Law Commons^™

Compulsory Terms In Property, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Northwestern University Law Review

The state’s imposition of compulsory terms in property relations—such as habitability warranties binding landlords and tenants and minimum wages binding employers and employees—has long been conceived by analysts generally situated on the political right as an affront to individual freedom and inevitably harmful to the terms’ intended beneficiaries. This critique, though, seems to have special purchase in public discourse today not only within its traditional circle of supporters on the right but, at least in some instances, for a sizable number on the left as well. The bipartisan acceptance of this critique is serving as a substantial roadblock to a …

American Courts' Image Of A Tenant, Nadav Shoked

Northwestern University Law Review

What is the core of current American residential landlord–tenant law, and how was that core formed? This Essay argues that in the past few decades courts have settled on a two-pronged landlord–tenant law regime. The law provides tenants with assurances respecting the quality of the units they rent. It does not, conversely, provide them with any assurances respecting the price of the rental units—and, therefore, respecting their ability to remain in those units.

The first component of the regime was established through the well-known judicial creation and endorsement of the warranty of habitability. The second component’s entrenchment is often attributed …

On The Origins Of The Modern Corporation And Private Property, Bernard C. Beaudreau

Seattle University Law Review

The Modern Corporation and Private Property (MCPP) by Adolf A. Berle Jr. and Gardiner Means, published in 1932, is undisputedly the most influential work ever written in the field of corporate governance. In a nutshell, Berle and Means argued that corporate control had been usurped by a new class of managers, the result of which included (1) shareholder loss of control (a basic property right), (2) questionable corporate objectives and behavior, and (3) the potential breakdown of the market mechanism. In this paper, I examine the origins of MCPP, paying particular attention to the authors’ underlying motives. I argue that …

Ownership Without Citizenship: The Creation Of Noncitizen Property Rights, Allison Brownell Tirres

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At the nation’s founding, the common law of property defined ownership as an incident of citizenship. Noncitizens were unable lawfully to hold, devise, or inherit property. This doctrine eroded during the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but few scholars have examined its demise or the concommittant rise of property rights for foreigners. This Article is the first sustained treatment of the creation of property rights for noncitizens in American law. It uncovers two key sources for the rights that emerged during the nineteenth century: federal territorial law, which allowed for alien property ownership and alien suffrage, and state …

Keeping Up With The Jonses: Making Sure Your History Is Just As Wrong As Everyone Else's, Brian Sawers

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Before Katz v. United States, a search under the Fourth Amendment required a trespass. If there was no trespass on one’s property, then there was no search. In Katz, a 1967 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court abandoned that approach, instead finding a search without a trespass based on the government’s invasion of a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” In Oliver v. United States, the Court found that trespass was not sufficient to create a search. It found no reasonable expectation of privacy in open fields, and thus no search, even though the defendant had erected “No Trespassing” signs around his property …

An Incomplete Revolution: Feminists And The Legacy Of Marital-Property Reform, Mary Ziegler

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

As this Article shows, the conventional historical narrative of the divorce revolution is not so much incorrect as incomplete. Histories of the divorce revolution have focused disproportionately on the introduction of no-fault rules and have correctly concluded that women's groups did not play a central role in the introduction of such laws. However, work on divorce law has not adequately addressed the history of marital-property reform or engaged with scholarship on the struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment to the federal Constitution. Putting these two bodies of work in dialogue with one another, the Article provides the first comprehensive history …

Race And Constitutional Law Casebooks: Recognizing The Proslavery Constitution, Juan F. Perea

Michigan Law Review

Federalist No. 54 shows that part of Madison's public defense of the Constitution included the defense of some of its proslavery provisions. Madison and his reading public were well aware that aspects of the Constitution protected slavery. These aspects of the Constitution were publicly debated in the press and in state ratification conventions. Just as the Constitution's protections for slavery were debated at the time of its framing and ratification, the relationship between slavery and the Constitution remains a subject of debate. Historians continue to debate the centrality of slavery to the Constitution. The majority position among historians today appears …

Much Ado About Nothing Much: Protestant Episcopal Church In The Diocese Of Virginia V. Truro Church, Henry L. Chambers Jr., Isaac A. Mcbeth

University of Richmond Law Review

This essay reviews the issues the Supreme Court of Virginia resolved in Truro and notes important issues it did not resolve. Part II supplies the factual background and procedural history ofthe dispute. Part III summarizes the court's opinion and the reasoning underlying its determination that Virginia Code section57-9(A) is not applicable to this particular action. Part IV critiques the opinion, noting the issues the court resolved and how it resolved them. Part V briefly addresses issues that remain unresolved by the court's decision and discusses the implications of leaving those issues unresolved. Part VI presents the authors' conclusions.

Walking The Beach To The Core Of Sovereignty: The Historic Basis For The Public Trust Doctrine Applied In Glass V. Goeckel, Robert Haskell Abrams

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In 2004, a split panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals announced its conclusion that Michigan littoral owners of property owned to the water's very edge and could exclude members of the public from walking on the beach. In that instant almost 3300 miles of the Great Lakes foreshore became, in theory and in law, closed to public use. The case became the leading flash point of controversy between the vast public and ardent private property rights groups. A little more than one year later, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed that ruling as errant on public trust grounds and returned …

Separating The Criminals From The Community: Procedural Remedies For “Innocent Owners” In Public Housing Authorities, Sarah N. Kelly

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

"On The Chastity Of Women All Property In The World Depends" : Injury From Sexual Slander In The Nineteenth Century, Lisa R. Pruitt

Indiana Law Journal

In this Article, Professor Pruitt discusses conceptions of the injury associated with defamation law, focusing in particular on sexual slander cases that were brought in the early nineteenth century, before statements that impugned a woman's chastity were deemed slander per se. During this time, women had to prove so-called "special damages" in order to state a cause of action. Courts showed some flexibility in what they recognized as constituting "special damages," even stretching to recognize pecuniary harm in damaged personal relationships. Nevertheless, courts refused to recognize injuries stemming from and related to emotional distress injuries, and they were often skeptical …

Property Ownership By Married Women In Victorian Ontario, Susan Ingram, Kris Inwood

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper reports patterns of property holding by women and men in late nineteenth-century Ontario. We focus on the town of Guelph immediately before and after legislation in 1872 and 1884 which permitted married women to hold property in their own name. The female-held share of all property and the female share of all owners in the town increased sharply. The gains were made by married women, and even more strongly by single women and widows. However, there was little or no shift of property in nearby rural townships. We argue that an induced change in inheritance practice amplified the …

Caste, Class, And Equal Citizenship, William E. Forbath

Michigan Law Review

There is a familiar egalitarian constitutional tradition and another we have largely forgotten. The familiar one springs from Brown v. Board of Education; its roots lie in the Reconstruction era. Court-centered and countermajoritarian, it takes aim at caste and racial subordination. The forgotten one also originated with Reconstruction, but it was a majoritarian tradition, addressing its arguments to lawmakers and citizens, not to courts. Aimed against harsh class inequalities, it centered on decent work and livelihoods, social provision, and a measure of economic independence and democracy. Borrowing a phrase from its Progressive Era proponents, I will call it the social …

Toward A Constitutional Kleptocracy: Civil Forfeiture In America, Stephan B. Herpel

Michigan Law Review

Leonard Levy, the legal historian who has written a number of highly regarded historical studies on various provisions of the United States Constitution, has added to his impressive oeuvre a new study of civil and criminal forfeiture. A License to Steal brings together a discussion of English legal history, a review of a number of Nineteenth Century and late Twentieth Century Supreme Court forfeiture decisions, accounts of actual applications of civil and criminal forfeiture, and a summary and critique of legislative proposals that have been made for reform of the civil forfeiture provisions of the federal drug statute. There is …

Stories About Property, William W. Fisher Iii

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Carol M. Rose, Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership

Transfers Of Property In Eleventh-Century Norman Law, William John Gallagher

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Transfers of Property in Eleventh-Century Norman Law by Emily Zack Tabuteau

A Conflict Over Land, Francis E. Ackerman

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Adopted Children In Pennsylvania: A Class Without A Clause, Bruce M. Dolfman, James Charles Schwartzman

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Books Received, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES AND THE SUPREME COURT

By Samuel Hendel

New York: King's Crown Press, 1951. Pp. 337

==================================

DUE PROCESSES OF LAW

By Virginia Wood

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951. Pp. 436. $6.00.

==============================

LEGAL AID IN THE UNITED STATES

By Emery A. Brownell

Rochester: The Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Co., 1951. Pp. 333. $4.50.

================================

LEVIATHAN AND NATURAL LAW

By F. Lyman Windolph

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951. Pp. 147. $2.50.

======================================

OIL AND LAW

Articles reprinted from the Texas Law Review

Austin:Texas Law Review, 1951. Pp. 1736. Bound copies $15.00, unbound copies $12.00.

===================================

PRICE POLICIES …