Common Law Commons^™

Separation Of Powers Doctrine On The Modern Supreme Court And Four Doctrinal Approaches To Judicial Decision-Making, R. Randall Kelso

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Spandrel Or Frankenstein's Monster? The Vices And Virtues Of Retrofitting In American Law, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Ancient mythology, literary fiction, and modern science fiction films all recount a similar cautionary tale: human ingenuity gives rise to a powerful invention, but through human fallibility and, in some tellings, venality, the invention becomes a monster and turns on its creators. Perhaps the most famous example is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in which Dr. Frankenstein's attempt to fashion a living man from the dead remains of others succeeds, only then to go horribly awry. Such stories are timeless because they warn of the dangers of indelible features of human nature: hubris and short-sightedness. Recent large-scale catastrophes such as the 2010 …

Legal Medievalism In Lex Mercatoria Scholarship, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

This short reaction piece to an article by Emily Kadens asks why a long-refuted story of an alleged uniform medieval lex mercatoria is still being maintained. The answer is that the story serves not as an actual history but instead as a foundation myth. Attempts to falsify the myth with historical data are therefore futile: the myth derives its value not from its truth value but from its symbolic power.

The Evolution Of The Common Law And Efficiency, Nuno Garoupa, Carlos Liguerre

Faculty Scholarship

The efficiency of the common law hypothesis has generated a large bulk of literature in the last decades. The main argument is that there is an implicit economic logic to the common law; the doctrines in common law provide a coherent and consistent system of incentives which induce efficient behavior.

We start by observing that if the common law is overall evolutionarily efficient, we are left with no explanation for the important doctrinal differences across common law jurisdictions. The observation is more striking if we keep in mind that presumably the de jure initial condition was the same, namely English …

Constitutional Backdrops, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

The Constitution is often said to leave important questions unanswered. These include, for example, the existence of a congressional contempt power or an executive removal power, the role of stare decisis, and the scope of state sovereign immunity. Bereft of clear text, many scholars have sought answers to such questions in Founding-era history. But why should the historical answers be valid today, if they were never codified in the Constitution's text?

This Article describes a category of legal rules that weren't adopted in the text, expressly or implicitly, but which nonetheless have continuing legal force under the written Constitution. These …

Law "In" And "As" History: The Common Law In The American Polity, 1790-1900, Kunal Parker

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Conflicted Assumptions Of Modern Constitutional Law, H. Jefferson Powell

Faculty Scholarship

Contribution to Symposium - The Nature of Judicial Authority: A Reflection on Philip Hamburger's Law and Judicial Duty

"Our Cities Institutions" And The Institution Of The Common Law, Bernadette Meyler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The audiences of early modern English drama were multiple, and they intersected with the legal system in various ways, whether through the cross-pollination of the theaters and the Inns of Court, the representations of the sovereign’s justice performed before him, or the shared evidentiary orientations of jurors and spectators. As this piece written for a symposium on “Reasoning from Literature” contends, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure addressed to these various audiences the question of whether the King should judge in person. In doing so, it drew on extant political theories suggesting that the King refrain from exposing himself to public censure …

East Going West?: The Promise Of Assured Supply Laws In Modern Real Estate Development, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 319 (2010), Lincoln L. Davies

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Burnham, Water, And The Plan Of Chicago: A Historical Explanation Of Why Water Was Ignored And The Consequences Of Ignoring Water, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 413 (2010), Virginia M. Harding

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Forgotten Namesake: The Illinois Good Samaritan Act's Inexcusable Failure To Provide Immunity To Non-Medical Rescuers, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1097 (2010), David Weldon

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

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, …

Echoes Of The Impact Of Webb V. Mcgowin On The Doctrine Of Consideration Under Contract Law: Some Reflections On The Decision On The Approach Of Its 75th Anniversary, Stephen J. Leacock

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Appropriations Power And Sovereign Immunity, Paul F. Figley, Jay Tidmarsh

Michigan Law Review

Discussions of sovereign immunity assume that the Constitution contains no explicit text regarding sovereign immunity. As a result, arguments about the existence-or nonexistence-of sovereign immunity begin with the English and American common-law doctrines. Exploring political, fiscal, and legal developments in England and the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this Article shows that focusing on common-law developments is misguided. The common-law approach to sovereign immunity ended in the early 1700s. The Bankers' Case (1690- 1700), which is often regarded as the first modern common-law treatment of sovereign immunity, is in fact the last in the line of English …

The Hidden Influence Of Jewish Law On The Common Law Tradition: One Lost Example, Michael J. Broyde

Faculty Articles

Professor Berman is undoubtedly correct that the surviving literature shows little such influence of Jewish jurisprudence. Over the course of numerous conversations I had with Professor Berman at Emory, we discussed another possibility, namely that the Jewish tradition indeed had a distinct influence on the common law; however, due to the general lack of enthusiasm for the Jewish legal tradition throughout the medieval Christian world, even when Jewish sources were consulted, they were not cited. I wish to show what I think is one such example --the enigmatic origins of the common law rule that the holder of lost property …

Procedural Common Law, Amy Coney Barrett

Journal Articles

Debates about the common lawmaking power of the federal courts focus exclusively on substantive common law. But federal common law is not limited to matters of substance; it reaches matters of procedure as well. Federal law includes a robust body of what might be called procedural common law - common law primarily concerned with the regulation of internal court processes rather than substantive rights and obligations. This body of law includes many doctrines that are fixtures in the law of procedure and federal courts. For example, abstention, forum non conveniens, remittitur, stare decisis, and preclusion can all fairly be characterized …

The Unseen Track Of Erie Railroad: Why History And Jurisprudence Suggest A More Straightforward Form Of Erie Analysis, Donald L. Doernberg

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why The Supreme Court Lied In Plessy, David S. Bogen

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

From Blackstone’S Common Law Duty Of Parents To Educate Their Children To A Constitutional Right Of Parents To Control The Education Of Their Children, Robert A. Sedler

Law Faculty Research Publications

Blackstone’s Commentaries stated that the common law imposed a duty on parents to provide for the maintenance, protection, and education of their children, and of these, the duty to provide an education was "of far the greatest importance."

Early on American courts cited Blackstone for the proposition of the common law duty of parents educate their children. As the nineteenth century progressed, public and private schools were formed in most American states, and a number of states enacted compulsory education laws.

American states also sometimes also enacted laws that interfered with the freedom of parents to direct the education of …

A Constitutional Significance For Precedent: Originalism, Stare Decisis, And Property Rights, Polly J. Price

Faculty Articles

The discussions in this Article proceed as follows. Part I briefly introduces several areas of contemporary debate for which this inquiry is relevant. In Part II, I examine previous scholarly evaluations of the doctrine of precedent in the formative period. I provide an alternative explanation for the adoption by American courts of rhetoric favoring stare decisis, one that links the rhetoric used by these courts with the predominant property discourse of the Founding period and with the Marshall Court’s subsequent emphasis on vested rights and the Contracts Clause. I suggest that the stare decisis property rule gained widespread acceptance as …

Promissory Estoppel: The Life History Of An Ideal Legal Transplant, Joel M. Ngugi

University of Richmond Law Review

This article hopes to accomplish three things. First, it will revisit the historical origins of the doctrine of promissory estoppel in the American law of contracts and the role that Samuel Williston, the Chief Reporter of the Restatement (First) of Contracts ("First Restatement") played in the evolution of the doctrine. The dominant theory is that Williston conceptualized the new promissory estoppel doctrine in a way that retarded and blunted the doctrine shortly after its birth. This theory is adhered to by both critics and proponents of the expansion of promissory estoppel as a ground of promissory obligation. According to both …

Towards A Common Law Originalism, Bernadette Meyler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Originalists' emphasis upon William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" tends to suggest that the common law of the Founding era consisted in a set of determinate rules that can be mined for the purposes of constitutional interpretation. This Article argues instead that disparate strands of the common law, some emanating from the colonies and others from England, some more archaic and others more innovative, co-existed at the time of the Founding. Furthermore, jurists and politicians of the Founding generation were not unaware that the common law constituted a disunified field; indeed, the jurisprudence of the common law suggested …

The Merger Of Common-Law And Equity Pleading In Virginia, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

This article describes the separation of common law and equity in Virginia leading up to the 2006 merger of common law and equity pleading and the problems that remain to be solved by the courts.

What Appellate Judges Do, Rick Sims

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Hadley V. Baxendale And Other Common Law Borrowings From The Civil Law, Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

In 1854, the English Exchequer Court delivered the landmark case of Hadley v. Baxendale. That case provided, for the first time in the common law, a defined rule regarding the limitations on recovery of damages for breach of contract. It has been widely celebrated as a landmark in the law of contracts, and more widely as a triumph of the common law system. A little over a decade after it was decided, it had already become highly regarded, for Chief Baron Pollock stated in 1866: “[A] more extensive and accurate knowledge of decisions in our law books, and a more …

The Origins Of American Felony Murder Rules, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Contemporary commentators continue to instruct lawyers and law students that England bequeathed America a sweeping default principle of strict liability for all deaths caused in all felonies. This Article exposes the harsh "common law" felony murder rule as a myth. It retraces the origins of American felony murder rules to reveal their modern, American, and legislative sources, the rationality of their original scope, and the fairness of their original application. It demonstrates that the draconian doctrine of strict liability for all deaths resulting from all felonies was never enacted into English law or received into American law. This Article reviews …

Courts And Lawyers On The Arkansas Frontier, Lynn Foster

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reading The Fossil Record: A New Look At Old Law, Elliot Gardner

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Some Old Problems In England And Some New Solutions From Virginia, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The fundamental ideal to which we aspire in the field of civil procedure is the perfect balance between expeditious results and correct results in the administration of justice. Two famous quotations from two famous English Equity judges come to mind. John Scott, Lord Eldon, the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain from 1801 to 1827 who was often criticized for being excessively dilatory, said, 'sat cito si sat bene'. Sir George Jessel, Master of the Rolls from 1873 to 1883, once said, 'I may be wrong and sometimes am, but I never have any doubts'. Jessel had his docket under firm …

Holmes, Common Law Theory, And Judicial Restraint, 36 J. Marshall L. Rev. 457 (2003), Frederic R. Kellogg

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.