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Full-Text Articles in Law
Law Library Blog (November 2016): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Law Library Blog (November 2016): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Law Library Newsletters/Blog
No abstract provided.
The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns
The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns
Faculty Working Papers
This short essay is a summary of my assessment of the meaning of the "vanishing trial" phenomenon. It addresses the obvious question: "So what?" It first briefly reviews the evidence of the trial's decline. It then sets out the steps necessary to understand the political and social signficance of our vastly reducing the trial's importance among our modes of social ordering. The essay serves as the Introduction to a book, The Death of the American Trial, soon to be published by the University of Chicago Press.
She...Refuses To Deliver Up Herself As The Slave Of Your Petitioner': Émigrés, Enslavement, And The 1808 Louisiana Digest Of The Civil Laws (Symposium On The Bicentennial Of The Digest Of 1808--Collected Papers), Rebecca J. Scott
Articles
Philosophically and juridically, the construct of a slave-a "person with a price"--contains multiple ambiguities. Placing the category of slave among the distinctions of persons "established by law," the 1808 Digest of the Civil Laws Now in Force in the Termtoiy of Orleans recognized that "slave" is not a natural category, inhering in human beings. It is an agreement among other human beings to treat one of their fellows as property. But the Digest did not specify how such a property right came into existence in a given instance. The definition of a slave was simply ostensive, pointing toward rather than …
Without Fear Or Favor: Judge James Edwin Horton And The Trial Of The 'Scottsboro Boys', Douglas O. Linder
Without Fear Or Favor: Judge James Edwin Horton And The Trial Of The 'Scottsboro Boys', Douglas O. Linder
Faculty Works
One evening, Circuit Judge James Horton, Jr. was having dinner with his family in his antebellum home in central Athens, Alabama; Limestone's county seat. Dinners in the Horton household were an opportunity to discuss events of the day. In early March of 1933, there were plenty of events to discuss. The ringing of their party line phone interrupted the Horton family dinner. The judge excused himself from the table. When he returned a few minutes later, he looked grim. The retrial of the Scottsboro Boys had been transferred to Decatur in neighboring Morgan County. He was to be the presiding …
Melting Hearts Of Stone: Clarence Darrow And The Sweet Trials, Douglas O. Linder
Melting Hearts Of Stone: Clarence Darrow And The Sweet Trials, Douglas O. Linder
Faculty Works
Detroit seemed to Dr. Ossian Sweet a good place to launch a medical practice in 1921. Ossian Sweet understood racial violence all too well. Growing up in Orlando, Ossian had witnessed a large crowd of whites running a black boy down a dusty road. Seeing racial hatred in its ugliest forms instilled in Sweet a deep race consciousness and determination not to let bigotry prevent him from achieving his own personal goals. He decided to move into his new home at 2905 Garland, whatever the risks to him and his family. Clarence Darrow associated with many causes over his long …
Beyond Mitigation: Towards A Theory Of Allocution, Kimberly A. Thomas
Beyond Mitigation: Towards A Theory Of Allocution, Kimberly A. Thomas
Articles
THE COURT: I don't think I have time to listen .... I am not going to reexamine your guilt or innocence here. That is not the purpose of a sentence.. THE DEFENDANT: I did not have the chance to tell you .... THE DEFENDANT: But, your Honor, listen to me-1 Should the court hear this defendant? Is the story of innocence relevant at allocution-the defendant's opportunity to speak on his or her own behalf at the sentencing hearing prior to the imposition of sentence? Or, is the purpose of allocution something different, as the judge suggests? The answers depend on …
Using Court Records For Research, Teaching, And Policymaking: The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, Margo Schlanger, Denise Lieberman
Using Court Records For Research, Teaching, And Policymaking: The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, Margo Schlanger, Denise Lieberman
Articles
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is, wisely, planning the future of its enormous collection of relatively recent court records. The pertinent regulation, a “records disposition schedule” first issued in 1995 by the Judicial Conference of the United States in consultation with NARA, commits the Archives to keeping, permanently, all case files dated 1969 or earlier; all case files dated 1970 or later in which a trial was held, and “any civil case file which NARA has determined in consultation with court officials to have historical value.” Other files may be destroyed 20 years after they enter the federal …
Stamped With Glory: Lewis Tappan And The Africans Of The Amistad, Douglas O. Linder
Stamped With Glory: Lewis Tappan And The Africans Of The Amistad, Douglas O. Linder
Faculty Works
Abolitionism came relatively late to Lewis Tappan. Devotional, benevolent and hardworking are all words that describe Tappan in his twenties and thirties. Social reformer he was not. In 1818, Tappan abandoned the Calvinism of his mother for Unitarianism, then fashionable for a socially ambitious merchant. For the next eight years, Tappan enjoyed the typical life of an upper-middle-class New England merchant. He took his new faith seriously, however, editing a Unitarian journal, and becoming the first treasurer of the American Unitarian Association. In the mid-1820's, America experienced The Great Second Awakening, a widespread revival of religion and religious debate and …
The Romance Of Revenge: Capital Punishment In America, Samuel R. Gross
The Romance Of Revenge: Capital Punishment In America, Samuel R. Gross
Articles
On February 17, 1992, Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive terms of life imprisonment for killing and dismembering 15 young men and boys (Associated Press 1992a). Dahmer had been arrested six months earlier, on July 22, 1991. On January 13 he pled guilty to the fifteen murder counts against him, leaving open only the issue of his sanity. Jury selection began two weeks later, and the trial proper started on January 30. The jury heard two weeks of testimony about murder, mutilation and necrophilia; they deliberated for 5 hours before finding that Dahmer was sane when he committed these …
A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts With Torturers, Juan E. Mendez
A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts With Torturers, Juan E. Mendez
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
A Retrospective On The Criminal Trial Jury, 1200-1800, Thomas A. Green
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 …
The Jury, Seditious Libel And The Criminal Law, Thomas A. Green
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: …
Societal Concepts Of Criminal Liability For Homicide In Medieval England, Thomas A. Green
Societal Concepts Of Criminal Liability For Homicide In Medieval England, Thomas A. Green
Articles
THE early history of English criminal law lies hidden behind the laconic formulas of the rolls and law books. The rules of the law, as expounded by the judges, have been the subject of many studies; but their practical application in the courts, where the jury of the community was the final and unbridled arbiter, remains a mystery: in short, we know little of the social mores regarding crime and crimi- nals. This study represents an attempt to delineate one major aspect of these societal attitudes. Its thesis is that from late Anglo-Saxon times to the end of the middle …
The Inefficiency Of The American Jury, Edson R. Sunderland
The Inefficiency Of The American Jury, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
What is proposed in the present article is to show that in attempting to preserve the independence of the jury in its exclusive juris- diction over questions of fact, the people and the courts in most American jurisdictions have departed from the common law practice and have introduced a principle calculated to undermine the very institution which they wish to strengthen. That is to say, through the rules prohibiting judges from commenting on the weight of the evidence, juries tend to become irresponsible, verdicts tend to become matters of chance, and the intricacy of procedure, with its cost, delay and …
Some Observations On Case Law Reporting, John R. Rood
Some Observations On Case Law Reporting, John R. Rood
Articles
There is an old tradition, still believed by many lawyers, that these year-books were official reports made by a reporter appointed and paid by the king. If there ever was such a reporter, he is yet to be discovered. No year-books have been found in the treasury of the courts; there is no record of the appointment or payment of any official reporter, through all the two hundred and fifty years covered by the year-books; all the year-books now in the British Museum were found in private hands.2 Is it conceivable that an official reporter would criticize the court and …
Materials Of Jurisprudence, James V. Campbell
Materials Of Jurisprudence, James V. Campbell
Articles
This period is marked by rather more strenuous efforts than have been made before in this country, to solve the problem of condensing and simplifying the law. Our own day is peculiar in the endeavors we have seen to evolve what is claimed to be a science of jurisprudence. Some admirable writers have succeeded in dividing the domain of law into its larger or smaller fields, and have shown with more or less fulness the relative positions of these, and their mutual dependence. This is a valuable service; for all lawyers know that, without a reasonably clear perception of the …