Law Commons^™

Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, And The Abolition Movement, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

In 1764, Cesare Beccaria, a 26-year-old Italian criminologist, penned On Crimes and Punishments. That treatise spoke out against torture and made the first comprehensive argument against state-sanctioned executions. As we near the 250th anniversary of its publication, law professor John Bessler provides a comprehensive review of the abolition movement from before Beccaria's time to the present. Bessler reviews Beccaria's substantial influence on Enlightenment thinkers and on America's Founding Fathers in particular. The Article also provides an extensive review of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence and then contrasts it with the trend in international law towards the death penalty's abolition. It then discusses …

Injustice Casts Shadow On History Of State Executions, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

This article, published in the StarTribune of Minneapolis, discusses the history of lynchings and executions in the State of Minnesota. It specifically discusses miscarriages of justice that have taken place in Minnesota, along with highlighting other problems associated with capital punishment.

Professor Waller's Un-American Approach To Antitrust, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

Professor Waller asks an un-American question - what can the United States antitrust program learn from the rest of the world? This question is un-American because we in the United States rarely look to others for advice. Besides, we invented antitrust and we were practically alone in the world in enforcing antitrust for almost a century. Only during the current generation have many other nations had active and vigorous antitrust programs. Moreover, the United States is in the business of exporting our accumulated century of antitrust wisdom through a wide variety of methods, and we revel in playing this role. …

The Astonishing Year(S) Of 1996: A Confusion Of Tongues And Alphabetical Camels The First Time As Tragedy, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

Such irreverence was nothing new to Nimrod. A half-century earlier he had encouraged [Abraham], who'd publicly renounced idolatry even though his father manufactured and sold graven images: how ridiculous, he reasoned, to worship clay figures that had been made the day before! Thus did Nimrod have Abraham thrown into a fiery furnace, from which, according to Midrashic legend, he emerged unscathed. Unlike Nimrod, Abraham eschewed power in favor of teaching ethics and morality to his people.

In the intervening years Nimrod concerned himself with the building of great cities as testimony to his own power and invincibility. And in 1996 …

The “Midnight Assassination Law” And Minnesota’S Anti-Death Penalty Movement, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

This article traces the history of Minnesota's anti-death penalty movement and the 1889 Minnesota law - dubbed by contemporaries as the "midnight assassination law" - requiring private, nighttime executions. That law, authored by Minnesota legislator John Day Smith, restricted the number of execution spectators, prohibited newspapers from printing any execution details, and provided that only the fact of the execution could be lawfully printed. Also commonly referred to as the "John Day Smith law," this Minnesota statute was challenged as being unconstitutional by Minnesota newspapers after those newspapers printed details of a botched hanging and were charged with violating the …

The Public Interest And The Unconstitutionality Of Private Prosecutors, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the history of private and public prosecution in the United States, including standards governing prosecutorial ethics. It argues that the use of private prosecutors is unethical and violative of defendants' constitutional rights. In particular, the article asserts that the use of such prosecutors violates due process principles and creates, at the very least, an unacceptable appearance of impropriety. The article contends that the public's interest in not having its members erroneously charged or convicted in the criminal process outweighs an interested party's right to retain a private prosecutor as set forth in some state laws. In addition …

Our First Televised Genocide, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

It is absolutely appalling that we have come so casually to observe the carnage, so passively to view the starvation over breakfast papers or dinnertime newscasts, so helplessly to watch these totally bereft human beings trudging barefoot over treacherous terrain toward the middle of nowhere.

There are other questions as well, of course, not as easily answered. Where are all their voices now, those demonstrators who so vociferously opposed war, ostensibly out of an overweening reverence for life? Is the latter-day holocaust being systematically perpetrated in northern Iraq any less horrifying than a direct hit on a camouflaged bomb shelter …

Free Exercise In The Free State: Maryland's Role In Religious Liberty And The First Amendment, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

Maryland arguably holds the distinction of being the state whose early history most directly ensured, and whose citizenry was most directly affected by, the First Amendment's protection of religious freedom. Because of its relatively diverse religious population, Maryland stood out as both a champion of tolerance and a hotbed of discrimination for most of its colonial experience. Similarities have been pointed out between the first provincial government in St. Mary's, Maryland, and the American plan under the Constitution, particularly with respect to religious liberty.

This article offers a brief overview of the religious history of Maryland, focuses on important state …

A Framework For Evaluating The Antitrust Legacy Of The Reagan Administration, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The End Of Antitrust—Or A New Beginning?, Joe Sims, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust is in one of its periodic states of decline. Historically, it has rebounded from these valleys to rise to even higher peaks of enthusiastic public and political popularity. The first period of substantial antitrust activity began 15 years after the passage of the Sherman Act, and lasted into the 1920s. The Great Depression saw antitrust at its lowest, followed by Thurman Arnold's aggressive tenure, but World War II was hardly a period of great antitrust enthusiasm. The 1950 Celler-Kefauver amendment to section 7 began the golden age of antitrust, a period that lasted until the middle 1970s. So far, …

A Brief History Of The University Of Baltimore, Our School, James F. Schneider

University of Baltimore Law Forum

No abstract provided.

A History Of Appalachian Coal Mines, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

This portion of the study discusses the social and economic antecedents of today's Appalachian coal industry. The time covered includes from pre-history up to the date of the study (1972).

Abortion Reform, Richard D. Lamm, Steven A.G. Davison

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Part One: Historical Perspective (Of The Chesapeake Bay), Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

This study analyzes the legal problems in the development and management of Chesapeake Bay resources. There are threshold problems of definition - What is Chesapeake Bay? What are its resources? What role does law play in their development and management?

The "Historical Perspective" traces the political controversies that have involved the Bay since the colonies of Maryland and Virginia were first founded. In a rough sense, it defines the traditional resources of the Bay by isolating occasions when individuals, businesses and governmental bodies found themselves at cross-purposes as to how the Bay was to be used and shared.