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Michigan Law Review

Legal History

New Deal

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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Era Of Deference: Courts, Expertise, And The Emergence Of New Deal Administrative Law, Reuel E. Schiller Dec 2007

The Era Of Deference: Courts, Expertise, And The Emergence Of New Deal Administrative Law, Reuel E. Schiller

Michigan Law Review

The first two terms of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency (1933-1941) were periods of great administrative innovation. Responding to the Great Depression, Congress created scores of new administrative agencies charged with overseeing economic policy and implementing novel social welfare programs. The story of the constitutional difficulties that some of these policy innovations encountered is a staple of both New Deal historiography and the constitutional history of twentieth-century America. There has been very little writing, however, about how courts and the New Deal-era administrative state interacted after these constitutional battles ended. Having overcome constitutional hurdles, these administrative agencies still had to interact with …


Looking Backward: Richard Epstein Ponders The "Progressive" Peril, Michael Allan Wolf Apr 2007

Looking Backward: Richard Epstein Ponders The "Progressive" Peril, Michael Allan Wolf

Michigan Law Review

In the 1888 novel Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy dreamed up a twentieth century America that was a socialist utopia, a vision invoked four years later by the conservative Justice David J. Brewer as a warning against government regulation. In How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution, Richard Epstein, looking back at the twentieth century through an interpretive lens much more similar to Brewer's than Bellamy's, sees and bemoans the growth of a dominant big government of which the novelist could only dream. Epstein pulls no punches in his attack on those he deems responsible for the shift in the American …


The Folklore Of Legal Biography, Mark Fenster Jan 2007

The Folklore Of Legal Biography, Mark Fenster

Michigan Law Review

Spencer Weber Waller's Thurman Arnold: A Biography faces the problem of making this life stand out, and this Review seeks both to evaluate his rendering-which it does in Part II, after providing more details of the raw materials of Arnold's life in Part I-and to use Arnold's ideas to reflect on the endeavor of the legal biography. Although other works bearing on Arnold's life have been available,' Waller's competent, readable chronicle will provide an authoritative source of information and satisfy the desires of general readers interested in accomplished legal lives and seeking a straightforward account of Arnold's career. But Waller's …


Contract Rights And Civil Rights, Davison M. Douglas Jan 2002

Contract Rights And Civil Rights, Davison M. Douglas

Michigan Law Review

Have African Americans fared better under a scheme of freedom of contract or of government regulation of private employment relationships? Have court decisions striking down regulation of employment contracts on liberty of contract grounds aided black interests? Many contemporary observers, although with some notable dissenters, would respond that government regulation of freedom of contract, particularly the antidiscrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has benefited African Americans because it has restrained discriminatory conduct by private employers. Professor David E. Bernstein challenges the view that abrogation of freedom of contract has consistently benefited African Americans by …


The Second Amendment: Structure, History, And Constitutional Change, David Yassky Dec 2000

The Second Amendment: Structure, History, And Constitutional Change, David Yassky

Michigan Law Review

A fierce debate about the Second Amendment has been percolating in academia for two decades, and has now bubbled through to the courts. The question at the heart of this debate is whether the Amendment restricts the government's ability to regulate the private possession of firearms. Since at least 1939 - when the Supreme Court decided United States v. Miller, its only decision squarely addressing the scope of the right to "keep and bear Arms" - the answer to that question has been an unqualified "no." Courts have brushed aside Second Amendment challenges to gun control legislation, reading the Amendment …


Civics 2000: Process Constitutionalism At Yale, Daniel J. Hulsebosch Jan 1999

Civics 2000: Process Constitutionalism At Yale, Daniel J. Hulsebosch

Michigan Law Review

One or another form of historical fidelity has long been in the repetoire of constitutional interpretation, and during the last two decades conservative jurists have searched for the "original intent" of various clauses. Increasingly, however, it is liberal law professors who are turning to history to make sense of American constitutionalism. What they find there is not a document listing eternal rights or duties but rather a multidimensional structure of government, captured as much in practice as on paper, that has metamorphosed over time. It seems we have, in that familiar phrase, a living Constitution. But interest is shifting from …


Caste, Class, And Equal Citizenship, William E. Forbath Jan 1999

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 …


Cabining The Constitutional History Of The New Deal In Time, G. Edward White Jan 1996

Cabining The Constitutional History Of The New Deal In Time, G. Edward White

Michigan Law Review

A Review of William E, Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt


Review Essay: Sunstein, Statutes, And The Common Law--Reconciling Markets, The Communal Impulse, And The Mammoth State, Peter L. Strauss Feb 1991

Review Essay: Sunstein, Statutes, And The Common Law--Reconciling Markets, The Communal Impulse, And The Mammoth State, Peter L. Strauss

Michigan Law Review

The following pages principally address Professor Sunstein's basic argument for building on, rather than defending against, legislative judgments, and so virtually ignore the details of his proposals for statutory interpretation. Part I outlines Sunstein's case for some regulation - the necessary failures of market ordering and the consequent need for a mixed economy in which government regulation intervenes in important ways. Part II addresses Sunstein's decision to tie his analysis to the public law innovations of the New Deal, and suggests ways in which the analysis might be strengthened by attention to earlier struggles and changes - changes in common …


New Deal Labor Policy And The American Industrial Economy, Patrick T. Connors May 1988

New Deal Labor Policy And The American Industrial Economy, Patrick T. Connors

Michigan Law Review

A Review of New Deal Labor Policy and the American Industrial Economy by Stanley Vittoz


The New Deal Lawyers, Michigan Law Review Mar 1983

The New Deal Lawyers, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The New Deal Lawyers by Peter H. Irons


Labor Law-Some Developments During The Past Five Years-(A Service For Returning Veterans), Russell A. Smith Jun 1946

Labor Law-Some Developments During The Past Five Years-(A Service For Returning Veterans), Russell A. Smith

Michigan Law Review

It will be helpful in appraising labor relations problems of today to recall that unionism in this country has trodden a rough and thorny path over the past century. Unions were not welcomed by employers, worker inertia itself was a considerable obstacle, and by and large the general public was dubious as to the value of unionism. Facing these difficulties unions from the- beginning felt compelled to resort to self-help--the strike, the picket line, the boycott, etc.--to achieve their aims. In so doing they encountered vigorous and successful opposition in the courts, as injured economic interests, and even the government, …


Congress And The Appellate Jurisdiction Of The Supreme Court, Ralph R. Martig Mar 1936

Congress And The Appellate Jurisdiction Of The Supreme Court, Ralph R. Martig

Michigan Law Review

A democratic government such as ours, based upon the theory of popular sovereignty, presents many curious political phenomena. For example: in order to insure a proper balance of the powers, it has been necessary for the Supreme Court to assume the onerous task of passing upon the constitutionality of congressional legislation. It is unfortunate, but necessary, that the Court be obliged to exercise this power of judicial review at a time when the entire country is suffering from the effects of a severe and sustained economic depression. It is unfortunate, too, that the legislation under judicial examination should involve questions …


Has The Constitution Gone?, John A. Fairlie May 1935

Has The Constitution Gone?, John A. Fairlie

Michigan Law Review

As far back as 1828, Chief Justice Marshall is quoted as saying: "Should Jackson be elected, I shall look upon the government as virtually dissolved." A few years later, when Taney was appointed Chief Justice by Jackson, Daniel Webster wrote: "Judge Story thinks the Supreme Court is gone, and I think so too." Soon afterwards, when the newly constituted Court rendered decisions upholding statutes from which Story dissented, the latter wrote to Judge McLean: "There will not, I fear, ever in our day, be any case in which a law of a State or of Congress will be declared …


The Delegation Of Federal Legislative Power To Executive Officials, Theodore W. Cousens Feb 1935

The Delegation Of Federal Legislative Power To Executive Officials, Theodore W. Cousens

Michigan Law Review

It will be the purpose of this article to attempt (1) a chronological survey of the previous Supreme Court cases relating to alleged delegations of legislative power, and (2) an analysis and discussion of the Panama Refining Co. decision in the light of this background. No discrimination is made between delegations of state and of federal legislative power, as the Supreme Court makes no such discrimination.