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Rubbing The Rabbit's Foot: Gallows Superstitions And Public Healthcare In England During The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Superstitions possess an ancient pedigree. With the passage of time thematic superstitions developed; for example, some solely addressed the public’s health care needs. In fact, as far back as the fifth century many English subjects believed magical spells and jewels had curative properties. Law was another context that generated a body of superstitions. Capital punishment was one area that generated many superstitions. In fact, so many that a specific category was established: gallows superstitions. With hanging as the primary method of execution in England for centuries, this group of superstitions became a relatively large one. By merging the health care …

Lights Hidden Under Bushel's Case, Thomas A. Green

Book Chapters

Some forty years ago, Charlie Donahue created a course which he titled "Law, Morals and Society." Designed for undergraduates, and situated among the offerings of the University of Michigan's interdisciplinary Medieval and Renaissance Collegium, the course reflected the approach to doing history that, as this volume recognizes, Charlie has followed throughout his long and enormously influential career as scholar, teacher, lecturer, and inepressible master of well-timed interventions during conference-panel discussion periods. "LMS" was composed of four units. Charlie, who taught two of them, led off with the legal basis for the deposition of Richard II; I followed with the law …

Book Review: Political Crime In Europe: A Comparative Study Of France, Germany And England. Barton L. Ingraham. University Of California-Berkeley Press, 1979., Albert M. Pearson Iii

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Forensic Evidence And The Court Of Appeal For England And Wales, Lissa Griffin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal has extensively analyzed the role of forensic evidence. In doing so, the court has grappled with the admissibility and reliability of a broad range of forensic evidence, from DNA and computer forensics to medical and psychological proof, to more outlying subjects like facial mapping, fiber analysis, or voice identification. The court has analyzed these subjects from two perspectives: the admissibility of such evidence in the lower courts and the admissibility of such evidence as fresh evidence on appeal. In both contexts, the court has taken a practical approach to admitting forensic proof …

The Jury And Criminal Responsibility In Anglo-American History, Thomas A. Green

Articles

Anglo-American theories of criminal responsibility require scholars to grapple with, inter alia, the relationship between the formal rule of law and the powers of the lay jury as well as two inherent ideas of freedom: freedom of the will and political liberty. Here, by way of canvassing my past work and prefiguring future work, I sketch some elements of the history of the Anglo-American jury and offer some glimpses of commentary on the interplay between the jury—particularly its application of conventional morality to criminal judgments—and the formal rule of law of the state. My central intent is to pose questions …

Lawful Wife, Unlawful Sex - Examining The Effect Of The Criminalization Of Marital Rape In England And The Republic Of Ireland, Melisa J. Anderson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Habeas Corpus Proceedings In The High Court Of Parliament In The Reign Of James I, 1603-1625, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Scholarly Works

English parliamentary habeas corpus proceedings have been neglected by scholars. This Article ends that neglect. This Article focuses on the parliamentary habeas corpus proceedings that occurred in the reign of King James. The Article corrects several misunderstandings relating to the history of the writ of habeas corpus in England and to the history of the English Parliament (which in the seventeenth century commonly was referred to as the High Court of Parliament).

Part I of the Article provides answers to questions concerning the historical background and context of the parliamentary habeas corpus proceedings in the High Court of Parliament during …

Assisted Suicide: A Tough Pill To Swallow, Mary Margaret Penrose

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Retrying The Acquitted In England Part Iii: Prosecution Appeals Against Judges' Rulings Of "No Case To Answer", David S. Rudstein

San Diego International Law Journal

The Order in Council permitting the prosecution appeal of "Mo" Courtney's acquittal and allowing him to be retried for the same offense of which he had previously been acquitted stems from the Criminal Justice Act 2003. That Act, which applies in England and Wales, grants the government the right to appeal certain rulings by the trial judge in criminal prosecutions on an indictment, including a ruling that there is no case to answer, i.e., a directed verdict of acquittal, and if the appeal is successful, allows the reviewing court to order that the acquitted defendant?s trial be resumed or that …

Retrying The Acquitted In England Part Ii: The Exception To The Rule Against Double Jeopardy For Tainted Acquittals, David S. Rudstein

San Diego International Law Journal

Parliament enacted a statute in 1996 intended to limit the double jeopardy bar in some situations in which the defendant obtained an acquittal through improper means, thereby permitting the government to retry the person for the same offense of which he previously was tried and acquitted. The statute, part of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996, allows a retrial when an individual's acquittal was tainted, which, under the statute, means an acquittal resulting from interference with, or intimidation of, a juror, witness, or potential witness. In allowing a retrial in such circumstances, the statute creates an exception to the …

Retrying The Acquitted In England, Part I: The Exception To The Rule Against Double Jeopardy For New And Compelling Evidence, David S. Rudstein

San Diego International Law Journal

More than 240 years ago, Sir William Blackstone, perhaps the most important commentator on the English common law, wrote that when a man is once fairly found not guilty upon any indictment, or other prosecution, before any court having competent jurisdiction of the offence, he may plead such acquittal in bar of any subsequent accusation for the same crime. This plea of autrefois acquit (a former acquittal), Blackstone explained, is based upon the principle that no man is to be brought into jeopardy of his life, more than once for the same offence, which he called a universal maxim of …

Reforming The Crime Of Libel, Clive Walker

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Thoughts From Across The Water On Hearsay And Confrontation, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

This article draws on the history of the hearsay rule, and on recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, to argue that the right to confrontation should be recognised as a basic principle of the law of evidence, and that aspects of the Law Commission's proposals for reform of the hearsay rule, and of the Home Office's proposals for restrictions on the right of cross-examination, are therefore unsatisfactory.

Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen

Michigan Law Review

A Review of V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868

Strong Criticism Of The American System Of Trial By Jury, Yale Kamisar

Articles

I grieve for my country to say that the administration of the criminal law in all the states in the Union (there may be one or two exceptions) is a disgrace to our civilization.

Strings Attached--Violin Fraud And Other Deceptions, Carla J. Shapreau

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Violin Fraud: Deception, Forgery, Theft, and the Law by Brian W. Harvey

Conjugal Homicide And Legal Violence: A Comparative Analysis, Alison Young

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article examines the defences in English and Canadian criminal law available to battered women who kill their abusers. The article sets out in detail the formation and evolution of the doctrinal interpretation, in English law, of the defences of provocation, diminished responsibility, and self-defence. Current case law is examined, including the recent cases of Thornton and Ahluwalia. The objective of the essay is to provide a critical context, namely the legal construction of the phenomenon of conjugal violence, in which we can see the current elaboration of these defences. The Canadian position is investigated, by means of a thorough …

Review Of Kingship, Law And Society: Criminal Justice In The Reign Of Henry V, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

Edward Powell's splendid study of Henry V's strategy for keeping peace among magnate and gentry factions represents an important contribution to the history of criminal justice. After providing a panoramic view of the machinery of criminal justice, Powell analyzes the extent to which that machinery was effective as between the Crown, at the center, and the upper echelons of society in the provinces. His conclusion, not surprisingly, is that the regular processes of common-law criminal administration could not easily be deployed at those levels. But Powell does not let the matter drop there. Kingship, Law, and Society presents a lucid …

A Retrospective On The Criminal Trial Jury, 1200-1800, Thomas A. Green

Book Chapters

My recent book provided an overview of the history of the institutional aspects of the English criminal trial jury upon which all of the contributors to this volume have, tacitly or otherwise, commented. That tentative institutional background was intended both to stand on its own terms and to provide a framework for the studies on the relationship between law and society and on the history of ideas regarding the jury that made up the larger part of the volume. The two aspects of my book were joined: the socio-legal analysis and the history of ideas were to a large extent …

Crime And The Courts In England 1660-1800, Frank C. Shaw

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800 by J.M. Beattie

Conscience And The Law: The English Criminal Jury, Robert C. Palmer

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Verdict According to Conscience by Thomas Andrew Green

Tightening The Reins Of Justice In America: A Comparative Analysis Of The Criminal Jury I England And The United States, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Tightening the Reins of Justice in America: A Comparative Analysis of the Criminal Jury I England and the United States by Michael H. Graham

The Jury, Seditious Libel And The Criminal Law, Thomas A. Green

Book Chapters

The seditious libel trials of the eighteenth century constitute an important chapter in the history of freedom of the press and the growth of democratic government. While much has been written about the trials and about the administration of the criminal law in eighteenth-century England, little has been said about the relationship between the libel prosecutions and the more pervasive and long-standing problems of the criminal law. We have perhaps gone too far in positing-or simply assuming-a separation between political high misdemeanors and common-run felony cases such as homicide and theft. For there were points of contact between the two: …

The Assassination Attempt, Yale Kamisar

Articles

From the moment the would-be assassin opened fire until many days after he was found not guilty by reaaon of insanity, the press was fascinated by the case. The very same day that it reported the assassination attempt "in the open street, and in the broad face of day," the Times considered but quickly dismissed the possibility of insanity: "The defndant's purpose was carried out with the most cold-blooded determination. . . . His demeanor throughout was cool and collected, nor did there appear any evidence of insanity." When, several days later, it became plain that the defendant was indeed …

Social Research And The Use Of Medieval Criminal Records, Edward Powell

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England by James Buchanan Given, and Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348 by Barbara A. Hanawalt

Review Of Crime In England, 1550-1800, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

Crime in England, 1550-1800, is the second collection of essays on the social history of crime and the criminal law in early modern England to appear in recent years. Together with the essays in Albion's Fatal Tree (1975),' these offerings advance our knowledge of the subject considerably. To be sure, as G. R. Elton cautions, there are methodological problems in a field so new, and Elton's "Introduction" will serve as an excellent starting point for readers concerned with such matters. We must nevertheless recognize the accomplishments of the new school of socio-legal historians. The essays in this volume deal with …

Some Non-Religious Views Against Proposed 'Mercy-Killing' Legislation Part Ii, Yale Kamisar

Articles

There have been and there will continue to be compelling circumstances when a doctor or relative or friend will violate The Law On The Books and, more often than not, receive protection from The Law In Action. But this is not to deny that there are other occasions when The Law On The Books operates to stay the hand of all concerned, among them situations where the patient is in fact ( 1 ) presently incurable, ( 2) beyond the aid of any respite which may come along in his life expectancy, suffering ( 3 ) intolerable and ( 4) …

Some Non-Religious Views Against Proposed 'Mercy-Killing' Legislation Part I, Yale Kamisar

Articles

In essence, Williams' specific proposal is that death be authorized for a person in the above situation "by giving the medical practitioner a wide discretion and trusting to his good sense." This, I submit, raises too great a risk of abuse and mistake to warrant a change in the existing law. That a proposal entails risk of mistake is hardly a conclusive reason against it. But neither is it irrelevant. Under any euthanasia program the consequences of mistake, of course, are always fatal. As I shall endeavor to show, the incidence of mistake of one kind or another is likely …

Review Of Crime And Public Order In England In The Later Middle Ages, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

Slowly but surely the history of English criminal law is being rewritten. Abundant monographs, articles and introductions to texts have appeared in the past couple of decades; many more are on the way. Work has gone ahead on the substantive law of crimes, on the procedures of the criminal law and its institutions andmore tentatively-on the social history of English criminal law. While medievalists have led the way, work is now being undertaken by early modern and modern historians as well.

Review Of The King's Pardon For Homicide To A.D. 1307, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

NAOMI D. Hurnard's The King's Pardon for Homicide before AD 1307 is significant and instructive for both legal and social historians. The author has painstakingly pieced together the available evidence from a variety of classes of mediaeval English public records to achieve a clear statement of the law of excusable homicide, i.e., non-felonious but requiring a royal pardon. She has lucidly presented the procedure which marks out the legal life story of persons deserving pardon, from the pardonable slaying to the formal proclamation of the king's peace. But she has also accomplished much more. Through careful and generally sound use …