Law Commons^™

Book Reviews, Robert N. Cooks, Kenneth B. Hughs (Reviewer), Jess Halstead (Reviewer), Walter P. Armstrong, Jr. (Reviewer), Howard J. Graham (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

Current Legal Problems 1956 Edited by G. W. Keeton and G. Schwarzenberger London: Stevens & Sons, 1956. Pp. vii, 275. $5.55

reviewer: David F. Maxwell

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Some Problems of Proof under the Anglo-American System of Litigation By Edmund Morris Morgan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. Pp. xii, 195. $3.50

reviewer: Charles T. McCormick

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Effective Drafting of Leases with Check List and Forms By Milton N. Lieberman Newark: Gann Law Books, 1956. Pp. viii, 974

reviewer: Robert N. Cooks

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The Law and One Man Among Many By Arthur E. Sutherland Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956. Pp. ix, …

The Federal Loyalty -- Security Program, Harold W. Chase

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the long run, the Report of the Special Committee on the Federal Loyalty-Security Program of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York will undoubtedly have a profound effect on the national government's complex of programs designed to ferret "security risks" out of government, industrial and maritime jobs. Indeed, the short-run impact has been impressive....

In sum and substance this is a very fine report, my own criticisms notwithstanding. In addition to the portions of the report discussed in detail above there are excellent chapters on the issues involved, the Communist threat, the operation of the …

Rules Of Evidence -- Substantive Or Procedural?, Edmund M. Morgan

Vanderbilt Law Review

It hardly needs stating that the definition of a legal word or term depends upon the purpose for which it is to be defined. If in framing a generalization designed to state a rule or make a discrimination applicable in a specific topic or field of the law, the courts use specified terms, it by no means follows that they intend those terms to be understood in the same sense in generalizations dealing with problems in another topic or field. The words, substance or substantive and procedure or procedural, have been used most frequently in three separate situations: (1) in …

An Analysis Of Marriage Trends And Divorce Policies, Robert S. Redmount

Vanderbilt Law Review

Divorce law, theoretically, is the embodiment of policies governing the dissolution of marriage. It is the legal expression of the values attached to marriage and implicitly states the law's understanding of the marital relationship, at least that part of it that reflects conflict and disturbance.

The analytic discourse which follows briefly assesses the roles and meanings of marriage, the sources and consequences of marital disharmony and the complications of marriage dissolution. The history and composition of divorce policies and laws is carefully savored and sharply scrutinized for fidelity to the reason and experience of marriage. The outcome of this analysis …

Holmes And Brandeis: Companions In Dissent, Samuel J. Konefsky

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the 1920's, the words "Justices Holmes and Brandeis dissented" had become a familiar refrain in discussions about the work of the Supreme Court. This affinity between two men so unlike each other in background and method naturally puzzled the observers, and the effort to explain their relationship has produced two mutually contradictory theories. One view holds that though the two jurists approached problems differently, they usually arrived at the same conclusion because they shared a common philosophy on all really basic issues. "Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Dembitz Brandeis," a contemporary press comment read, "have achieved a spiritual kinship …

Justice William Cushing And The Treaty-Making Power, F. William O'Brien S.J.

Vanderbilt Law Review

Although the work of the Supreme Court during the first few years was not great if measured in the number of cases handled, it would be a mistake to conclude that the six men who sat on the Bench during this formative period made no significant contribution to the development of American constitutional law. The Justices had few if any precedents to use as guides, and therefore their judicial work, limited though it was in volume, must be considered as stamped with the significance which attaches to all pioneer activity. Moreover, most of this work was done while on circuit …

Samuel F. Miller, Justice Of The Supreme Court, 1862-1890, Charles Fairman

Vanderbilt Law Review

It was in the summer, about 1880. Miller, on the rounds of his circuit, had come to Omaha, where, in chambers, he was to hear counsel argue a mining case from Colorado. In the hall of the post office building, Miller saw Roscoe Pound (aetat circa 101 and already known to the Judge), and greeted him with the inquiry: "Well, sonny, how would you like to come with me while I hear a case?" Gladly the lad went along, and seated himself on the floor, Turkish-fashion, under the Judge's desk. The controversy concerned what was then a new and highly …

A Sketch Of John Marshall Harlan's Pre-Court Career, David G. Farrelly

Vanderbilt Law Review

Like other men before and after his time, John Marshall Harlan of Kentucky left his imprint on the law. Nearly 34 years on the Supreme Court of the United States gave Harlan ample opportunity to express his opinions on a host of legal questions. Sitting on the high bench as he did from 1877 to 1911, public problems passed before him for review in the form of litigation. During that post-Civil War period as today there was discrimination against the Negro in American society. Despite the constitutional guaranties of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, Negroes were not accorded the …

Fair Trade And The State Constitutions -- A New Trend, Edward J. Kohrs

Vanderbilt Law Review

The proponents of resale price maintenance will mark the years 1955 and 1956 as a period of major setbacks. The past two years have seen the highest courts of eight states' invalidate state Fair Trade laws. The rapid development of this trend is surprising in view of the fact that prior to 1949, the constitutionality of such legislation under the state constitutions had been upheld by every state court in which it was attacked, and was widely regarded as a settled proposition.

Much has been written explaining, defending, and condemning the concept of Fair Trade, and no attempt will be …

The Utopian Pilgrimage Of Mr. Justice Murphy, John P. Roche

Vanderbilt Law Review

On July 19, 1949, Frank Murphy, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States died in Detroit. The liberal press mourned the passing of a mighty warrior for civil liberty. Other journals observed the protocol of the occasion by politely deploring his death, the University of Michigan Law School prepared a memorial issue of the Michigan Law Review' in honor of its distinguished alumnus, a few encomiums appeared in the law journals, then silence set in. A silence which has been broken only by occasional slighting references to Murphy's talents, and by a word-of-mouth tradition in law school …

Recent Judicial Biographies: A Composite Review, Otis P. Dobie

Vanderbilt Law Review

The great Chief Justice of our time has been considerably recalled in the period under review. Pusey,' in a lengthy readable treatment that does not emphasize the legal, views Hughes as a liberal of circa 1910 who was uncomfortable but acquiescent amid the 1930's progressions. Interesting tidbits include a moving account of Hughes' mission to Holmes to request his resignation; bar letters to White complaining of the vagueness of Holmes' opinions; the friendship of Hughes with White and Harlan; Hughes' concern over the tendency of the New Deal brethren to expansively construe statutes and approve state taxes on interstate commerce …

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Conflict of Laws--Alimony may be Awarded Wife after Husband obtains Ex Parte Divorce

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CONFLICT OF LAWS--FORUM NON CONVENIENS APPLIED FOR PROTECTION OF LOCAL INTERESTS

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CONSTITUTIONAL LAW--IMPAIRMENT OF CONTRACT--EXISTING AUTOMOBILE DEALERSHIP CONTRACT MAY BE CHANGED TO PROTECT THE GENERAL WELFARE

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CRIMINAL LAW--BIGAMY--GOOD FAITH BELIEF THAT ACCUSED WAS DIVORCED IS A DEFENSE TO A CHARGE OF BIGAMY

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EVIDENCE--RELEVANCY--ADMISSION OF HABIT EVIDENCE TO SHOW DUE CARE

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FEDERAL TORT CLAIMS ACT--SCOPE OF EMPLOYMENT--GOVERNMENT'S LIABILITY FOR SKYLARKING AIRCRAFT

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INCOME TAXATION--RESERVE WITHHELD BY FINANCE COMPANY AND CHARGEABLE WITH AMOUNT OF DISHONORED NOTES NOT ACCRUABLE AS INCOME TO INDORSER

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LABOR …

Judge Hand's Views On The Free Speech Problem, Robert S. Lancaster

Vanderbilt Law Review

Judge Learned Hand has been for many years a lawyer's lawyer. His opinions are liberally sprinkled through the case books; commentaries on legal matters cite his opinions with increasing respect and admiration; but to many people he is the judge who upheld the conviction of the eleven communists in New York on a question involving the limits of free speech. Scholars of parts and even some lawyers do not know that he anticipated the Supreme Court's "clear and present danger" test by two years, or that his contribution to the law of free speech is by no means confined to …

Chief Justice Taney: Prophet Of Reform And Reaction, Robert J. Harris

Vanderbilt Law Review

Roger Brooke Taney's judicial career began and ended in controversy.' His appointment as Chief Justice in 1836 came not long after his nomination to be Secretary of the Treasury had been rejected and his nomination to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court had been indefinitely postponed because of his role as a central figure in the great controversy between the Jackson administration and the Bank of the United States. These successive nominations of Taney to high position evoked a flood of partisan invective against him in an age which was hardly characterized by restraint. In the course of …

The "Liberalism" Of Chief Justice Hughes, Samuel Hendel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Charles Evans Hughes ascended the bench as Chief Justice of the United States in February 1930 in the midst of the most serious and steadily worsening economic crisis in American history; a crisis which was to put the institution of judicial review, the Court, and the leadership of its Chief Justice to their severest test. "One may search in vain," said Harlan F. Stone, "for a period in the history of the Supreme Court in which the burden resting on the Chief Justice has been so heavy or when his task has been more beset with difficulties."Now, twenty years after …

Mr. Justice Frankfurter -- Law And Choice, Wallace Mendelson

Vanderbilt Law Review

In an opinion that seems destined to live as long as the ideals of democracy survive, Justices Holmes and Brandeis rejected their colleagues' narrow conception of free speech, yet concurred in the judgment affirming conviction. Though the accused had claimed protection under the appropriate constitutional provision, she had failed at the trial level to raise the "clear and present danger" issue. Raising it in the Supreme Court was futile, thought Holmes and Brandeis, because "Our power of review in this case is limited not only to the question whether a right guaranteed by the Federal Constitution was denied [in the …

The Supreme Court Of History, Howard Jay Graham

Vanderbilt Law Review

Our theme is simple, overpowering: Justices of the Supreme Court, a number of whose predecessors destroyed the bulk or their correspondence, and who themselves may be tempted to do likewise, nonetheless quite evidently desire, and certainly deserve, faithful (if not quite full) reconstruction, both of their individual roles, and of the Court's, in our constitutional scheme. Much of this story, to quote the then Professor Frankfurter, is "largely irrecoverable,"' yet indispensable to an understanding of our institutions.

Manifestly, something of a paradox is involved in our whole attitude toward judicial history. Much of the law, particularly judge-made public law, is …

Mr. Justice Rutledge And The Roosevelt Court, Alfred O. Canon

Vanderbilt Law Review

The career of Mr. Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge on the Supreme Court of the United States came to an end on September 10, 1949. His passing signified the end of a man's work--and the end of an era. As Rutledge's last opinion became a part of American constitutional history, the Roosevelt Court disappeared and a new alignment of majority and minority was born. The influence of Rutledge in this important period of constitutional development will be difficult to measure until the broader outlines of contemporary social, political, economic, and legal trends are more firmly sketched in the future. A justice's …

The Limits Of State Jurisdiction In Affording Common Law Protection To Clothing Designs, Leonard S. Elman

Vanderbilt Law Review

The recent case of Dior v. Milton' indicates that the "misappropriation" doctrine of the law of unfair competition will be applied to impose liability upon unlicensed users of original clothing designs. The purpose of this article is to outline briefly the statutory protection presently available for such designs, and to discuss certain problems raised by the Dior v. Milton decision.

The Constitution, in article I, section 8, provides that Congress shall have power to enact legislation "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their …

The Beginning, Flourishing And Decline Of The Inns Of Court: The Consolidation Of The English Legal Profession After 1400, Anton Hermann Chroust

Vanderbilt Law Review

The origin and history of the Inns of Court, their relation to each other and to the English legal profession, and their subsequent decline, pose some puzzling problems which often do not admit of a precise or uniform answer. This paper, however, will attempt to clarify some of the following questions: When and under what conditions did the lawyers of England move into common dwelling places or Inns? Why did they cluster together in a strip of land which was surrounded on the south by the River Thames, on the east by the old City of London, on the north …

A Missing Link In The Evolution Of Due Process, Wallace Mendelson

Vanderbilt Law Review

On the eve of the American Revolution, Blackstone could comment that "so great.., is the regard of the [English] law for private property ... it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community."' A similar concern for proprietary interests soon found expression on this side of the Atlantic in what Professor Corwin has called "The Basic Doctrine of American Constitutional Law"; namely, the "doctrine of vested interests." The general purport of this concept was that "the effect of legislation on existing property rights was a primary test of its …

Book Reviews, Robert J. Harris, John Raeburn Green (Reviewer), H. C. Nixon (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

----------------------------------- Book Reviews ----------------------------------

The Forgotten Ninth Amendment

By Bennett B. Patterson

Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1955. Pp. ix, 217. $4.00.

reviewer: Robert J. Harris

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The Birth of the Bill of Rights, 1776-1791

By Robert Allen Rutland

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955. Pp. vii,243. $5.00.

reviewer: John Raeburn Green

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James Wilson: Founding Father, 1742-1798

By Charles Page Smith

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. Pp. xii, 426.$7.50.

reviewer: H. C. Nixon

Molding The Corporate Form To Particular Business Situations: Optional Charger Clauses, F. Hodge O'Neal

Vanderbilt Law Review

This paper looks into the usefulness of optional (or as they are sometimes called, "permissive" or "special") charter provisions' in molding the corporate form of business organization to meet the diverse needs of particular business situations. It first examines statutory materials and judicial decisions bearing on the validity and effect of optional provisions. It then considers optional clauses in current use and typical legal and business problems that optional clauses may help to solve. It shows that optional clauses often can be used to clarify the rights and other relations of participants in an enterprise, to avoid disadvantageous corporate "norms," …

Cash Sales, Worthless Checks And The Bona Fide Purchaser, Calvin W. Corman

Vanderbilt Law Review

The owner of goods or chattels in consummating a sale frequently accepts a check in exchange, only to discover that the check is worthless and that in the brief interval before dishonor the goods have been resold to a bona fide purchaser for value. On ascertaining the whereabouts of the goods, the initial owner seeks to repossess them or recover their reasonable value from the holder. A judicial question as to the relative rights of two innocent parties must therefore be determined.

This legal problem has received the attention of law review commentaries' and text writers and has been annotated …

Molding The Corporate Form To Particular Business Situations: Optional Charter Clauses, F. Hodge O'Neal

Vanderbilt Law Review

This paper looks into the usefulness of optional (or as they are sometimes called, "permissive" or "special") charter provisions' in molding the corporate form of business organization to meet the diverse needs of particular business situations. It first examines statutory materials and judicial decisions bearing on the validity and effect of optional provisions. It then considers optional clauses in current use and typical legal and business problems that optional clauses may help to solve. It shows that optional clauses often can be used to clarify the rights and other relations of participants in an enterprise, to avoid disadvantageous corporate "norms," …

Bills And Notes -- 1956 Tennessee Survey, Paul J. Hartman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Section 23 of the Negotiable Instruments Law, adopted in all of the forty-eight states,' provides: "When a signature is forged or made without the authority of the person whose signature it purports to be, it is wholly inoperative, and no right to retain the instrument, or to give a discharge therefor, or to enforce payment thereof against any party thereto, can be acquired through or under such signature, unless the party, against whom it is sought to enforce such right, is precluded from setting up the forgery or want of authority.' In Nashville Trust Co. v. Southern Buyers the Tennessee …

Real Property -- 1956 Tennessee Survey, Herman L. Trautman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Bona Fide Purchases Without Notice: There were two cases, First Federal Savings and Loan Ass'n v. Dearth' and Harris v. Buchignani, decided during the year which concerned the title acquired by a purchaser of real property without actual notice of an unrecorded interest. The first of the above cases concerned a purchaser from the heir of the deceased record owner, and the second concerned a purchaser from a record owner who had previously executed a contract of sale which was not recorded. Both cases originated in Memphis.

Administrative Law -- 1956 Tennessee Survey, James B. Earle

Vanderbilt Law Review

Questions of the scope and timing of judicial review of administrative agency action were again before the courts during the period covered by this survey. Timing of Judicial Review: The problem of "timing" of judicial review of administrative action includes questions of the availability of administrative remedies and whether their exhaustion must be required before court action; ripeness for review, usually associated with the issuance of agency rules and regulations; and jurisdictional questions vis-a-vis the agency and the court.

Business Associations -- 1956 Tennessee Survey, F. Hodge O'Neal

Vanderbilt Law Review

Surprisingly few cases were decided in the field of Business Associations during the survey period. Those decisions for the most part merely reaffirmed legal principles already established in Tennessee law. One of the cases, Wyatt v. Brown,' raised again the interesting old question of what is a partnership and what factual elements are necessary to constitute the partnership relation. This article discusses that question first and then comments rather briefly on the other cases and the principles they enunciate.

Creditors' Rights And Security Transactions -- 1956 Tennessee Survey, Paul J. Hartman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Possession of Land Under Contract of Sale as Notice to Subsequent Purchaser of the Land: There is a security transaction facet in the ejectment case of Harris v. Buchignani,' decided by the Tennessee Supreme Court, which should be given some attention. In that case, by clear implication, the court put forth some disturbing doctrine relative to priorities under the Tennessee recording statute. Without specifically mentioning it, the court appears to have disavowed and repudiated the doctrine that possession of property inconsistent with the record title holder is notice to a subsequent deed of trust lender so as to prevent the …