Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Constitutional Law Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Michigan Law Review

Discipline
Keyword
Publication Year
File Type

Articles 1381 - 1410 of 1622

Full-Text Articles in Constitutional Law

Book Reviews Apr 1925

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.


Conflict Of Laws Rules As Constitutional Limitations Apr 1925

Conflict Of Laws Rules As Constitutional Limitations

Michigan Law Review

With the constant growth of the United States as a commercial nation, it has been inevitable that state lines should figure in business transactions to an ever diminishing extent. Business relations, keeping pace with the rapid development of modem means of transportation, have increasingly assumed an interstate aspect. With this extension of commercial dealings, the question of the legal rights of the parties so engaged has frequently arisen. Diversity of local rules of law has led to much litigation and disagreement. Differences in local rules might be overcome through the services of competent commercial lawyers, and contracts might then be …


Constitutional Law-Jury Trial For Contempt-Constitutionality Of Clayton Act Mar 1925

Constitutional Law-Jury Trial For Contempt-Constitutionality Of Clayton Act

Michigan Law Review

The defendants, striking employees of a railway company, were proceeded against in a federal district court for contempt in violating a preliminary injunction, and demanded a jury trial under the Clayton Act (c. 323, 38 STAT. 738, sec. 21, 22), which provides that in cases of wilful disobedience of "any lawful writ, process, order, rule, decree, or command of any District court of the United States or any court of the District of Columbia by doing any act or thing" forbidden, if such act or thing also constitutes a criminal offense under any statute of the United States or law …


Crimes-Arrest-Reasonable Cause To Believe Feb 1925

Crimes-Arrest-Reasonable Cause To Believe

Michigan Law Review

The admission of evidence was objected to, in a recent case, on the ground that it had been illegally secured. Officers had arrested the defendant without a warrant, on a charge of illegally transporting liquor. He was in fact guilty of the offense for which arrested, but contended that the evidence secured by the arrest could not be used. The circuit court of appeals phrased the issue thus : ''Was there probable cause for the officers to believe (that the felony was being committed), or were the facts sufficient to give rise merely to a suspicion thereof? If the former, …


Constitutional Law-Restricting Liberty Without Due Process Of Law-Extorted Confessions Feb 1925

Constitutional Law-Restricting Liberty Without Due Process Of Law-Extorted Confessions

Michigan Law Review

Of recent years the administration of criminal justice has increased many-fold, owing to the constantly increasing size of our great cities and the period of growing social unrest in which we find ourselves. Public opinion has demanded a more effective mode of dealing with those who break the law with seeming impunity. In view of this attitude it is only natural that in a particularly baffling crime the police should seek to obtain some clue of the criminals by grilling suspects. This has resulted in many cases in acts which to say the least are over-zealous. In a recent case …


Distinction Between Governmental And Proprietary Functions Of Municipal Corporations, Delmar W. Doddridge Feb 1925

Distinction Between Governmental And Proprietary Functions Of Municipal Corporations, Delmar W. Doddridge

Michigan Law Review

There are many places in the law where the making of a distinction has resulted in a difficulty in application that has greatly increased litigation, but there are few places where this is more true than in the distinction made between the governmental and the proprietary functions of municipal corporations. The distinction has taken a firm grip upon the law of municipal corporations and seems well settled, although its propriety as applied to particular subjects may be doubted. The terminology of the distinction is in itself productive of doubt, the function or duty in the one branch being denominated "governmental", …


Constitutional Validity Of Statute Barring Negroes From Primary Elections Jan 1925

Constitutional Validity Of Statute Barring Negroes From Primary Elections

Michigan Law Review

The history of suffrage in the South during the last thirty-five years has been largely a story of the adoption and administration of discriminatory regulations devised to catch the negro without debarring any considerable number of white people. This legal disfranchisement has been accomplished by property or educational qualifications possessed generally by whites but not by negroes, or by giving a great deal of discretion to election and registration officials, who, understanding what is expected of them, find quite uniformly that the negroes do not meet the requirements while the white applicants generally do. How the letter of the Fifteenth …


Recent Important Decisions Jan 1925

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.


Constitutional Law-Liberty Of Contract-Regulation Of Loaves Of Bread Nov 1924

Constitutional Law-Liberty Of Contract-Regulation Of Loaves Of Bread

Michigan Law Review

A Nebraska statute aimed at short weights in loaves of bread, forbade the manufacture or sale of loaves weighing either more or less than specified standard amounts. It applied only to quantities of 25 loaves or more and a "tolerance" of two ounces per pound was allowed in excess of the standard weights, to be measured by taking an average of the whole consignment. The prohibition of excess weights was explained by the Nebraska court as an attempt "to prevent a loaf of one standard from being increased in size until it can readily be sold for a larger standard". …


Fair Value Of Public Utilities, Edwin C. Goddard Jun 1924

Fair Value Of Public Utilities, Edwin C. Goddard

Michigan Law Review

Such being the decisions, we turn to the practical working of the theories that have been applied. The law is a practical subject. Even in so sacred a matter as protection of property, rules of law should regard the practical results of any theory. A theory that works badly, presumptively at least, is defective, and may be wrong. The guaranties of the Constitution were made for man, not man for the guaranties, and a conception of property that does not work out for the advantage of man may raise a query whether the Constitution demands that conception. It was that …


Evidence--Admissibility Of Evidence Secured Through Violation Of Constitutional Prohibitions May 1924

Evidence--Admissibility Of Evidence Secured Through Violation Of Constitutional Prohibitions

Michigan Law Review

No other questions are oftener before our courts in these latter days than those which concern the admissibility of evidence objected to under the various constitutional provisions, state and national, providing against unreasonable searches and seizures, and compulsory self-crimination.


Book Reviews May 1924

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.


Constitutional Law-Interstate Commerce-The Transportation Act Of 1920 Apr 1924

Constitutional Law-Interstate Commerce-The Transportation Act Of 1920

Michigan Law Review

Contemporaneous comments on Supreme Court decisions involving the "due process" clause too often resolve themselves into mere "debates" as to the wisdom of the particular legislation in question, either from the standpoint of the ultimate object to be accomplished or the methods adopted for its accomplishment. Strongest adherents of our unique system of judicial review must admit that, after all, the duty of the Supreme Court consists primarily in determining whether or not the legislation before it is valid, not whether it is, or is not, a politic enactment.


Book Reviews Mar 1924

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.


Aliens-Right To Own Or Lease Land-Effect Of "Equal Protection" Clause Feb 1924

Aliens-Right To Own Or Lease Land-Effect Of "Equal Protection" Clause

Michigan Law Review

Right of alien residents under the "equal protection" clause of- the federal Constitution received further delimitation in the Alien Land Law Cases, decisions handed down last November. Terrace v. Thompson (U. S. 1923), Adv. Ops. 35, and Porterfield v. Webb, Adv. Ops. 42. In the former case the court was concerned with a Washington statute passed to enforce a provision in the Washington constitution that forbade the ownership of land by any aliens other than those who had in good faith declared their intention to become citizens. The California statute in the second case differed chiefly in limiting its …


Real Property-Alienation-Limitation Feb 1924

Real Property-Alienation-Limitation

Michigan Law Review

In the field of property as in that of personal rights (including contract) we still encounter occasionally the specter of certain supposedly absolute rights. The courts have had to declare often enough that the owner's rights of use are limited by the like rights of other owners, by considerations of public policy, public convenience, etc.; it is not so often that a court deals explicitly with the limitations upon an owner's power of disposing and leasing his property. In Terrace v. Thompson, recently decided by the United States Supreme Court (Nov. 12, 1923) it was urged by a United …


Constitutional Law--"Liberty" Under Fourteenth Amendment--Validity Of Foreign Languages Statutes Jan 1924

Constitutional Law--"Liberty" Under Fourteenth Amendment--Validity Of Foreign Languages Statutes

Michigan Law Review

Nine states during the months immediately following the conclusion of the World War passed statutes in substantially the same language, forbidding the teaching of any modem language except English to children below the eighth grade in any school, private or public. Ohio also passed a law applying only to the German language. Teachers in Nebraska, Iowa, and Ohio were convicted during 1920 and 1921 of violating these statutes and, after the supreme courts of the various states had held them valid, their cases were combined in an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Held, the statutes deprived appellants …


Constitutional Law--Due Process--Kansas Industrial Court Dec 1923

Constitutional Law--Due Process--Kansas Industrial Court

Michigan Law Review

Has the State power to regulate wages and to secure continuity of functioning in essential industries? The U. S. Supreme Court, in Wolff Packing Co. v. Court of Industrial Relations of Kansas, -- U. S. -- Adv. Op. June 11, 1923, says no, at least as to individuals or corporations, engaged in the production of food, but not strong enough to dominate or control the industry. The case involves the validity, under the Federal Constitution, of the Kansas Act establishing the Court of Industrial Relations, referred to hereinafter as the "Industrial Court." Special Session Laws of Kansas, 1920, Chap. …


Constitutionality Of Acts For Conservation Or Retention Of Natural Gas Within The State Dec 1923

Constitutionality Of Acts For Conservation Or Retention Of Natural Gas Within The State

Michigan Law Review

The distribution of our natural resources creating among our several states an economic inter-dependence of varied degrees, and the growing appreciation of the danger of approaching exhaustion in various fields, has very naturally prompted the legislatures of some of the states to enact statutes which have been broadly designated as "conservation acts," though some of them could be described more accurately as "domestic preference acts". Most of these statutes are calculated to prevent waste, arc real conservation measures, and have nearly always been upheld. Ohio Oil Co. v. Indiana, 177 U. S. 190, concerned a statute making it unlawful …


Book Reviews Nov 1923

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.


Legislation In Vague Or General Terms, Ralph W. Aigler Jun 1923

Legislation In Vague Or General Terms, Ralph W. Aigler

Michigan Law Review

For some reason, probably in part the increasing complexity of our life and relationships, but more largely, perhaps, the growing tendency to regulate everybody and everything by positive law, the courts have been called upon with increasing frequency to pass upon the effectiveness of statutes and ordinances phrased in indefinite terms. In a very interesting and valuable paper, Professor Freund has pointed out the weakness and strength, on the one hand, of legislation in general terms, and on the other hand, legislation in which the rule of conduct is attempted to be laid down with precision. His interest apparently lay …


Constitutional Law--Minimum Wage Law For Women As A Violation Of The Fifth Amendment Jun 1923

Constitutional Law--Minimum Wage Law For Women As A Violation Of The Fifth Amendment

Michigan Law Review

The advance of so-called social legislation within the last several decades has furnished an intensely interesting period in constitutional and industrial development. The last skirmish with the fast-disappearing forces of logic and anachronistic formalism seems to have been fought in the recent case of Adkins v. Lyons (April 9, 1923), U. S. Adv. Ops. 795 and 796.


Internationial Aspects Of Prohibition Enforcement Jun 1923

Internationial Aspects Of Prohibition Enforcement

Michigan Law Review

The Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution prohibits "the manufacture, sale, or transportation oi intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes." 40 Stat. 1050, 1941. In the National Prohibition Cases, 253 U. S. 350, 386, the amendment was said to be operative "throughout the entire territorial limits of the United States." As originally enacted, the National Prohibition Act did not in terms define its territorial field, but a supplemental provision afterwards enacted declares that the act "shall apply not only …


Declaratory Judgments Jun 1923

Declaratory Judgments

Michigan Law Review

The Connecticut legislature passed an act in 1921 authorizing courts to make binding declarations of rights. The act was attacked as unconstitutional on the same ground raised by the supreme court of Michigan against the Michigan Declaratory Judgment Act in the case of Amway v. Railway Co., 211 Mich. 592, 12 A. L. R. 26, namely, that declaring rights was not a judicial function. But the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut sustained the act as in no way contravening the constitution. Braman v. Babcock (Conn., 1923), 120 Atl. 150.


A Critique Of Methods For Alteration Of Women's Legal Status, Gladys Wells May 1923

A Critique Of Methods For Alteration Of Women's Legal Status, Gladys Wells

Michigan Law Review

A case was appealed because all women electors were excluded from the jury. Held, the Nineteenth federal Amendment merely prohibits discrimination, leaving the states to confer the right of suffrage. Moreover, jury service is distinct therefrom; and the state constitution excludes women by providing for juries of twelve "men." If being an elector ipso facto entitled to jury service, the legislature could prescribe no other limitation. No question of violation of the Fourteenth Amendment can be raised since the accused does not belong to the excluded class.


Constitutional Law--Executive Pardons In The Courts Apr 1923

Constitutional Law--Executive Pardons In The Courts

Michigan Law Review

An interesting conflict between American political theories and early English precedents arose in a recent case involving the jurisdiction of a court of equity to set aside a pardon procured through fraud and deception upon the pardoning power. At the common law any suppression of the truth or suggestion of falsehood in procuring a pardon was held to vitiate it. HAWKINS, B. 2, ch. 37, § 8; 4 BLACK. COMM. 398, 400. The statute of 27 EDW. III, c. 2, provided that where a pardon was granted at any man's suggestion, the fact of such suggestion and the name of …


Book Reviews Apr 1923

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.


Constitutional Law--Equal Protection Of The Laws--Imposition Of Penalties On Common Carriers For Fialure To Settle Claims Apr 1923

Constitutional Law--Equal Protection Of The Laws--Imposition Of Penalties On Common Carriers For Fialure To Settle Claims

Michigan Law Review

A Nebraska statute provided that common carriers should settle properly presented claims for loss of and damage to freight within sixty days from the presentation thereof, and in case such settlement was not made and more was recovered in a subsequent suit than had been tendered by the carrier, the amount found due should carry as a penalty seven per cent interest from the presentation of the claim and reasonable attorney's fees. In case of appeal, an additional attorney's fee might be included if the plaintiff succeeded. The plaintiff company presented a large number of freight claims, which were all …


Search And Seizure--Reasonableness Apr 1923

Search And Seizure--Reasonableness

Michigan Law Review

Prohibition has rendered more than ever acute the problem of law .enforcement. Search for and seizure of contraband liquor as forfeited to the state is a very essential part of enforcement, and there is immediately raised the question: What constitutes a legal search and seizure?

The recent decision of the Michigan Supreme Court in People v. Case (Mich., 1922), 190 N. W. 289, may well serve as a starting point. There, officers without permission and without warrant entered defendant's automobile truck as it stood upon a public fair-ground, searched and found liquor therein, and arrested defendant when he appeared and …


The Supreme Court's Adjudication Of Constitutional Issues In 1921-1922, V, Thomas Reed Powell Mar 1923

The Supreme Court's Adjudication Of Constitutional Issues In 1921-1922, V, Thomas Reed Powell

Michigan Law Review

By the terms of Article III of the Constitution the federal judicial power extends to cases and controversies of various kinds, and it is established that no dispute, even though otherwise cognizable, can be brought before the federal courts unless they are technically a case or a controversy. In illustration of this, Fairchild v. Hughes held that a private citizen with no other interest at stake than his personal opposition to woman suffrage can not bring a bill to restrain the Secretary of State from issuing a proclamation declaring the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.