Law Commons^™

Review: The Recission Of Contracts And Cancellation Of Written Instruments

Michigan Law Review

A review of THE RECISSION OF CONTRACTS AND CANCELLATION OF WRITTEN INSTRUMENTS By Henry Campbell Black.

Review: Edward Coke, Oracle Of The Law

Michigan Law Review

A Review of EDWARD COKE, ORACLE OF THE LAW By Hastings Lyon and Herman Block.

Review: Selected Cases On The Law Of Taxation

Michigan Law Review

A review of SELECTED CASES ON THE LAW OF TAXATION By Henry Rottschaefer.

Review: Annual Survey Of English Law, 1928 And State Law Index-An Index And Digest To The Legislation Of The United States Enacted During Ths Biennium 1925-1926.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of ANNUAL SURVEY OF ENGLISH LAW, 1928. By the London School of Economics and Political Science., and STATE LAW INDEX-AN INDEX AND DIGEST TO THE LEGISLATION OF THE UNITED STATES ENACTED DURING THS BIENNIUM 1925-1926. By the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress.

Witnesses-Immunity From Self-Incrimination-Statute Requiring Testimony That Would Subject Witness To A Penalty

Michigan Law Review

Acts 1921, No. 203 of Vermont required a disclosure from all persons convicted of intoxication as to the persons from whom the liquor was obtained. The petitioner was convicted of intoxication and on his refusal to disclose the person from whom he obtained the liquor was adjudged to be in contempt and committed to jail. Held, petitioner was in unlawful restraint and should be discharged, as the law requiring the disclosure was unconstitutional, article ten of the state constitution providing that no person could be compelled to give evidence against himself. In the light of Acts 1921, No. 204 …

Reformation-Trusts-Stranger To The Instrument

Michigan Law Review

Defendant was an agent with authority to purchase land for his principal, the plaintiff, and to take options in his own name. Instead, he took contract title in his own name. Plaintiff furnished the entire consideration. In a suit in which the vendor was joined as plaintiff, held, that the land contract be reformed by inserting the name of the plaintiff as purchaser. Goss v. McKinney (Mich. 1930) 229 N.W. 450.

Quasi-Contracts-Dutiful Intervention-Discharge Of Public Officer's Duty

Michigan Law Review

By statute in Montana the boards of county commissioners were ordered to cause such highways as were necessary for the public welfare to be "laid out, recorded, opened" and maintained. A highway was laid out through the plaintiff's land in 1903, but the county commissioners refused to continue constructing it though requested to do so by the plaintiff, instead compelling him to remove the fences on his property. His entire land being thus thrown open to the public, he constructed the road himself in 1926, with the knowledge of the commissioners, who on its completion immediately accepted it but refused …

Some Legal Problems Connected With Stock Market Transactions, S. Ashley Guthrie, Henry F. Tenney

Michigan Law Review

If any one were asked what was the most dramatic event of the last year, he probably refer at once to the collapse of the great Bull Market on the New York Stock Exchange. This was not only a dramatic event, but it was literally a tragedy for hundreds of thousands of people. Securities shrank to less than half their former inflated values and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and paper profits were lost over night, or possibly we should say over two nights, for the crash occurred in two stages, one in October and one in November, …

Criminal Law-Prosecution For Poisoning Not Resulting In Fatality

Michigan Law Review

In considering the question of criminal liability for poisoning not resulting in death, the problem may be discussed to best advantage by making the following four-fold classification: (1) administering with intent to kill, (2) attempt to administer with intent to kill, (3) administering with intent to injure, and (4) attempt to administer with intent to injure.

Corporations-Basis For Preemptive Rights

Michigan Law Review

Defendant corporation's authorized capital stock consisted of 800 shares of common stock, 76 shares of which remained unissued. Over the objection of the plaintiff, the directors of the corporation authorized the issue of 50 shares of the 76 to a salesman in satisfaction of a debt due him from the corporation, the remaining 26 shares to one of the directors for cash with which to meet corporate indebtedness. No contest for corporate control was afoot. No opportunity was given to the shareholders generally to purchase such shares. Later the faction of the individual defendants to whom said 26 shares had …

Replevin-Defense Of Paramount Right To Possession In A Third Person

Michigan Law Review

Courts are often heard to say, as does the Wisconsin court in a recent case, that an action of replevin may be defeated by proof of title paramount in a third person, even though the plaintiff has shown a right to possession as against the defendant sufficient to support an action of trespass. This seems so anomalous, so opposed to our notion of other possessory actions, for example, trespass, and even trover, where the plaintiff need show only a better right to possession to recover, that we are led to wonder how such a doctrine ever obtained a foothold in …

Fraudulent Intent In Trade Mark Cases, Grover C. Grismore

Michigan Law Review

One of the troublesome questions which confront the trade mark lawyer is that as to the extent to which a fraudulent intention is an essential element in trade mark litigation. Must a plaintiff who is seeking injunctive relief, or damages, or an accounting against a defendant who", it is alleged, has simulated his trade mark, trade name or other identifying device, show that the latter has consciously sought to mislead the purchasing public? Judges and legal writers leave the matter in doubt. It is the purpose of this paper to discover, if possible, how this doubt has arisen and to …

Massachusetts Trusts And Succession Taxes, Maxwell E. Fead, Milton D. Green

Michigan Law Review

Ordinarily, one thinks of trust estates as connected with testamentary dispositions of property, marriage settlements, spendthrift trusts, or other similar "pure" trusts. However, in comparatively recent years, trust estates have assumed a place in active business life, occupying the same general fields of activity as the corporation. Business men early found that the advantages of corporate existence were offset, to a greater or less degree, by corresponding disadvantages, such as compliance with regulations laid down by the state, inflexibility of charter provisions, and particularly increased burdens of taxation. The corporate organization lays itself open to the touch of the state …

The Italian Magistracy Of Labour A Fascist Experiment, Leonard Manyon

Michigan Law Review

The legislators of Fascist Italy, although they vigorously affirm the unprecedented and original character of their achievement, do not despise history--or even pre-history--as a measure of that achievement. In the social and economic no less than in the political sphere, they claim the merit of vast innovations, whose true significance, they tell us, can be gauged only by surveying, across the course of centuries, the evolution of human civilization.

A Letter To The Lawyers Club, William W. Cook

Michigan Law Review

The scope and purposes of the law schools will in my opinion rapidly expand. And the first expansion will be the inauguration of legal research. You have led the way. You have the first and so far the only research professorship. Professor Sunderland has blazed the trail and is hewing a road through the wilderness. And I think he is laying out the right route.

The Criminal's Right Of Privacy

Michigan Law Review

The dissent of Mr. Justice Brandeis in the famed wire tapping case has been of especial interest to those who are acquainted with his article in the Harvard Law Review in 1890 on "The Right of Privacy." The law has witnessed few more fascinating developments than the engrafting of this latter concept into the formula of justice, few more conspicuous examples of creative juristic effort. Concerning it Dean Pound has said: "What may almost be called the classical example (of creative activity) is the paper on the Right of Privacy in which Mr. Justice Brandeis, then at the bar, was …

Intercorporate Stockholding Under Section 7 Of The Clayton Act

Michigan Law Review

It is notorious that the Clayton Act was passed in response to misguided popular agitation based upon erroneous notions as to the scope and effect of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, and in fulfilment of, campaign promises voiced not only by Wilson, but embodied in the platforms of all three political parties in 1912. Stevens, "The Federal Trade Commission Act," 4 AMER. ECON. REV. 840; "The Clayton Act," 5 ibid. 38; Henderson, THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION, p. 16; Barrett, "The Federal Trade Commission," 81 CENT. L. J.; 166-171, 183-189, 201-207; Taft, THE ANTI-TRUST ACT AND THE SUPREME COURT. Even without the …

Marriage-Annulment For Fraudulent Misrepresentation As To Intent To Cohabit

Michigan Law Review

An interesting problem as to what constitutes fraud sufficient to invalidate a marriage is raised by the recent Illinois case of Bielby v. Bielby. 165 N.E. 231. The husband asked annulment on the ground of the wife's misrepresentation as to her intent to cohabit. The evidence as to the wife's intent and as to whether the marriage was actually consummated was undecisive, the wife testifying that it was and the husband that it was not. However, he did not testify that he had ever requested consummation or that she had ever refused it. It was held there could not …

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

The Immunity Of Foreign States When Engaged In Commercial Enterprises: A Proposed Solution, John G. Hervey

Michigan Law Review

Do governments which engage in commercial undertakings assume the civil and criminal liabilities imposed upon private corporations engaged in similar enterprises, or do governments confer sovereign privileges upon their undertakings? Can governments engage in commercial enterprises and thereby escape the liabilities imposed upon private individuals? More particularly, are foreign governments engaged in such undertakings exempt from process in the American courts?

Corporations-Government Owned Corporation Claiming Attributes Of Sovereignty

Michigan Law Review

That the government or the sovereign can not be sued without its consent has been so often repeated that it has attained the prosaicness of a legal maxim. Even so the doctrine was never so whole heartedly acceded to in the United States as it was in England, and we find the cases setting up at least one notable exception in the United States as to the property of the sovereign.

The Illinois Appellate Courts-Are They Satisfactory?

Michigan Law Review

The instantaneous answer of "Yes" to this question was given by every Illinois attorney the writer asked while gathering material for this article, and undoubtedly that would be the answer of an overwhelming percentage of the Illinois Bar. In the Constitutional Convention of 1920 in Illinois, not one of the fifty odd lawyer members ever questioned their expediency in all the debates on the judiciary article. And much can, of course, be said in their favor. They relieve the supreme court of a great burden of work. They are closer at hand than the supreme court to most of the …

Mortgages - Equity Jurisdiction - Personal Decrees Against The Mortgagor

Michigan Law Review

The Michigan supreme court recently held that the jurisdiction of equity in proceedings for the foreclosure of mortgages is governed by statute, and that equity can only render a personal decree against the mortgagor where the statute expressly permits it. This view, if correct, must be recognized as an exception to the well settled doctrine that a court of equity which has obtained jurisdiction of a controversy on any ground or for any purpose, may retain such jurisdiction for the purpose of administering complete relief. Michigan has repeatedly affirmed this general doctrine.

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

Right Of Holders Of Preferred Stock To Participate In The Distribution Of Profits, Jay Finley Christ

Michigan Law Review

When, in the management of the affairs of corporate enterprises, a surplus is available for the payment of dividends, the question often arises, "In what proportions is this fund to be distributed, as between holders of common stock and holders of preferred stock?" When the contract, whether in the by-laws, the subscription agreement, the certificate, or any other form, makes clear the intent of the parties, one way or another, such intent is, of course, controlling. But the intent of the parties may not always be clearly expressed, and in the latter event the rights of the parties are determined …

When Is A Treaty Self-Executing, Leslie Henry

Michigan Law Review

A self-executing treaty is a treaty which of its own force furishes a rule of municipal law for the guidance of municipal courts in deciding cases involving the rights of individuals.

Ordinarily treaties are simply agreements or contracts between two or more sovereignties, obligating them to carry out the mutual promises contained therein. But under our Constitution a treaty is of greater force. It may operate as a law, just like an act of Congress. But the constitutional provision is not mandatory. Not every treaty provision is necessarily a law. For example, a promise to secure the passage of legislation …

Taxation-Constitutional Law-Classifcation Of Corporations

Michigan Law Review

The equal protection clause does not detract from the right of the state justly to exert its taxing power or prevent it from adjusting its legislation to differences in situation or forbid classification in that connection, but it does require that the classification be not arbitrary, but based on a real and substantial difference having a reasonable relation to the subject of the particular legislation. Though this is the generally accepted rule as to classification, it has long been recognized by the Supreme Court that the very nature of taxation demands that the legislatures be given the widest sort of …

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.