Constitutional Law Commons^™

Corwin: The "Higher Law" Background Of American Constitutional Law, Charles M. Whelan S.J.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The "Higher Law" Background of American Constitutional Law. By Edward S. Corwin.

Constitutional Law - Federal Anti-Subversive Legislation - The Communist Control Act Of 1954, Paul R. Haerle

Michigan Law Review

This comment is intended as a preliminary step in an analysis of the legislative history of the act and a consideration of both its potential effectiveness and constitutional validity.

Crosskey And The Constitution: A Reply To Goebel, Sylvester Petro

Michigan Law Review

The immediate purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the inadequacies of the most embittered of the reviews of Crosskey's book which I have read, "Ex Parte Clio,'' written by Professor Goebel (hereinafter sometimes referred to as "the reviewer"). Demonstrating these things will involve repeated reference to the thesis and the methodology of the book, and comparison of the book with the contentions advanced by the reviewer. The reading will probably be as tedious as the writing has been, but that cannot be helped, for the longer aim of this paper cannot be achieved in any other manner. That aim …

Aliens - Naturalization - Netural Aliens Who Sought Relief From Military Service Barred From Becoming United States Citizens, John Houck S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

During World War II, an alien who was a citizen or a subject of a neutral country was allowed to escape service in the armed forces of the United States by signing Selective Service Form DSS 301. A release thus obtained carried with it a disability ever to become a citizen of the United States. A substantial number of neutral aliens availed themselves of this relief from military service. Today, the courts are faced with the problem of whether signing Form 301 shall in every case prevent the alien from becoming a citizen. It is the purpose of this comment …

Borderland - Where Copyright And Design Patent Meet, Richard W. Pogue

Michigan Law Review

Copyright law and design patent law contemplate basically different objects of protection. Yet at the outer fringes of these types of protection certain concepts overlap to form a rather undefined borderland in which it is difficult to say what law is applicable-copyright law, patent law, neither, or both. It is the purpose of this paper to explore this borderland area in the light of traditional copyright and patent law principles, with attention given to policy considerations involved, and to offer suggestions toward drawing a sharper boundary between the two.

Treaties Governing The Succession To Real Property By Aliens, Willard L. Boyd, Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Under customary international law no nation has the duty to grant to aliens the right to hold real property. Although international law accords to an alien the privilege of participating in the economic life of the state of his residence, this privilege does not encompass the right to hold real property. The right to succeed to and hold real property is a matter solely within the competence of a nation. It is for each nation exclusively to regulate the acquisition and tenure of real property. National authority in this regard can be traced to the concept that the sovereign may …

Constitutional Law-Right To Bail, Robert L. Sandblom S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution provides that "Excessive bail shall not be required . . . ." This clause, as with all of the Bill of Rights, serves as a limitation on the federal government. From a very early date this provision has likewise established a boundary on the discretion of the federal courts in their exercise of criminal jurisdiction. Although this Eighth Amendment provision is a protection against federal encroachment, it does not limit the powers of states, arguments of individual Justices to the contrary notwithstanding.

In the recent Supreme Court decision of Stack v. Boyle, this …

Silva: Presidential Succession, Wilber M. Brucker, Jr. S. Ed.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION. By Ruth C. Silva.

English Constitutional History, By S.B. Chrimes, John J. Murray

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Presidential Succession Act Of I947, Ruth C. Silva

Michigan Law Review

The Constitution of the United States empowers the Congress to designate what officer shall act as President in case of the death, resignation, removal, or inability of both the President and Vice President. Recently the Eightieth Congress passed a statute under this grant of power. Although the new succession act is frequently alleged to be unconstitutional, it is similar to the first succession law enacted by the Second Congress, which contained many of the men who framed the Constitution and voted for its ratification. The law of 1792 provided that the President pro tempore of the Senate or, if the …

Founding Fathers And The Natural Law: A Study Of The Source Of Our Legal Institutions, The, Clarence Emmett Manion

Journal Articles

Where did the Founding Fathers get the principles upon which they established our government? What was the source of their faith? The bedrock of their convictions? What was the political evolution of our Constitution? The legal philosophy of our Bill of Rights? The discussion of these questions by Dean Manion is timely for it is necessary now to make soundings and take bearings if the Ship of State is to continue on its true course. Whereas the Revolution of 1688 brought the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty to England, the American colonists resisted that doctrine and adhered to the true natural …

The Enduring Federalist, Edited By Charles A. Beard; The Great Rehearsal, By Carl Van Doren, John P. Frank

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Vested Rights And The Portal-To-Portal Act, Ray A. Brown

Michigan Law Review

The Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 attempts, by new and retroactive definitions of what constitutes working time of an employee under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, to deprive employees of claims under that earlier act, to which the Supreme Court of the United States has held they were entitled. This article will discuss whether this can be done under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Van Doren: The Great Rehearsal, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of THE GREAT REHEARSAL. By Carl Van Doren.

Mr. Justice William Johnson And The Common Incidents Of Life: I, A. J. Levin

Michigan Law Review

When Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes filed his brief dissenting opinion in Lochner v. New York in 1905 he must have noticed something new on the American horizon. In this now famous opinion he initiated the first steps which were to usher in a new era in American jurisprudence. "General propositions do not decide concrete cases," he announced with axiomatic brevity and, thus, gave the first telling blow to what may well be termed "introspective jurisprudence." This generalization on the subject of generality was followed in the opinion by a more concrete application, the implementing assertion that a reasonable man might …

The Constitution-1787 And Today, Walter F. Dodd

Indiana Law Journal

An Address given before Indianapolis Bar Association, September 6, 1944.

The Place Of Trial Of Criminal Cases: Constitutional Vicinage And Venue, William Wirt Blume

Michigan Law Review

In 1909 one Henry G. Connor, presumably Mr. Justice Connor of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, published in the Pennsylvania Law Review an article entitled "The Constitutional Right to a Trial by a Jury of the Vicinage." The question discussed was: May a state constitutionally provide by statute that a crime be tried in a county other than that in which it was committed? Or, putting the question in terms of vicinage as distinguished from venue, may a state constitutionally provide by statute that a crime be tried by jurors summoned from a county other than the county …

Administrative Boards And Delegation Power, William Burns Lawless

Journal Articles

With the growth of American federalism and the passing of the doctrines of laissez faire as axioms of economic and political legal theory, the Congressional function magnified. Throughout the last decade the multiphased problems of Congress has necessitated the creation of administrative commissions to perform-the policies of the legislature. Congress continues to declare the law and determine the legal principle to control in given cases. In the same breath of legal creation it goes farther and provides for an administrator or commission to vitiate the doctrine set-out. The transfusion of power from the national legislature to the administrator promotes sensitive …

A Proposal For Co-Operative Research On The Bill Of Rights, Jerome Hall

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Council And Court: The Handbill Ordinances, 1889-1939, James K. Lindsay

Michigan Law Review

The extent to which a municipality may regulate or prohibit the distribution of handbills and circulars on its streets and from house to house has been thoroughly considered by the courts in the last two years. These recent cases reveal one phase of a battle historically rich and presently important to the American people. It is the thrust of a principle-the right of free speech and press-against the encroachments of municipal governing bodies concerned with the practical problem of keeping their streets clean. The municipal official sees the problem thus: "One of the small but aggravating nuisances which most cities …

Constitutional Interpretation And Judicial Self-Restraint, Vincent M. Barnett Jr.

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 …

Gibbons V. Ogden Then And Now, Hugh Evander Willis

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law - Federal Courts - Law To Be Applied In Cases Of Diversity Of Citizenship - Swift V. Tyson Overrule, Frank B. Stone

Michigan Law Review

A recent personal injury case, Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, arose in the federal district court, based upon diversity of citizenship, in which the defendant urged that state judicial decisions of Pennsylvania, the locus delicti, imposed no liability on it for negligence to trespassers. The plaintiff denied that such was the Pennsylvania law and alternatively replied that the issue of law was one to be determined by the federal court without regard to the law of Pennsylvania. On April 25, 1938, a verdict for the plaintiff was unanimously set aside by the Supreme Court. Two members, Justices Butler and McReynolds, …

Governmental Powers, State And National, Under Our Constitutional System, Orie Leon Phillips

Michigan Law Review

We are living in a day when democracy is receding and the totalitarian state is advancing on many fronts. Three great nations have accepted as their governmental system authoritarian collectivism. Under the totalitarian systems, the right of the individual to think freely, to engage in free enterprise, to enjoy personal liberty, and to work out his own destiny is taken away. Instead, there is a regimentation of human beings, where everyone's thought, everyone's time, everyone's labor, and at last everyone's life, are at the disposal of a supreme authority. Of course, such a system means the vesting of tremendous powers …

Freedom Of The Press And Of The Mails, Eberhard P. Deutsch

Michigan Law Review

It should be unnecessary to amend the Federal Constitution to accommodate the facilities of government to the needs of society, as those needs develop with the social and scientific advance of civilization. But the trend of legislative effort to reach beyond constitutional limits to satisfy fleeting economic or political expediencies, without regard for the vital distinction between sound and substance, and of courts to seek justification for such excursions, under the benefit of constitutional doubt due "solemn expressions of legislative will," may lead to highly dangerous situations. As this trend is permitted to reach extremes, the erasure of the well-defined …

Amending The Constitution Article Five: The Keystone Of The Arch, Ralph R. Martig

Michigan Law Review

Article V is the keystone of the Constitution. For, by altering its provisions, the process of amendment can be made so rigid as to become impracticable, or so flexible that the instrument can be altered without sufficient thought. Through this article, then, we reach toward every other clause in the Constitution.

Constitutional Law - Minimum Wage Decision - Future Of Legislation By States

Michigan Law Review

The shadow of a thirteen-year old decision which many had hoped was laid forever again fell upon the field of minimum wage legislation as the Supreme Court invalidated the New York minimum wage law for women. With this holding, which came as a surprise to many, the issue of the constitutionality of minimum wage legislation was again thrust into the limelight, and with the two great political parties wrestling with the problem of party programs, the decision may have political repercussions, of a force as yet incalculable. Before considering the future of minimum wage legislation, let us take a brief …

Congress And The Appellate Jurisdiction Of The Supreme Court, Ralph R. Martig

Michigan Law Review

A democratic government such as ours, based upon the theory of popular sovereignty, presents many curious political phenomena. For example: in order to insure a proper balance of the powers, it has been necessary for the Supreme Court to assume the onerous task of passing upon the constitutionality of congressional legislation. It is unfortunate, but necessary, that the Court be obliged to exercise this power of judicial review at a time when the entire country is suffering from the effects of a severe and sustained economic depression. It is unfortunate, too, that the legislation under judicial examination should involve questions …

Has The Constitution Gone?, John A. Fairlie

Michigan Law Review

As far back as 1828, Chief Justice Marshall is quoted as saying: "Should Jackson be elected, I shall look upon the government as virtually dissolved." A few years later, when Taney was appointed Chief Justice by Jackson, Daniel Webster wrote: "Judge Story thinks the Supreme Court is gone, and I think so too." Soon afterwards, when the newly constituted Court rendered decisions upholding statutes from which Story dissented, the latter wrote to Judge McLean: "There will not, I fear, ever in our day, be any case in which a law of a State or of Congress will be declared …

The Delegation Of Federal Legislative Power To Executive Officials, Theodore W. Cousens

Michigan Law Review

It will be the purpose of this article to attempt (1) a chronological survey of the previous Supreme Court cases relating to alleged delegations of legislative power, and (2) an analysis and discussion of the Panama Refining Co. decision in the light of this background. No discrimination is made between delegations of state and of federal legislative power, as the Supreme Court makes no such discrimination.