Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

The Legal Status Of The Netherlands, Bartholomew Landheer

Michigan Law Review

The transfer of the Netherlands Government to London involves a number of legal aspects which are of great interest. In the first place, the term "government" deserves a closer scrutiny. Under an absolute monarchy or a totalitarian form of government the king or ruler combines the legislative, executive and judicial powers. Under a democracy or a constitutional monarchy the situation becomes far more complicated.

It is stated in the Netherlands Constitution that the executive power is vested in the king. The legislative power, however, is exercised by the king and States-General together. Thus, if, as in the case of the …

Legal Techniques And Political Ideologies: A Comparative Study, Alexander H. Pekelis

Michigan Law Review

The problem with which we are going to deal is one of comparative law, a discipline probably even more illusory than legal science itself. A body of laws represents in itself neither a social reality nor a social ideal. One of the difficulties that every historian faces in trying to reconstruct a period of the past with the help of legal monuments is due to the great variety of relations existing between legal rules and social reality. So, e.g., legal monuments generally contain in an inextricable confusion at least two contradictory types of rules: rules which are a simple restatement …

Comparative Research And Unification Of Law, Hessel E. Yntema

Michigan Law Review

The current interest in international unification of law as a major objective of comparative legal research is significant testimony, in an era of accentuated nationalism, to the increasing solidarity of the modern world. In the development of this interest, Latin America has played a pioneer role. As early as 1826, the celebrated Congress convened at Panama envisaged in its deliberations what one of its members termed a "System of Public Law" for the Americas. The Congress of Montevideo of 1888-1889, anticipated by the Lima Congress of Jurists of 1878, produced the first substantial and successful codification of private international law, …

Italian Administrative Courts Under Fascism, Paul B. Rava

Michigan Law Review

Observers not wholly familiar with the administration of the present government of Italy are generally surprised by the fact that the Council of State, the supreme administrative court, is still an operating body after more than eighteen years of blackshirt revolution and domination. It seems strange that a dictator should have preserved this agency, which was established in order to bring justice into public administration, and which rapidly became the principal guardian of individual rights against administrative arbitrariness. One asks how the Council of State can, in a totalitarian state, continue to exercise its functions of administrative court and of …

The Classification Of Some Powers Of Appointment, Joseph Gold

Michigan Law Review

Many problems involving powers of appointment depend for their solution on the classification of the power in question as general or special. It is now clearly established in English law and in most American jurisdictions that this classification depends on the persons to whom an appointment may be made. The fact that the power is exercisable on a contingency or in a specified manner does not affect the character of the power. Nor is it relevant for the purpose of classification that the power permits the appointment of a limited interest only. A general power is usually said to be …

Revocation Of Wills By Subsequent Change In The Condition Or Circumstances Of The Testator, Elizabeth Durfee

Michigan Law Review

Among the oldest rules in the law of wills are those by which a will is held to be revoked by implication by certain changes in the circumstances of the testator. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these rules. Special reference will be made to statutes, both those which deal generally with the subject and those which provide specifically for the effect of particular events, such as marriage; no attempt will be made, however to analyze the latter type of statute exhaustively. By way of introduction, a brief historical survey of the doctrine should be made.

Excess Profits Taxation In 1941, Charles Victor Beck Jr., Jamille George Jamra, David L. Loeb

Michigan Law Review

The problems of business taxation are twofold: from the governmental standpoint, the problem is to obtain sufficient revenues at a minimum of cost and with the least resistance; from the business standpoint, the problem is to obtain lighter taxation where possible at a minimum of cost and with the greatest simplicity and uniformity. The excess profits tax has been devised by the economists of the several nations with the object of bolstering national taxing systems in extraordinary periods which demand abnormal revenues. With the advent of the excess profits tax, the desire for simplicity and low cost in taxation was …

The Revision Of The Treaties Of Montevideo On The Law Of Conflicts, Ernst Rabel

Michigan Law Review

In its issue of July 1940, the Revista Juridica Argentina of Buenos Aires has published the new "Tratados de Derecho Internacional Privado" of Montevideo concluded in 1939 and 1940. We are grateful to this review for apprising us of a significant event in the field of international codification.

The Premises Of The Judgment As Res Judicata In Continental And Anglo-American Law, Robert Wyness Millar

Michigan Law Review

The newly reconstituted Supreme Court of the United States has become the center of an earnest controversy with respect to the true role of the Court in constitutional interpretation. The general controversy is, of course, far from new. What makes it of more than ordinary significance is that the Court itself is revealing a tendency substantially to alter the extent, if not the nature, of judicial review. This tendency has not yet become clearly dominant, but it is apparent enough to shake the implicit faith in the Court of many of those to whom, before 1937, any criticism of the …

The Premises Of The Judgment As Res Judicata In Continental And Anglo-American Law, Robert Wyness Millar

Michigan Law Review

That every judicial judgment, whatever its character, consists of premises and conclusion is a fact sufficiently obvious. In our system, especially, expression of the premises must very often be sought outside the actual judgment-order and collected from other parts of the judicial record or even from evidence aliunde of what took place at the hearing. But the legal nature of the relation between premises and conclusion is independent of the particular structure of the record and the mode of ascertaining what those premises were. Given satisfaction of the requirements of the law with respect to identity of parties, it is …

The Codification Of The French Customs, John P. Dawson

Michigan Law Review

A renewed attack on central problems of English legal history can gain fresh perspective from the history of French law. France and England entered the later middle ages with a common fund of legal and political institutions. Much of the area that was to be included in modern France was united with England under a common sovereign; political institutions were shaped by the same basic forces into similar forms of feudal organization; private law was largely composed of unformulated popular custom, remarkably similar even in detail. As early as the thirteenth century the tendencies toward divergence, both in law and …

Dicey's Law Of The Constitution: A Review, William A. Robson

Michigan Law Review

The first edition of this celebrated work appeared in 1885; and such was its vogue until ten or fifteen years ago that there is scarcely anyone over thirty-five years of age who studied law, politics or constitutional history at a university or professional law school in England and the British Dominions who was not "brought up" on Dicey. "Dicey on the Constitution" was regarded for generations not merely as a perfect, accurate and comprehensive statement of the principles of the British system of government; but also as a reliable explanation of its superior virtues and liberties. The book attained an …

Regulation Of Labor Unions And Labor Disputes In France, Rudolf B. Sobernheim, V. Henry Rothschild 2nd

Michigan Law Review

In a study of British labor, Andre Philip contrasted what he termed "le Trade Unionisme'' of England with les syndicats professionels of France. So foreign did he deem the British concept of trade unionism to his French readers that, in speaking of British trade unions, he preferred not to use the French term.

German Social Honor Courts, Harlow J. Heneman

Michigan Law Review

Germany's National Socialist regime has prided itself on its ability to maintain peaceful employer-employee relations at a time when other countries of the world are seriously troubled by industrial disturbances. The German government has actively intervened to see that neither employers nor workers overstep bounds set for them by Nazi social and economic policies. Dr. Robert Ley, head of the German Labor Front, has said that the government owes its success in this field to measures that are a "healthy combination of freedom and compulsion." Since Hitler's advent to power, the former organizations of both employers and employees have largely …

Restricted Testation In New Zealand, Australia And Canada, Joseph Dainow

Michigan Law Review

One of the long accepted differences between the common law and the civil law has been the freedom of testamentary disposition of the former as contrasted with the limitations of the latter. Thus, while the continental testator was limited in the amount of property that he could leave away from the members of his immediate family, the Englishman could cut them all off without a penny. In other common-law countries the same liberty was continued; but recent years have witnessed important departures.

Corporate Nationality And The Neutrality Law, Paul Weidenbaum

Michigan Law Review

Even a superficial reading of the neutrality law indicates that certain problems of corporate entity and nationality are of utmost importance for its future working. This act seeks to give protection from certain real or assumed dangers. The problem arises whether such purpose cannot be wholly frustrated by the simple means and ways afforded by incorporation. This problem has never been hidden.

The Theory And Practice Of Pre-Trial Procedure, Edson R. Sunderland

Michigan Law Review

Pre-trial civil procedure under the English common-law system consisted only of pleading. Whatever the rules of pleading could accomplish in the way of defining and restricting issues contributed to the efficiency of the trial. What could not be done by the rules of pleading could not be done at all.

The great weakness of pleading as a means for developing and presenting issues of fact for trial lay in its total lack of any means for testing the factual basis for the pleader's allegations and denials. They might rest upon the soundest evidence, or they might rest upon nothing at …

Conditional Wills, Alvin E. Evans

Michigan Law Review

The discovery of what the language of a testator means is a constant duty of the courts. The task in the case of wills conditional in form frequently is to inquire whether the conditional language is merely formal and used by way of inducement or is intended to be taken literally. Clear cut and uniformly dependable tests as guides to such inquiry do not exist.

Basic Monetary Conceptions In Law, Arthur Nussbaum

Michigan Law Review

While in various periods of American legal history American courts have been confronted with problems of a monetary character, the importance and multiplicity of these questions have never been more strongly felt than within the last few years, and there is certainly no indication that this situation will change in the near future. The jural difficulties arising from monetary troubles are unusual, not only because of their financial and social implications, but also because of their theoretical intricacies. No wonder, therefore, that arguments advanced by courts in cases of a monetary nature are very often highly unsatisfactory. Again and again, …

The Doctrine Of Stare Decisis In British Courts Of Last Resort, John A. Fairlie

Michigan Law Review

The House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council are both British courts of last resort. The House of Lords is the final court for the United Kingdom and reviews cases from the English Court of Appeals and equivalent courts of Scotland and Northern Ireland; the Judicial Committee hears appeals of cases from the colonies and dominions and ecclesiastical cases.

Readers of Professor Gray's lectures on The Nature and Sources of the Law are aware of the distinction he notes between the attitude of the British House of Lords, on the one hand, and the Judicial Committee …

Attorney And Client - Unlawful Practice Before Industrial Commission In Workmen's Compensation Proceedings, Charles R. Moon Jr.

Michigan Law Review

In forty-four states of the Union and in Alaska, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippine Islands there are workmen's compensation acts. A great majority of these acts provide for a board or commission to settle all disputes as to compensation. Practice before these boards and commissions has become a large share of the business of many lawyers and of many law firms. To them, in particular, and to the legal profession, in general, the question raised in the recent case of Goodman v. Beall is of considerable interest. In this case, suit was brought by a committee of the Ohio …

The Investigating Magistrate (Juge D'Instruction) In European Criminal Procedure, Morris Ploscowe

Michigan Law Review

For nearly five centuries the distinctive figure in the preliminary stages of European criminal proceedings has been the investigating magistrate, known in France as the juge d'instruction. Although temporarily eclipsed by the revolutionary reforms in France in 1791, he was soon re-established. In other European countries the juge d'instruction continued to be the central figure in the preliminary procedure through all the reforms achieved by the liberal movements of the nineteenth century. The investigating magistrate has remained a purely Continental institution. In theory and in practice he embodies the essential difference between Continental and Anglo-American criminal procedure preliminary to trial.

International Law-Expatriation-Citizenship Of Child Lost By Removal And Expatriation Of Father

Michigan Law Review

Petitioner, a native-born American woman, was taken to Canada by her father who became naturalized there while she was still a minor. Petitioner later married a British subject and seeks naturalization here under a statute authorizing this to American women who have lost their citizenship through marriage to an alien. A treaty in force between the United States and Great Britain provided that persons naturalized according to Canadian law should lose American citizenship. The Canadian statute provided that if the father became naturalized, his minor children should, "within Canada," be deemed Canadian subjects. Held, that petitioner had not lost her …

The English Rule As To Liability For Unintended Consequences, George C. Tilley

Michigan Law Review

The question how far a defendant is liable in tort for the unintended consequences of his wrongful act, generally supposed to have been settled for England by the case of In re Polemis and Furness, Withy & Co., Ltd., has recently been reopened by the House of Lords decision in the case of Liesbosch Dredger v. S. S. Edison. Defendants, owners of the Edison, negligently sank the plaintiffs' dredger Liesbosch while the latter was being used by the plaintiffs in performance of a profitable contract to construct a harbor at Patras, Greece. There was evidence that, …

Constitutional Law - Force And Effect Of Clauses Providing For Payment Of Private Indebtedness In Gold

Michigan Law Review

Certain Belgium company bonds were issued providing for payment of interest "in sterling in gold coin of the United Kingdom of or equal to the weight and fineness existing on September 1, 1928." After England had left the gold: standard the issuing company sought to make interest payments in depreciated pounds. Plaintiff bondholder sought to enforce payment of sufficient depreciated currency to enable him to purchase on the day of payment gold in the same quantity as he would have received had payment been due September 1, 1928. The English House of Lords held for plaintiff, reversing the decision of …

Alternative Parties And The Common Law Hangover, Dale E. Bennett

Michigan Law Review

Professor Edson R. Sunderland stated in 1920 that a glaring failure chargeable to the legal profession in America was "its ignorance and indifference to improvements in procedural practice developed in other jurisdictions," pointing out that while discoveries by foreign scholars in the field of medicine were eagerly accepted, similar innovations in the field of law were uniformly ignored regardless of merit. Such apathy is largely attributable to the legislatures, but the courts cannot be given an entirely clean bill of health, for attempted procedural reforms have often been nullified, in whole or in part, by technical construction and an attempted …

International Law - Validity Of Soviet Decrees

Michigan Law Review

The Soviet government, by a nationalization decree, confiscated all oil lands in Russia, among them the land of plaintiffs, Russian nationals, and sold oil extracted therefrom to defendant. Plaintiffs sought an accounting, claiming that the confiscatory decrees of the unrecognized Soviet government and seizure of oil lands thereunder had no legal effect. A communication from the State Department was introduced: "The Department of State is cognizant of the fact that the Soviet regime is exercising control and power in territory of the former Russian Empire and the Department of State has no disposition to ignore that fact. The refusal of …

Constitutional Law-Force And Effect Of Clauses Providing For Payment Of Private Indebtedness In Gold

Michigan Law Review

A recent English case decided in the Court of Appeal, In re Société lntercommunale Belge D'Eléctricité, Feist v. The Company, suggests questions of interesting application to American constitutional law. In that case a debtor's obligation specified payment "in sterling in gold coin of the United Kingdom of or equal to the standard of weight and fineness existing on September 1, 1928." When payment became due, however, gold was no longer available - England had discontinued gold payments and left the gold monetary standard, gold was subject to being commandeered by the government, and gold coins were redeemable at …

Constitutional Law-Federal Instrumentality- Mcculloch V. Maryland In Canada And Australia, Alden L. Powell

Michigan Law Review

The British North America Act of 1867 expressly exempts from taxation certain governmental instrumentalities. Section 125 of that Act provides that "no Lands or Property belonging to Canada or any Province shall be liable to taxation." This restriction applies to both Dominion and Provincial governments. W. H. P. Clement writes that this provision was a precautionary measure "to prevent the Dominion from levying taxes for federal purposes upon property held by the Crown for provincial purposes, and vice versa. It would operate no doubt to exempt from custom's duties goods purchased abroad by a provincial government. . . . " …

Limitation Of Actions And The Conflict Of Laws, Edgar H. Ailes

Michigan Law Review

All civilized States, in the interest of an efficient administration of justice, have felt compelled to fix time limits beyond which access to their courts would be denied to aggrieved parties. Interest reipublicae ut sit finis litium. This was true even of Roman law in which actions were normally perpetual. Since the limitations enacted by various legislatures differ widely, and since debts are transitory, permitting suit wherever the creditor can find the debtor (at least in countries where the Common Law prevails), it is of the first practical importance that definite rules of Conflict of Laws be evolved to …