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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Jury And Criminal Responsibility In Anglo-American History, Thomas A. Green
The Jury And Criminal Responsibility In Anglo-American History, Thomas A. Green
Articles
Anglo-American theories of criminal responsibility require scholars to grapple with, inter alia, the relationship between the formal rule of law and the powers of the lay jury as well as two inherent ideas of freedom: freedom of the will and political liberty. Here, by way of canvassing my past work and prefiguring future work, I sketch some elements of the history of the Anglo-American jury and offer some glimpses of commentary on the interplay between the jury—particularly its application of conventional morality to criminal judgments—and the formal rule of law of the state. My central intent is to pose questions …
The Invention Of Common Law Play Right, Jessica D. Litman
The Invention Of Common Law Play Right, Jessica D. Litman
Articles
This Article explores playwrights' common law "play right." Since this conference celebrates the 300th birthday of the Statute of Anne, I begin in England in the 17th Century. I find no trace of a common law playwright's performance right in either the law or the customary practices surrounding 17th and 18th century English theatre. I argue that the nature and degree of royal supervision of theatre companies and performance during the period presented no occasion (and, indeed, left no opportunity) for such a right to arise. I discuss the impetus for Parliament's enactment of a performance right statute in 1833, …
The Multiple Common Law Roots Of Charitable Immunity: An Essay In Honor Of Richard Epstein's Contributions To Tort Law, Jill R. Horwitz
The Multiple Common Law Roots Of Charitable Immunity: An Essay In Honor Of Richard Epstein's Contributions To Tort Law, Jill R. Horwitz
Articles
Professor Epstein has long promoted replacing tort-based malpractice law with a new regime based on contracts. In Mortal Peril, he grounded his normative arguments in favor of such a shift in the positive, doctrinal history of charitable immunity law. In this essay, in three parts, I critique Professor Epstein’s suggestion that a faulty set of interpretations in charitable immunity law led to our current reliance on tort for malpractice claims. First, I offer an alternative interpretation to Professor Epstein’s claim that one group of 19th and early 20th century cases demonstrates a misguided effort to protect donor wishes. Rather, I …
Face To Face': Rediscovering The Right To Confront Prosecution Witnesses, Richard D. Friedman
Face To Face': Rediscovering The Right To Confront Prosecution Witnesses, Richard D. Friedman
Articles
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the right of an accused 'to confront the witnesses against him'. The United States Supreme Court has treated this Confrontation Clause as a broad but rather easily rebuttable rule against using hearsay on behalf of a criminal prosecution; with respect to most hearsay, the exclusionary rule is overcome if the court is persuaded that the statement is sufficiently reliable, and the court can reach that conclusion if the statement fits within a 'firmly rooted' hearsay exception. This article argues that this framework should be abandoned. The clause should not be regarded …
Free-Standing Due Process And Criminal Procedure: The Supreme Court's Search For Interpretive Guidelines, Jerold H. Israel
Free-Standing Due Process And Criminal Procedure: The Supreme Court's Search For Interpretive Guidelines, Jerold H. Israel
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When I was first introduced to the constitutional regulation of criminal procedure in the mid-1950s, a single issue dominated the field: To what extent did the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment impose upon states the same constitutional restraints that the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments imposed upon the federal government? While those Bill of Rights provisions, as even then construed, imposed a broad range of constitutional restraints upon the federal criminal justice system, the federal system was (and still is) minuscule as compared to the combined systems of the fifty states. With the Bill of Rights provisions …
Thoughts From Across The Water On Hearsay And Confrontation, Richard D. Friedman
Thoughts From Across The Water On Hearsay And Confrontation, Richard D. Friedman
Articles
This article draws on the history of the hearsay rule, and on recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, to argue that the right to confrontation should be recognised as a basic principle of the law of evidence, and that aspects of the Law Commission's proposals for reform of the hearsay rule, and of the Home Office's proposals for restrictions on the right of cross-examination, are therefore unsatisfactory.
Epithetical Jurisprudence And The Annexation Of Fixtures, Joseph H. Drake
Epithetical Jurisprudence And The Annexation Of Fixtures, Joseph H. Drake
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If we begin with all the facts of a controversy and proceed inductively to determine the rights of the parties litigant, we thus arrive at a jurisprudence of rights, whereas, if we reason deductively from a rule, a definition, or a maxim of law to its application in the facts of our case, we can at best attain only a jurisprudence of rules, which has been so aptly characterized as an epithetical jurisprudence. The subject of fixtures is one in which we have great difficulty in applying the inductive method because the courts have been slower in approaching the subject …
Wills - Revocation By Judicial Legislation, Edwin C. Goddard
Wills - Revocation By Judicial Legislation, Edwin C. Goddard
Articles
Wills and their revocation as we know them are peculiarly the result of the actions and reactions of our common and statute law. We are sufficiently familiar with statutes, declaratory of the common law, in derogation thereof, and creating entirely new principles of law. We also know law the result of no legislative act. Whatever may or may not be admitted about court-made law, we see the undoubted fact that the great body of our law is the outgrowth of decisions applying to new conditions principles of law found in analogous cases, whereby the common law is able to adapt …
A New Function For Courts - Declaring The Rights Of Parties, Edson R. Sunderland
A New Function For Courts - Declaring The Rights Of Parties, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
In a recent opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States Justice Holmes makes this interesting observation:- "The foundation of jurisdiction is physical power, although in civilized times it is not necessary to maintain that power throughout proceedings properly begun." Paraphrased, the statement comes to this: In early times the basis of jurisdiction is the existence and the constant assertion of physical power over the parties to the action, but as civilization advances the mere existence of such power tends to make its exercise less and less essential.
Some Aspects Of Fifteenth Century Chancery, Willard T. Barbour
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 …
Privilege Of Enemy Aliens To Maintain Actions, Ralph W. Aigler
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 …
The Statute Of Uses And Active Trusts, Edgar N. Durfee
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. …
The Disposition To Be Made Of Property The Subject Of A Power If The Power Is Not Exercised, John R. Rood
The Disposition To Be Made Of Property The Subject Of A Power If The Power Is Not Exercised, John R. Rood
Articles
The object sought in this article is to collect and classify the cases in which the courts have passed on the question as to what shall be done with property over which a power of appointment has been given; when it finally turns out for some reason that the power has not been exercised. It is not the object to establish any particular thesis, but rather to ascertain how the adjudicated cases stand.
The Sheriff's Return, Edson R. Sunderland
The Sheriff's Return, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
When William the Conqueror found himself military master of Britain, he was confronted by a governmental problem quite different from that which has usually accompanied foreign conquest. He did not subdue a nation already organized, substituting his power for that of its former ruler in the conventional way of conquerors. Britain was a geographical unit but politically and socially it was a congeries of loosely related communities. The natural law of survival of the fittest normally operates upon peoples as upon individuals, and develops centralized power as a means of self-preservation. But Britain had a substitute for this. The sheltering …
Rule Against Perpetuities As Applied To Options, John R. Rood
Rule Against Perpetuities As Applied To Options, John R. Rood
Articles
Does the rule against perpetuities render unlimited options void? This is a question which the English courts answered affirmatively some thirty-five years ago; new aspects of the question have been frequently presented to those courts since that time, and conclusions not easy to reconcile have been reached. It is believed that the present status of the law in England is that an option is like any other interest in land, void if it may arise at too remote a time, otherwise not. This conclusion is based on the decision in Borland's Trustees v. Steel Bros. & Co. [1901] 1 Ch. …
The Liability Of The Common Carrier As Determined By The Recent Decisions Of The United States Supreme Court, Edwin C. Goddard
The Liability Of The Common Carrier As Determined By The Recent Decisions Of The United States Supreme Court, Edwin C. Goddard
Articles
An understanding of the present day liability of the common carrier under conditions as they exist, especially in interstate shipments, is best reached by an historical journey from the early decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States to the end of the year just past.
Corporations And Express Trusts As Business Organizations, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Corporations And Express Trusts As Business Organizations, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
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PRESIDENT BUTLER of Columbia University is reported to have said in an address before the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1911, that "the limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modem times, whether you judge it by its social, by its ethical, by its industrial, or, in the long run--after we understand it and know how to use it,--by its political, effects." 1
Admiralty Jurisdiction And State Waters, John B. Waite
Admiralty Jurisdiction And State Waters, John B. Waite
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The case of Ex parte Boyer1 closes with the statement that it "does not raise the question whether the admiralty jurisdiction of the district court extends to waters wholly within the body of a state, and from which vessels cannot so pass as to carry on commerce between places in such state and places in another state or in a foreign country; and no opinion is intended to be intimated as to jurisdiction in such a case." Nor does any other case appear directly to intimate such an opinion, unless it be that of Stapp v. Clyde2 wherein a state …
Pleading Estoppel, W. Gordon Stoner
Pleading Estoppel, W. Gordon Stoner
Articles
No subject is fraught with more difficulties for the pleader than that of estoppel. The problems of "when" and "how" to plead seem never so perplexing as when they arise in connection with this subject. That these problems are not confined to any day or age is evidenced by the reports from the time of Lord COKE down to the latest advance sheets of the present day reporter systems, and the lawyers of no generation have been wholly agreed on their solution. No system of pleading yet established has been free from these questions and with each general change in …
Influence Of Social And Economic Ideals On The Law Of Malicious Torts, W. Gordon Stoner
Influence Of Social And Economic Ideals On The Law Of Malicious Torts, W. Gordon Stoner
Articles
"The existence and the alteration of human institutions," says DICEY, "must in a sense, always and everywhere depend upon the beliefs or feelings, or, in other words, upon the opinion of the society in which such institutions flourish."1 Undoubtedly, law, as much as any other human institution, has felt this influence of public opinion. The political, economical and ethical ideals of a people find expression in their laws. True it is that public opinion is usually, if not always, in the lead, but in a truly happy and contented society the distance is never great. As MAINE says, in progressive …
New Doctrine Concerning Contracts In Restraint Of Trade, Jerome C. Knowlton
New Doctrine Concerning Contracts In Restraint Of Trade, Jerome C. Knowlton
Articles
Is a covenant in restraint of a particular trade and unlimited as to space against public policy and therefore void and unenforceable? Long ago an English judge, in speaking of the making of contracts, protested against arguing too strongly upon public policy. "It is a very unruly horse, and, when once you get astride it, you never know where it will carry you."1 Right he was and is, and the judge who would keep his saddle must be a good rider, for the horse shies badly on the way at every new condition in trade and commerce, occasioned by recent …
English Law As An Exponent Of English History, Edson R. Sunderland
English Law As An Exponent Of English History, Edson R. Sunderland
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It is not my purpose to unduly emphasize the light which the study of the laws of a people throws upon its character and development. The teaching of history should be broad enough to recognize the importance of all sides of national life. But I believe there has never been a sufficient appreciation of the real wealth of suggestive and illuminating material which is contained in the history of English law. For the English have been pre-eminently a legal race. In the study of Roman History Roman Law has always occupied a prominent place. The Romans made their reputation, so …
Statute Of Uses And The Modern Deed, John R. Rood
Statute Of Uses And The Modern Deed, John R. Rood
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To what extent does the modem conveyance of estates in land in the United States by deed derive its validity from the English Statute of Uses, 27 Hen. 8, c. IO? No doubt the student, and especially the teacher, is inclined to magnify the importance of mere matters of history, because it is so much easier to understand or explain many of the terms and doctrines of real property law by approaching them historically, and, indeed, many of them cannot otherwise be understood at all. And yet we all have this constant, serious, and often difficult task, of separating matter …
Ratification By An Undisclosed Principal, Edwin C. Goddard
Ratification By An Undisclosed Principal, Edwin C. Goddard
Articles
Omnis ratihabitio retrotrahitur, et mandato priori aequiparatur. Every ratification relates back, and is equivalent to a prior authority, is the second great maxim of agency, and has been said to be as well established and as simple of application as the first and fundamental one, qui facit per alium, facit per se. It was as well recognized in the Roman law, as it is in the common law. Whether the maxim ratihabitio mandato comparatur of the Roman lawyers and the early English cases is identical in meaning with the dogma ratihabitio mandato acquiparatur of Lord Coke, and of all English …
The "Law Reports", Nathan Abbott
The "Law Reports", Nathan Abbott
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The period between the years 1860 and 1870 marks an interesting stage in the history of law reporting. Within this period a system of reporting that had existed for upward of three centuries came to an end, and an experiment was begun whereby it was hoped to produce reports not merely in a new way, but reports that were to be materially different in form and substance from those of the previous system. The conception of the enterprise and its successful accomplishment is due to the energy and discretion of one man, whose history of the affair, after twenty years …