Law Commons^™

Declaratory Judgments

Michigan Law Review

The Connecticut legislature passed an act in 1921 authorizing courts to make binding declarations of rights. The act was attacked as unconstitutional on the same ground raised by the supreme court of Michigan against the Michigan Declaratory Judgment Act in the case of Amway v. Railway Co., 211 Mich. 592, 12 A. L. R. 26, namely, that declaring rights was not a judicial function. But the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut sustained the act as in no way contravening the constitution. Braman v. Babcock (Conn., 1923), 120 Atl. 150.

Internationial Aspects Of Prohibition Enforcement

Michigan Law Review

The Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution prohibits "the manufacture, sale, or transportation oi intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes." 40 Stat. 1050, 1941. In the National Prohibition Cases, 253 U. S. 350, 386, the amendment was said to be operative "throughout the entire territorial limits of the United States." As originally enacted, the National Prohibition Act did not in terms define its territorial field, but a supplemental provision afterwards enacted declares that the act "shall apply not only …

A Critique Of Methods For Alteration Of Women's Legal Status, Gladys Wells

Michigan Law Review

A case was appealed because all women electors were excluded from the jury. Held, the Nineteenth federal Amendment merely prohibits discrimination, leaving the states to confer the right of suffrage. Moreover, jury service is distinct therefrom; and the state constitution excludes women by providing for juries of twelve "men." If being an elector ipso facto entitled to jury service, the legislature could prescribe no other limitation. No question of violation of the Fourteenth Amendment can be raised since the accused does not belong to the excluded class.

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 …

Constitutional Law--Evidence--Searches And Seizures, H. C. H.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

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 …

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.

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

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 …

Code Civil Précédé De La Constitution Belge, Jean Servais, E. Mechelynck

Civil Codes (1800-1923)

Avec des notes de concordance et de jurisprudence utiles a l’interprétation des textes.

At head of title: Collection des Codes Belges.

Extrait des Codes belges et lois usuelles en vigueur en Belgque, 12e. edition

Constitutional Law--Licenses, H. C. H.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Admissibility Of Evidence Obtained By Illegal Search And Seizure, G. W. Meuth

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Former Jeopardy, Roy Mitchell Moreland

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Constitutions Of The Northwest States, John D. Hicks

Selected Books and Theses

Covers subjects such as the statehood movement; constitutional conventions; the organization of state governments; education and state lands; banks, corporations, and trusts; labor and social legislation; taxation; suffrage and other miscellaneous topics; and admission to the Union. Includes a bibliography. A study in partial fulfillment for a degree of doctor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin (1916) and reprinted in University Studies, January-April 1923.

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 …

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 …

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, …

Has A Person The Constitutional Right To Abstain From Work, William F. Keefer

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

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

Michigan Law Review

The power of Congress over the territories was involved in three cases. Balzac v. Porto Rico held that Porto Rico has not been "incorporated" into the United States so as to make applicable the constitutional requirement of trial by jury in criminal cases. This had been substantially settled in some of the Insular Cases, leaving only the question whether the situation had since been changed. In holding that it had not, Chief Justice Taft placed chief reliance on the absence of any explicit declaration by Congress and on the fact that in the Organic Act of Porto Rico of March …

Constitutional Law-Tax On Employment Of Child Labor

Michigan Law Review

The federal Child Labor Tax Law, Act of February 24, 1919, levied a tax of ten per cent on the net income of persons employing child labor. The act exempts from its operation employers who do not know the child employee to be under age. It also provides for the appointment of inspectors by the Secretary of Labor.

The Railway Strike Injunction

Michigan Law Review

The bill in this case was filed by the United States of America against various labor organizations, and officers of such organizations, concerned in the strike of railway shopmen. It alleged (in brief) a conspiracy on the part of defendants to compel the railroads to disregard the wage decision of the Labor Board, by obstructing the transportation of passengers and property in interstate commerce and the carriage of the mails. A temporary restraining order was issued on September 1, and a temporary injunction on September 25. None of the defendants answered the bill, but two of them appeared, moving to …

Compulsory Construction Of New Lines Of Railroad, Kenneth F. Burgess

Michigan Law Review

In the half century of public regulation of railroads in the United States, regulatory legislation has dealt primarily with functions incident to the operation of existing enterprises. The basic concept has been that railroad corporations as common carriers have voluntarily assumed obligations to the public which the public has a right to require to be performed.

Social And Economic Interpretation Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robert Eugene Cushman

Michigan Law Review

For those who love precision and definiteness the question of the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to social and economic problems remains an irritating enigma. The judicial construction of due process of law and the equal protection of the law has from the first discouraged systematic analysis and defied synthesis. More than one writer has emerged from the study of the problem with a neat and compact set of fundamental principles, only to have the Supreme Court discourteously ignore them in its next case. But paradoxical as it may seem, those who long for a wise and forward-looking solution of …

Book Reviews, Nathan Isaacs, Horace Lafayette Wilgus, Arthur H. Basye, Leonard D. White, Victor H. Lane, Edwin D. Dickinson

Michigan Law Review

What does a judge do when he decides a case? It would be interesting to collect the answers ranging from those furnished by primitive systems of law in which the judge was supposed to consult the gods to the ultra-modern, rather profane system described to me recently by a retrospective judge: "I make up my mind which way the case ought to be decided, and then I see if I can't get some legal ground to make it stick." Perhaps the widespread impression is the curiously erroneous one lampooned by Gnaeus Flavius (Kantorowitz). The judge is supposed to sit at …

Indemnity Act Of 1863 A Study In The War-Time Immunity Of Governmental Officers, James G. Randall

Michigan Law Review

One of the familiar measures of the Union administration during the Civil War was the suspension of the habeas corpus privilege and the consequent subjection of civilians to military authority. The essential irregularity of such a situation in American law is especially conspicuous when one considers its inevitable sequel-namely, the protection of military and civil officers from such prosecution as would normally follow invasion of private rights and actual injury of persons and property. Such protection was supplied by a bill of indemnity passed in 1863, and this law, with its amendment of i866, forms a significant chapter in the …