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Full-Text Articles in Law

Sociological Interpretation Of Law, Joseph H. Drake Jun 1918

Sociological Interpretation Of Law, Joseph H. Drake

Articles

It is not the purpose of this paper to essay a definition of either of the formidable words in the title. The object is rather to call attention away from the metaphysical question, what is law? to the sociological question, how may we best attain justice in the administration of law? and, by the aid of some examples from history and comparative law, to justify as legal and constitutional the sociological method of interpretation. That such justification is necessary is evident from the fact that although the dictum of Mr. Justice. HOLMES in the dissenting opinion in Lochner v. New …


Is A Contract Necessary To Create An Effective Escrow?, Ralph W. Aigler Jun 1918

Is A Contract Necessary To Create An Effective Escrow?, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

WHERE land has been sold and both parties are desirous of protecting themselves pending full payment of the purchase price, there are two common ways of accomplishing their purpose without any change in legal ownership. There may be (1) a contract of sale properly evidenced so as to be enforceable, and (2) a deed executed by the vendor and placed "in escrow." Sometimes one method is preferred, sometimes the other. If the former is adopted, it is, of course, vitally important that the contract comply with the formal requirements of the law; in the latter there has been some difference …


Admission To The Bar, Edwin C. Goddard Feb 1918

Admission To The Bar, Edwin C. Goddard

Articles

This article is written in the belief that the hour is here when some changes in admissions to the bar should be urged and urged again, when some things often thought and discussed in certain assemblies should be openly and frankly talked over with the profession at large.


Some Aspects Of Fifteenth Century Chancery, Willard T. Barbour Jan 1918

Some Aspects Of Fifteenth Century Chancery, Willard T. Barbour

Articles

IT is now more than thirty years since Justice Holmes in a brilliant and daring essay set on foot an inquiry which has revealed the remote beginnings of English equity. Equity and common law originated in one and the same procedure and existed for a long time, not only side by side, but quite undifferentiated from each other. Their origin is to be found in the system of royal justice which the genius of Henry II converted into the common law; but this royal justice was in the beginning as much outside of, or even antagonistic to, the ordinary judicial …


Race Segregation Ordinance Invalid, Henry M. Bates Jan 1918

Race Segregation Ordinance Invalid, Henry M. Bates

Articles

The opinion in Buchanan v. Warley reflects the confusion and difficulty of that troublesome problem, the place of the negro race in the United States, with which the case and the segregation ordinance of Louisville discussed therein are essentially concerned. The decision by a unanimous court reverses the holding of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, and declares that the ordinance violates the Fourteenth Amendment. This result is reached by one of those anomalous and objectionable devices which characterize our methods of solving fundamental constitutional questions. The case arose upon a bill for specific performance of a contract, whereby the plaintiff, …


Power Of The U.S. Supreme Court To Enforce Judgments Against States, Henry M. Bates Jan 1918

Power Of The U.S. Supreme Court To Enforce Judgments Against States, Henry M. Bates

Articles

Four and one-half centuries later the "sovereign state" of Virginia sued the "sovereign state" of West Virginia to recover a sum of money alleged to be due upon the agreement of West Virginia to assume its proportionate share of the debt of the old state of Virginia. The suit was brought in the Supreme Court of the United States, which after prolonged consideration rendered judgment for the plaintiff. No execution or other compulsory process was issued, however. But now after delays for various reasons and pretexts urged by West Virginia the court is compelled to face the problem of what …


The National Army Act And The Administration Of The 'Draft', Henry M. Bates Jan 1918

The National Army Act And The Administration Of The 'Draft', Henry M. Bates

Articles

In Arver v. U. S., and five similar cases attacking the validity of the so-called National Army Act of May 18, 1917, Public Statutes, No. 12, 65th Congress, c. -, - Stat. -. ) the Supreme Court unanimously sustained the validity of the Act so far as attacked. The contention that compulsory military service as provided in the Act is contrary to our fundamental conception of the nature of citizenship, and that such compulsion is repugnant to a free government and in conflict with the guaranties of the Constitution as to individual liberty, the Court disposed of summarily and completely …


Privilege Of Enemy Aliens To Maintain Actions, Ralph W. Aigler Jan 1918

Privilege Of Enemy Aliens To Maintain Actions, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

In his History and Practice of Civil Actions, Lord Chief Baron Gilbert (p. 205) states that alienage is a disability which must be pleaded to the action, "because it is forfeited to the King, as a rep-isal for the damages committed by the Dominion in enmity with him. In 1 Hale's Pleas of the Crown, (p. 95) it is said "That by the law of England debts and goods found in this realm belonging to alien enemies belong to the King, and may be seized by him," Y. B. 19 E 4, 6, is cited to that effect. The provisions …


Acquiring Jurisdiction In Garnishment Proceedings, John R. Rood Jan 1918

Acquiring Jurisdiction In Garnishment Proceedings, John R. Rood

Articles

Garnishment is a proceeding provided by statutes found in every state, for the purpose of laying hold of something belonging to a defendant or judgment debtor but actually in the hands of someone else, and appropriating it to pay the debt due from the defendant or judgment debtor. If the proceeding is instituted ancillary to a pending suit, and before judgment, it is a species of attachment. If it is issued ancillary to a judgment already recovered it is a species of execution. If the third person summoned as garnishee is merely bailee of property belonging to the judgment debtor …


Effect Of Change Of Law Upon Obligation To Pay Rent, Ralph W. Aigler Jan 1918

Effect Of Change Of Law Upon Obligation To Pay Rent, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

In McCullough Realty Co. v. Laemmle Film Service, (Nov. 16, 1917), 165 N. W. 33, the supreme court of Iowa had occasion to pass upon a question which has become increasingly frequent with the spread of prohibition laws, namely, the effect upon the obligation of a tenant to pay rent, of a subsequent law that makes it unlawful for him to use the premises for the purpose for which he leased them. The case before the Iowa court was not one arising out of a lease of premises for saloon purposes, but the question involved was precisely the same, and …


The Federal Bankruptcy Act And Its Effect On State Insolvency Laws, Evans Holbrook Jan 1918

The Federal Bankruptcy Act And Its Effect On State Insolvency Laws, Evans Holbrook

Articles

Since Sturgis v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122, it has been clear that State Insolvency Laws were valid (within certain well-defined limits) during the non-existence of a Federal Bankruptcy Act, and that upon the enactment of a Federal Bankruptcy Act the State laws were superseded and suspended so far as they were in conflict with the Federal legislation. The difficulty has been in determining when there was such conflict, and it has arisen in various ways. For instance, the Federal Bankruptcy Act permits any natural person to become a voluntary bankrupt, but provides that no involuntary proceedings shall be taken against …


Public Utility Valuation - Going-Concern Value In Rate Making, Edwin C. Goddard Jan 1918

Public Utility Valuation - Going-Concern Value In Rate Making, Edwin C. Goddard

Articles

What is the effect of a city ordinance which proposes to a public utility company the terms on which it may dispose of its product to the users, but which is rejected by the company? As to a company not yet doing business it is clear that the ordinance when rejected becomes a mere legal nullity. It never was more than an offer that might ripen into a binding contract by acceptance. That it is by no means a nullity as to a utility actually operating in the city after the expiration of its franchise and as a mere tenant …


Joy Riding, Simple And Compound, Edgar N. Durfee Jan 1918

Joy Riding, Simple And Compound, Edgar N. Durfee

Articles

The wrongful use of another's automobile, even though accompanied by a trespassory taking, cannot, if followed by a return to the owner or an abandonment, be easily brought within the definition of larceny at common law or under the ordinary larceny statutes, because of the requirement of intent to deprive the owner permanently of his property. Smith v. State, 146 S. W. 547; State v. Boggs (Iowa, 1917), 164 N. W. 759; McClain, Criminal Law, § 566. Of course, such intent, at the time of taking, might be found in spite of return or abandonment, though it is doubtful whether …


Training For A Profession--Law, Ralph W. Aigler Jan 1918

Training For A Profession--Law, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

So long as human conduct and relations must accord with pre-established and determinable rules, the study of law, and the practice thereof, will be of absorbing interest. When we consider futher that our government is one of law, and the the positisions of highest responsibility therein are such that training in law is peculiarly desirable, it is not at all surprising that many young men have taken to the legal profession.


Cost Of Public Justice, John R. Rood Jan 1918

Cost Of Public Justice, John R. Rood

Articles

The common citizen who becomes victim of a wrong and seeks redress in the courts of America soon finds by bitter experience that it is better to bear those ills we have than go to law. The expense is more than the thing is worth. The result depends on who has the longest purse, the most endurance, and the shrewdest lawyer, and little on the merits of the case. When he gets to court he finds his remaining money is being spent, not in the trial of his case, but in deciding whether an absque hoc is a sine que …


Contract Of Infant--Evidence, Competency Of Witness Under Survivorship Statute, Victor H. Lane Jan 1918

Contract Of Infant--Evidence, Competency Of Witness Under Survivorship Statute, Victor H. Lane

Articles

Two questions are presented by the case of Sigiaigo v. Signaigo, (Mo. 1918), 205 S. W. Rep. 23: First, the enforcibility of the contract of an infant, fully performed by her, to live with a man and his wife as their adopted child so long as they should live, in consideration that the infant should have all the property of the foster parents upon their death; and Second, the competency of the consenting mother of the infant to testify in support of the infant's claim.


Contingent Gifts And Incorporation By Reference, John R. Rood Jan 1918

Contingent Gifts And Incorporation By Reference, John R. Rood

Articles

The courts have had great difficulty in reconciling certain contingent gifts with the statutes requiring wills to be in writing duly executed. At first glance there appears no inconsistency, but in practice troubles accumulate.


When Is A Preferential Transfer 'Required' To Be Recorded? , Evans Holbrook Jan 1918

When Is A Preferential Transfer 'Required' To Be Recorded? , Evans Holbrook

Articles

The BANKRUPTCY ACT of 1898 (as amended in 1903 and 1910), after defining a preference, provides in § 60b that preferences made under certain circumstances may be recovered from the preferred creditor if the latter had "reasonable cause to believe" that a preference was to be effected "at the time of the transfer * * * or of the recording or registering of the transfer if by law recording or registering thereof is required," such time being within four months before bankruptcy. Bankrupcty courts have for years been vexed with the question: When is a transfer "required" to be recorded …


Insurance Policies As Assets In Bankruptcy, Evans Holbrook Jan 1918

Insurance Policies As Assets In Bankruptcy, Evans Holbrook

Articles

The Supreme Court of the United States, in the recent case of Cohen v. Samuels, 38 Sup. Ct. 36, has put an end to a method, approved by some of the lower Federal Courts, whereby a person could create a fund which would be completely under his control but which would nevertheless be protected against any claim on the part of his trustee in bankruptcy. The circumstances in the principal case were as follows: Samuels had taken out ordinary life insurance policies, with the usual provisions as to loan and surrender values, payable to certain of his relatives as beneficiaries, …


Interstate Commerce Commission - Intrastate Rates, Edwin C. Goddard Jan 1918

Interstate Commerce Commission - Intrastate Rates, Edwin C. Goddard

Articles

The marvelous possibilities for collision between State and Nation involved in our dual form of government are nowhere better or more often exhibited than in commerce regulation. We have long been learning the definition of the commerce which the constitution gives Congress power to regulate. It is only recently that we are finding how this power reaches over into purely intrastate business done by a carrier also engaged in interstate commerce. That nearly all rail carriers are now engaged in such business, even when their lines are wholly intrastate, has been often illustrated under the Second Employer's Liability Act. In …


Acquirement Of Title By A Willful Trespasser And Compensation For The Trespassee, Joseph H. Drake Jan 1918

Acquirement Of Title By A Willful Trespasser And Compensation For The Trespassee, Joseph H. Drake

Articles

The interaction of the basic maxim of substantive law, that no man may be deprived of his property without his consent, and the correlative maxim of adjective law, that the courts will give exact compensation for property taken or destroyed, together with the more or less mechanical rules of damages depending upon the form of action used, have in their outcome gone far toward justifying the somewhat grandiloquent utterance of our legal forbears of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that the "Common Law is the perfection of human wisdom." The final stage in this development is shown in the late …


The Content Of Covenants In Leases, Ralph W. Aigler Jan 1918

The Content Of Covenants In Leases, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

Among the many troublesome problems in law those arising out of "covenants running with the land" are not the least It is quite clear that in order for a covenant to "run" there must be an intimacy of relationship between it and the land, or. more properly, the estate, with which it passes. It is, then, vitally important to consider in each case the subject matter, the content of the covenant, and this matter of relationship.


Re-Writing The Statute Of Frauds: Part Performance In Equity, Willard T. Barbour Jan 1918

Re-Writing The Statute Of Frauds: Part Performance In Equity, Willard T. Barbour

Articles

One of the most striking examples of judicial legislation is that process whereby courts of equity, from the end of the seventeenth century onwards, have in no small measure re-written the Statute of Frauds. Exception was added to exception until the doctrine kmown as "part performance" became firmly established. The doctrine was not evolved consistently and the basis of some applications of it is obscure. One who follows Sir Edward Frys admirable but futile attempt (Fry, SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE (ed. 5) §§ 580, ff.) to systematize the variant decisions of the English courts must feel doubtful whether any single theory will …


Full Faith And Credit And Jurisdiction, Willard T. Barbour Jan 1918

Full Faith And Credit And Jurisdiction, Willard T. Barbour

Articles

The judgment of a sister state, when assailed by collateral attack, is often said to occupy a position intermediate between foreign and domestic judgments. Though the older American cases were inclined to examine into the merits of any foreign judgment, the present tendency is toward the adoption of the English view according to which a foreign judgment may be attacked collaterally only for want of jurisdiction or fraud. Dicey, Conflict of Laws (ed. 2) Ch. XVII; see note to Tremblay v. Aetna Life Insurance Co., 97 Me. 547, in 94 Am. St. Rep. 521, 538. But whereas any statement of …


Child Labor Law Case, Commerce Power Of Congress And Reserved Powers Of The States, Henry M. Bates Jan 1918

Child Labor Law Case, Commerce Power Of Congress And Reserved Powers Of The States, Henry M. Bates

Articles

The decision in the Child Labor Law case, Hammer v. Dagenhart, - U. S. -, 62 L. ed. -, decided June 3, 1918, would have caused much less surprise twenty-five years ago than it did when announced last June, for it is based upon two constitutional provisions concerning which the much wider and more varied experience of the last quarter century had developed theories, better defined and sounder than those of the earlier period. Those two provisions are the Tenth Amendment regarding the powers reserved to the States and the Commerce Clause. There has been an astonishing amount of faulty …


The Statute Of Uses And Active Trusts, Edgar N. Durfee Jan 1918

The Statute Of Uses And Active Trusts, Edgar N. Durfee

Articles

To explain the survival of uses, alias trusts, after the Statute of Uses, one is probably justified in assuming a sympathetic attitude toward this Equitable institution on the part of the Common Law Judges. Maitland, Equity, 29. But, however predisposed the Judges might be, they would have to satisfy themselves, perhaps others as well, that they were interpreting rather than nullifying the Statute. Only such uses could be saved as could be "distinguished." The case of the use raised upon a chattel interest is clear enough, as it was without the letter, and fairly without the mischief, of the Statute. …


Substitutional Gifts To Classes, John R. Rood Jan 1918

Substitutional Gifts To Classes, John R. Rood

Articles

In some recent cases we have fresh reminder of the futility of Sir William Grant's distinction between original and substitutional gifts, a rule over which courts have quarreled and disagreed ever since it was promulgated, and which never was applied to the exclusion of anyone without disappointing the wish of the testator. In speaking of this rule in Re Hickey, [1917], 1 Ch. D. 601, 604, Neville, J., says: "The alleged principle seems to be that the meaning of the word 'substitute' involves the idea of replacing one thing by another. One cannot 'substitute' something for nothing. The proposition appears …


Acquiring Jurisdiction Without Personal Service, Seizure Of Aid Of Statute, John R. Rood Jan 1918

Acquiring Jurisdiction Without Personal Service, Seizure Of Aid Of Statute, John R. Rood

Articles

It is often assumed that courts can acquire jurisdiction only by personal service to give jurisdiction in personam, or by a seizure to give jurisdiction in rem; but it is not so. The assumption is induced no doubt by the fact that in the ordinary common law actions jurisdiction is acquired in that way. Mr. Justice Field very distinctly pointed out in the case of Pennoyer v. Neff (1877), 95 U. S. 714, that it was not the fact that the land was not seized that rendered the judgment void. It was the fact that the land was not the …


The Writ Of Prohibition - Procedural Delay, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1918

The Writ Of Prohibition - Procedural Delay, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

A disheartening recrudescence of procedural red-tape is found in a recent decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio. A contest arose over the jurisdiction of the Public Service Commission to fix telephone rates in Cleveland. The Commission was engaged in a determination as to the reasonableness of a schedule of rates filed by the telephone company, when a petition was filed in the Common Pleas Court for an injunction against the charging of rates other than those fixed by a city ordinance. Believing that under the statute the Public Service Commission had exclusive jurisdiction over the subject of rates, and …


Who Is An Alien Enemy?, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1918

Who Is An Alien Enemy?, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

One Gustav Muller, a native German, resided in England on May 20th, 1915. He had never been naturalized. He owned a leasehold house in England, and on the date just mentioned he executed a power of attorney to one John White to sell this leasehold house and make proper conveyance of the same. Six days later he was permitted by the British Government to return to Germany, and he started the same day, May 26th. He was known to be in Germany on June 11th, but the date of his arrival was unknown. On June 2 the leasehold was sold …