Law Commons^™

Indigent Access To Civil Courts: The Tiger Is At The Gates, Wayne H. Scott

Vanderbilt Law Review

The accusation that justice in America has become a luxury has been heard with increasing frequency in recent years. An often criticized aspect of this perceived discrimination is that the poor are systematically deprived of effective access, and frequently of any access at all, to the judicial process by the varied and burdensome expenses of civil litigation.' Although these financial barriers have been subjected to increasingly successful attacks in the courts, the extent to which they have been lowered remains unclear. Nevertheless, an examination of the steps already taken to alleviate the problem of the indigent civil litigant raises hopes …

State Courts And The Federal System, Griffin B. Bell

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the more important aspects of federalism lies in the relationship which has been established between state and federal courts. The interworkings of the judicial process involve power in some in-stances and principles of comity in others. The purpose of this article is to examine this relationship, including possible areas of abrasion resulting from the interworkings between the two court systems.

Justice Murphy: The Freshman Years, Woodford Howard

Vanderbilt Law Review

Justice Murphy is commonly regarded as having been a libertarian activist. He was not highly regarded as a Justice during his lifetime and this opinion prevails today. Here Professor Howard sees Justice Murphy during his early years on the Supreme Court as a man of indecision rather than an uncompromising libertarian. Through an examination of first amendment cases between 1940-42, the author finds that Murphy displayed a common reaction to the responsibilities of a new Supreme Court Justice which differed from most only in intensity.

The First Amendment And The Judicial Process: A Reply To Mr. Frantz, Wallace Mendelson

Vanderbilt Law Review

Cut loose from its foundation in the distinction between discussion and incitement, the clear and present danger test lost its rational meaning and became a cloak for "vague but fervent transcendental-ism." In short, the activists destroyed it as an intelligible guide to decision-and then abandoned it about a dozen years ago. Meanwhile they have tried, and apparently discarded, one "new" verbalism after another. The latest is Mr. Justice Black's absolutist concentration on two untroubled words in the first amendment: "no law." This gambit--"no law means no law"--again begs all the difficulties simply by ignoring them. As Dean Griswold has suggested, …

Supreme Court Attitudes Toward Federal Administrative Agencies, Joseph Tanenhaus

Vanderbilt Law Review

This article reports for a legal audience an examination by social science methods of the validity of certain hypotheses about the behavior of the United States Supreme Court and of its individual members. In order that this study may be viewed in broader perspective,the first part of the essay surveys the prior uses of social science methods in dealing with the judicial process.

The Nature Of The Arbitration Process, William M. Hepburn, Pierre R. Loiseaux

Vanderbilt Law Review

The process of reaching a decision in labor-management arbitrations involves many uncertain factors. As to the final result in a case, we can perhaps say that it is in accord with the contract of the parties or that it is not; that it is "fair" or not; "practical" or unworkable; or that it accords with "public policy" or violates it. Some or all of the criteria discussed in this article may be satisfied in a particular case, but, as is proper, the parties are most often interested in basic equities, in whether an award can be brought within the ambit …

What Is Happening In The Conflict Of Laws: Three Supreme Court Cases, Wendell Carnahan

Vanderbilt Law Review

An answer to the topical inquiry is "A great deal" but full explanation of the general answer to a very big question cannot be attempted in a single article. Instead, attention will be directed primarily to the opinions in three cases decided on the same day by the Supreme Court of the United States. These cases present problems in the segments of conflict of laws dealing with principles of forum non conveniens and full faith to a statute,' jurisdiction over a foreign corporation and a combination of choice of laws rules and judicial recognition of an alimony award. These cases …

The Moral Element In Supreme Court Decisions, Samuel E. Stumpf

Vanderbilt Law Review

Does the United States Supreme Court decide cases on the basis of moral and ethical value judgments? Such a question may reveal a misunderstanding of the nature of law as well as the nature of the judicial process. Moreover, to expect the Court to roam in the field of morals may indicate a failure to take into account the limitations placed upon the Court both by our federal system and by the division of powers. Indeed, a reading of the Supreme Court decisions for the past twenty years reveals a manful resistance on the part of the judges to intrude …

Book Reviews, Carl B. Swisher (Reviewer), Elvin E. Overton (Reviewer), Jay Murphy (Reviewer), Charlotte Williams (Reviewer), Alexander Holtzoff (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

Book Reviews

LIONS UNDER THE THRONE

By Charles P. Curtis, Jr.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947. Pp. xviii, 368. $3.50

MR. JUSTICE BLACK: THE MAN AND His OPINIONS

By John P. Frank (Introduction by Charles A. Beard)

New York: Knopf Company, 1949.Pp. xix, 357. $4.00

ON UNDERSTANDING THE SUPREME COURT

By Paul A. Freund

Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1949. Pp. vi, 130. $3.00

MELVILLE VESTON FULLER: CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES, 1888-1919

By Willard L. King

New York: Macmillan Company, 1950. Pp.394. $5.00

CHIEF JUSTICE STONE AND THE SUPREME COURT

By Samuel J. Konefsky (Prefatory Note by Charles A. …

Trends In The Use Of Extrinsic Aids In Statutory Interpretation, Glendon M. Fisher Jr., William J. Harbison

Vanderbilt Law Review

As evidenced by the increasing numbers of court decisions which involve statutes,' and by the large and continually growing literature in the field, the subject of statutory interpretation is one of the most important in modern law. Although it is a field in which exact rules of automatic application can very seldom be formulated, only recently a member of the Supreme Court pointed out the great need for a set of "consistently accepted principles of interpretation." Since the primary purpose of all statutory interpretation is to ascertain the meaning and to effectuate the purposes of the legislature, and since words …