Law Commons^™

Perpetuities, Restraints On Alienability,And The Duration Of Trusts, Ralph A. Newman

Vanderbilt Law Review

There is no doubt that we must have some fairly well-defined standard for determining when a restraint on alienation lasts too long. There is need for only one rule directed to the ultimate objective sought the establishment of a limitation upon the period during which alienability may be postponed. This limitation of the period of permissible duration of the state of inalienability must apply to all interests of any kind, present or future, vested or contingent, legal or equitable, absolute or in trust. The test of suspension should be the practical possibility, as well as the legal possibility, of alienation. …

Priority Paradoxes In Patent Law, Richard H. Stern

Vanderbilt Law Review

The constitutional provision governing patents gives Congress the power to promote the progress of useful arts "by securing for limited Times to... Inventors the exclusive Right to their... Discoveries. "'Because an "exclusive right" suggests an exclusive grant, the Patent Office interference proceeding has been created for the purpose of determining administratively the question of priority of rights between two or more parties claiming substantially the same invention. This article attempts to state in terms of an informal axiomatic system the rules of law for determining priority of invention, and then examine that system to explore its possible paradoxes Finally, an …

Book Review, Chester J. Antieau

Vanderbilt Law Review

Any book that educates the American community to an under-standing of and an appreciation for the Bill of Rights serves a laudable end. And conceivably any author is entitled to define his own terms. However, Mr. Weinberger indicates his displeasure with the traditional meaning of the term, "Bill of Rights," as embracing the first ten amendments and sets out to include within his comparable term what he calls "Additional Amendments Dealing with Personal Liberty"' thus adding the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th amendments, as well as "Provisions in the Original Constitution Dealing with Personal Liberty" which he specifies as the …

Book Note, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Donald K. Carroll, Judge of the District Court of Appeal, First District of Florida, has presented in this book a treasure house of materials useful to every judge. Included in it are writings from a multitude of sources, published both in this country and Europe. The book's primary purpose is to provide an anthology of inspirational and helpful literary gems for use by judges in their work; its secondary purpose is to give source materials for preparing speeches or writings on judicial subjects.

Practical Problems In Preparation And Trial Of Libel Cases, Laurence H. Eldredge

Vanderbilt Law Review

Any deterrent to complete information about a candidate for admission to the bar is contrary to the public welfare. A conditional privilege is an affirmative defense, which must be pleaded and proved. Not until the defendant rests his case, after what may be a long and expensive trial, does he know where he stands on such a defense, and it is generally left to the lay jurors to decide, under "instructions." Life being what it is, only a few courageous lawyers will have the hardihood to run the risk of exposing themselves to a libel jury trial, with its uncertainties …

The Absolute Privilege Of The Executive In Defamation, Arno C. Becht

Vanderbilt Law Review

Should executive officers have an absolute privilege to commit defamation? This is Professor Becht's inquiry as he traces the evolution and application of this privilege from its origin in England through its development in American state and federal courts. After balancing the factors for and against absolute immunity, the writer reaches the conclusion that officials should be reduced to a qualified privilege in defamation.

Constitutional Questions Involved In The Expenditure Of Compulsorily Paid Union Dues Under The Railway Labor Act, Edwin R. Render

Vanderbilt Law Review

Prior to the enactment of federal labor legislation the negotiation and execution of union and closed shop contracts raised many legal questions of which compulsory payment of union dues and assessments was but one. Where an employer agreed to a closed' or union shop, few legal problems arose. Frequently, the employer only agreed to a closed or union shop after considerable pressure had been exerted, thus presenting the problem of the legality of economic pressure for such an objective. In the absence of statute, some state courts held that the closed or union shop was illegal,while others took the view …

Book Notes, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

A TREASURY OF LEGAL QUOTATIONS Selected by Paul C. Cook New York:Vantage Press, 1961. Pp.181. $5.00

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COLONIAL JUSTICE IN WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS Edited by Joseph H. Smith Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961. Pp.ix, 426. $7.50.

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THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: ITS BUSINESS, PURPOSES, AND PERFORMANCE By Paul A. Freund Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1961. Pp.224. $1.35.

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A LAWYER'S VERSUS. By Irving J. Siegal New York: Vantage Press, 1960. Pp.40. $2.00.

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Civil Rights--Civil Rights Act of 1957 Gives Federal Court Mandatory Jurisdiction To Entertain Suit by the United States To Enjoin State Criminal Prosecution

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Conflict of Laws--Federal Tort Claims Act--Applicable Substantive Law Held To Be Whole Law of State Where Negligence Occurred

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Constitutional Law--Discrimination--Conviction for Disturbing the Peace in Lunch Counter Sit-in Held To Violate Due Process for Lack of Evidence

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Federal Courts--Erie Doctrine--Opinion Evidence Held Admissible Under Federal Rule 43(a) in Diversity Case

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Federal Courts--Federal Question Jurisdiction--Lack of Jurisdiction to Enforce Award of Airline System Board of Adjustment in Labor Dispute

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Interstate Commerce--Taxation--State Privilege Tax …

Book Reviews, Edward S. Mason, Stanley D. Rose, Reber Boult, Robert N. Covington

Vanderbilt Law Review

This volume, which brings together, with one exception, all of Stocking's papers relating to workable competition, is more than a random collection of essays. As he indicates in the preface, the papers had been conceived from the beginning as segments of a book, and they proceed to cover systematically the relation of the concept of workable competition to the major areas of antitrust policy.

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Sir Frederick Pollock was born in 1845 and died in 1937. Throughout this long life, his industry was apparently unflagging. His mark is clearly discernible in wide areas of English law. Every student of the …

Theoretical And Comparative Aspects Of Reapportionment And Redistricting: With Reference To Baker V. Carr, Charles P. Edwards

Vanderbilt Law Review

Dr. Edwards in this article applies political theory to evaluate the impact of reapportionment and redistricting on representative government. In so doing he discusses the sources of this political theory and the goals of representative government. He also surveys comparative political practice in Great Britain and the United States. In suggesting various legislative, administrative, and judicial remedies to malapportionment and inequitable districting, Dr. Edwards concludes that the effect of the present litigation resulting from the Baker v. Carr decision will be to arouse public opinion and prompt legislators to meet the accumulated challenges of urbanization as well as other contemporary …

What's Wrong With Baker V. Carr?, Robert Lancaster

Vanderbilt Law Review

The decision of the majority of the Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr, the recently decided Tennessee Reapportionment Case, may well turn out to be one of the landmark decisions of American jurisprudence. If by reason of apathetic acquiescence such a judicial intrusion is permitted to go unchallenged and undebated, our federal system of limited and constitutional government may be further weakened. Although the balance of power as between the states and the national government has shifted and this shift has been reflected in and furthered by judicial interpretation of our Constitution, it seems questionable that such a far-reaching and …

Statement Of Fact Versus Statement Of Opinion -- A Spurious Dispute In Fair Comment, Herbert W. Titus

Vanderbilt Law Review

In attempting to solve problems in a variety of areas lawyers continuously make use of a distinction between statements of "fact" on the one hand and those of "opinion" on the other.' So versatile is this distinction that it has been used to solve problems raised in such diverse areas of the law as evidence and defamation. However, since the turn of the century the fact-opinion dichotomy has been severely criticized as a means of deciding what kinds of testimony should be allowed in a legal trial. Yet in the law of defamation, where this distinction has been extensively applied …

The "Reception" Of Defamation By The Common Law, Colin R. Lovell

Vanderbilt Law Review

The rather low opinion held by Mr. Bumble concerning the logic of the law must be set off by the Holmesian reminder that not "logic," but"experience" has kept the law viable. The warning has peculiar applicability in looking at the common law doctrines on defamation. Only the experience of history can explain why, in contrast to Roman civil law systems with their view that all defamations and insults are injuriae, with a single remedial action, the common law has no interest in mere bad language' and goes on to have two separate actions for defamation. Moreover, these are quite artificially …

The Free-Ness Of Free Speech, Robert A. Leflar

Vanderbilt Law Review

Freedom of speech under Anglo-American law has never been an absolute right, and numerous exercises of free speech (and of free press)have been subjected to inhibiting legal sanctions, both criminal and civil,almost from the beginning of our common law heritage. It is true that the Blackstonian rule prohibiting "previous restraints upon publications" purported, to protect absolutely the initial right to publish. But an absolute right to publish what one may thereafter be criminally punished or forced to pay civil damages for publishing is obviously illusory in its absoluteness.It is not an absolute right in any real sense of the term. …

Defamation And The Right Of Privacy, John W. Wade

Vanderbilt Law Review

The history of the two torts of defamation and unwarranted invasion of the right of privacy has been greatly different. Defamation developed over a period of many centuries, with the twin torts of libel and slander having completely separate origins and historical growth. Professor Street summarizes this history by declaring that there was "a perversion of evolutionary processes," with the result that there was produced "a rather heterogeneous pile which should normally have gone to form a consistent body of legal doctrine, but which on the contrary, comprises many disconnected fragments moving in a confused way under the impulse of …

Defamation, A Camouflage Of Psychic Interests: The Beginning Of A Behavioral Analysis, Walter Probert

Vanderbilt Law Review

Does the law of defamation need to be reformed? The author thinks so. Professor Probert rejects the doctrine of libel per se and questions the courts' understanding and use of the term "reputation." It is his belief that plaintiffs on an individual basis should have increased benefit of the knowledge accumulated by the various social sciences in proving the harm done by the alleged defamation, with more liberalization in the requirements of pleading and proof than is now generally countenanced by the courts.

Torts -- 1961 Tennessee Survey (Ii), John W. Wade

Vanderbilt Law Review

The twenty tort cases decided during the shorter survey period this year all involved negligence actions.' Most of the cases involved the application of established rules or standards to new fact situations, some of them being fairly routine. Only two cases were of striking significance.

Penology On Appeal: Appellate Review Of Legal But Excessive Sentences, Gerhard O.W. Mueller

Vanderbilt Law Review

Mr. Mueller traces the development of the technique of sentence appeals in relation to the evolution of penological theory and examines the practices of representative American jurisdictions in this area. In evaluating the status of the law, the author's reasoned judgment is that too few appellate courts have the power to review excessive sentences, and that even these courts do not exercise their power in terms of functional penology.

The Dilemma Of The Directed Acquittal, Richard H. Winningham

Vanderbilt Law Review

Some of the worst abuses of state criminal due process, the author believes, result from anachronistic and artificial restraints which prevent the trial judge from directing acquittals. Therefore,he advocates for all states a uniform policy and practice recognizing and authorizing directed acquittals where the evidence is legally insufficient to support a conviction.

Agency -- 1961 Tennessee Survey (Ii), W. Harold Bigham

Vanderbilt Law Review

I. Employee and Independent Contractor Distinguished

During the abbreviated survey period there were no significant or momentous decisions by Tennessee courts--state or federal--involving agency principles. Indeed the only state appellate case properly to be considered here involved the rather pedestrian question of whether a petitioner for workmen's compensation benefits was, vis-a-vis the defendant prime contractor, an employee or an independent contractor.

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II. Misrepresentations of Agent

Butts v. Colonial Refrigerated Transportation, Inc. is merely another example of the Sixth Circuit's unfortunate proclivity for writing per curiam affirmances. It is well-nigh impossible to determine whether the liability of the defendant which …

Constitutional Law -- 1961 Tennessee Survey (Ii), James C. Kirby, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

Only three cases are assigned to this field for the abbreviated survey period and in one of these, the court avoided the constitutional question. In the other two cases the constitutional issues were not difficult and the results reached should cause neither surprise nor controversy among survey readers.

Equal Protection -- Racial Discrimination Home Rule--Self Executing Constitutional Provisions Miscellanous

Contracts -- 1961 Tennessee Survey (Ii), Paul J. Hartman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Statutes may impose a tax upon the transaction of certain business merely for the purpose of raising revenue, and not with any view of regulating the business itself. Even though such statutes impose a penalty for failure to comply with their provisions, contracts made without paying the requisite tax or obtaining the requisite license generally are not thereby made unenforceable. Of course, the legislature may provide that the failure to comply with a revenue statute will invalidate a bargain. But where, as in the Acuff case, the purpose of the statute is the protection of the public, a bargain made …

Domestic Relations -- 1961 Tennessee Survey (Ii), William J. Harbison

Vanderbilt Law Review

The definition of "abandonment" within the meaning of the Tennessee adoption statutes was clarified in the case of Ex parte Wolfenden. The stepmother of the subject child filed a petition for adoption, joined in and consented to by the natural father. A cross-petition was filed by the child's uncle and his wife, seeking to adopt the child and alleging that the natural father had abandoned the child and had delivered her to the home of the uncle for permanent rearing. The circuit judge granted the cross-petition upon the ground that adoption by the uncle was for the best interest of …

Workmen's Compensation -- 1961 Tennessee Survey (Ii), J. Gilmer Bowman, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

Since the workmen's compensation statute was designed to provide benefits for an employee's work-connected injury or death, it necessarily follows that there must have been an employment relationship within the coverage of the statute and that the person or persons claiming the benefits must be within the class entitled to do so. The application of this basic premise, which on its face appears simple enough, was involved in three cases before the Tennessee Supreme Court during the survey period.

Bowling v. Whitley was a workmen's compensation suit brought by an employee against his immediate employer, a subcontractor, as well as …

Procedure And Evidence -- 1961 Tennessee Survey (Ii), Edmund M. Morgan, Joel F. Handler

Vanderbilt Law Review

Construction of Pleading--(a) Conclusions.- In an action by the administratrix of a decedents estate the allegations in the complaint that the intestate had a policy of insurance on his life for $1,500 and was induced by the fraud of defendant to make defendant the beneficiary by which she was able to collect the money upon his death and "that this $1500 insurance money is the property of the estate and defendant is accountable to complainant as administratrix of the estate" are sufficient as against ademurrer on the ground that the complaint fails to show any right or title in complainant …

Some Reflections On Baker V. Carr, Nicholas Deb. Katzenbach

Vanderbilt Law Review

This article is based on the author's address before the Vanderbilt University School of Law in connection with the school's 1962 Law Day ceremonies. In it, Mr. Katzenbach examines the positions of the various opinions in Baker v. Carr, the significance of the case both for Tennessee and the country as a whole, and the various alternatives open to the district courts for implementing the decision.

Psychosexuality And The Criminal Law, Ralph Slovenko, Cyril Phillips

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is common knowledge that sexual mores vary in every culture. Sexual ethic and social structure are interrelated. Sexual morality is not the same in an industrially advanced society as it is in a primitive agriculture regime (the industrial revolution's influence upon sexual morals will so attest) Sexual mores vary in different parts of the same country (Puritan Massachusetts and pioneer Wyoming could not be expected to develop the same set of rules), and indeed between different social strata in the same one locality. Every society imposes regulations and codes upon sexual relations, and quite rightly. However, the striking fact …

The Companion Of The New Hampshire Doctrine Of Criminal Insanity, John Reid

Vanderbilt Law Review

The problem of criminal responsibility is one of the most difficult in criminal law. Of the various solutions that have been devised, the author suggests that the New Hampshire-Scottish approach--with its emphasis on insanity as a question of fact for the jury--is the most desirable.

Subnormal Mentality As A Defense In The Criminal Law, John E.V. Pieski

Vanderbilt Law Review

Although little is left of the theory which ascribed to mental deficiency causative force in criminal conduct, the entire episode taught at least two valuable lessons to modem criminologists. First, it served as a warning against superficial research and hasty conclusions, thus inducing subsequent scholars to take a more scientific approach to similar problems. Second, it aided in alerting others that, although not all or even most criminals are mentally deficient, there are an appreciable number of criminals who possess a subnormal mentality, and who must be reckoned within the criminal law. Notwithstanding that the legal profession has utilized the …