Law Commons^™

Brightening The Covenant Chain: Aboriginal Treaty Meanings In Law And History After Marshall, Mark D. Walters

Dalhousie Law Journal

The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Marshall raises some difficult questions about the interpretation of Crown-Aboriginal treaties, especially treaties dating from the eighteenth century. The Court acknowledged that the treaty context is important to establishing the meaning of treaty texts, and Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perspectives must be considered. As a result, judges must have regard to historical analyses of Crown-Aboriginal relations when interpreting these old treaties. In this article, the author explores some of the complex theoretical problems that such legal-historical analyses create, focusing in particular upon the possibility that lawyers and judges may reach …

Latin American Legal History: Some Essential Spanish Terms, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

Terms related to Latin American legal history translated into English.

Will The Heavens Fall? De-Radicalizing The Precedent-Breaking Decision, Paul Waldau

Animal Law Review

This article offers an extended analogy for the purpose of posing basic questions about proposals for granting legal rights to some nonhuman animals. The analogy is drawn from the precedent-breaking eighteenth century English case Somerset v. Stewart, which liberated an African slave. The article argues that one can identify features of the eighteenth century debate which illuminate features of today's debate over proposed uses of centrally important legal concepts for some nonhuman animals. Using the comparison for the limited task of highlighting the complex cultural backdrop in each situation, the article suggests that the comparison helps one see the nature …

Beyond Indian Law: The Rehnquist Court’S Pursuit Of States’ Rights, Color-Blind Justice And Mainstream Values, David H. Getches

Publications

No abstract provided.

Competing Frameworks For Assessing Contemporary Holocaust-Era Claims, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

There are many angles from which to perceive the contemporary holocaust-era claims. In 1997, Time magazine quoted Elie Wiesel as saying that, [i]f all the money in all the Swiss banks were turned over, it would not bring back the life of one Jewish child. But the money is a symbol. It is part of the story. If you suppress any part of the story, it comes back later, with force and violence.

Wiesel touches on two perspectives: first, what has been described as litigating the holocaust, with all that that implies about the law's questionable capacity to adjudicate issues …

Curtailing Tax Treaty Overrides: A Call To Action, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

During the past 25 years, Congress has with increasing frequency enacted legislation that is intended to override inconsistent provisions in U.S. tax treaties. These legislative overrides are harmful, and have been decried by our treaty partners, members of the executive branch, and commentators.

Until now, commentators have generally devoted themselves to describing and deploring legislative overrides of tax treaties, and have done no more than repeatedly call on Congress to cease enacting such legislation. Congress has ignored these pleas, and has continued to enact legislative overrides with impunity.

Given this background, the essay calls on commentators to cease pleading with …

Alice In Legal Wonderland: A Cross-Examination Of Gender, Race And Empire In Victorian Law And Literature, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Lewis Carroll's 1865 scene of a recalcitrant Alice in the courtroom, defying the court's authority as she grows (literally) into a large and threatening presence, dramatizes what was becoming an increasingly common Victorian spectacle: a woman questioning and critiquing the law and claiming a place for herself within its institutions. Women have played a significant (but much overlooked) role in legal history and, in this paper, I argue for the importance of examining various narratives of the past (including literary accounts) that explored women's relationship to the law.

Against the backdrop of several legal cases in which women sought entry …