no end of possible situations and the rules of law are legion; an illegal arrest without resistance renders the officer liable only in damages for false imprisonment, McCullough v. Greenfield, 133 Mich. 463. While misunderstandings between the parties are less likely to occur, and the rights and duties of each are more easily …

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 …

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

Books Received

Michigan Law Review

A list of books received by Michigan Law Review