Courts Commons^™

Bankruptcy-Secured Debts-Jurisdiction Of State Courts

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Limitation Of Diversity Jurisdiction In Cases Affecting Foreign Corporations, Gustavus Ohlinger

Michigan Law Review

On February 29, 1932, President Hoover sent to the Senate and House of Representatives a message recommending that the jurisdiction of federal courts based on diversity of citizenship be modified by "providing that where a corporation, organized under the laws of one State, carries on business in another State it shall be treated as a citizen of the State wherein it carries on business as respects suits brought within that State between it and the residents thereof arising out of the business carried on in such State."

Courts-Discretion To Refuse Jurisdiction-Forum Non Conveniens

Michigan Law Review

In these days of frequent travel and of corporations doing business in many states, a plaintiff with a transitory cause of action often can get personal service on defendant in more than one jurisdiction. This privilege may be abused, and to meet such abuse a plea of forum non conveniens is proper, the substance of which, as its name implies, is that the forum is not appropriate for the trial of the suit. Where either of the parties is a resident, or where the cause of action arose within the jurisdiction, the forum will usually be as appropriate as any, …

Courts-Removal Of Causes-Jurisdictional Amount

Michigan Law Review

Two suits for personal injuries, in each of which a claim for $5,000 was made, were removed to the federal court by defendant. Plaintiff's counsel in his opening statement said that as the result of the injuries one plaintiff was unable to work for two weeks and visited his doctor seven times and that the other was away from work for three weeks and also saw his doctor seven times. The wages of the first plaintiff were $55 a week; those of the second averaged $75 a week. He further stated that the injuries were not permanent, and that, except …

Federal Practice--Unconstitionality Of A State Statutye-Requirement Of A Three-Judge Court

Michigan Law Review

The plaintiff corporation applied for a preliminary injunction in a suit to restrain the collection of a state franchise tax on the ground that the tax law was unconstitutional under the federal Constitution. After the complaint had been filed and a temporary restraining order had been granted, the defendant moved to dismiss the bill for want of equity, and upon a hearing of the motion the bill was dismissed. The plaintiff then appealed to the circuit court of appeals where the law was held to be unconstitutional and the judgment was reversed. Held, the single judge had no jurisdiction …

Prohibition-Against Enforcement Of Order To Produce Documents-Availability Of Other Appellate Relief

Michigan Law Review

Application was made to the circuit court of appeals for a writ of prohibition against a district judge to restrain him from compelling petitioner to allow an inspection of his ledger. Held, that although in the opinion of the court the order had been entered improperly, the circuit court of appeals had no jurisdiction to issue a writ of prohibition against enforcement of the order. Keaton v. Kennamer (C. C. A. 10th, 1930) 42 F.(2d) 814.

Administative Tribunals-Judicial Review Of Legislative Functions

Michigan Law Review

On refusal of the Federal Radio Commission to renew its license for a broadcasting station with the existing terms, on the ground that public convenience and necessity did not require it, the applicant company availed itself of a statutory appeal to the court of appeals of the District of Columbia which reversed the finding as to public convenience and necessity. The commission applied to the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. Held, writ dismissed on the theory that the court had no jurisdiction to review the exercise pf an administrative or legislative power, and that the …

Venue--Waiver Of Objection In Federal Courts

Michigan Law Review

The plaintiff, a fireman for the defendant railroad, was injured by a defective "chafing-block" while engaged in switching cars onto a siding, in order to permit an interstate train to pass. The injury took place in West Virginia, where the plaintiff was a resident. The defendant was incorporated under the laws of Maryland. Suit was brought in the federal court of the northern district of Ohio. The plaintiff based his right to recover on the Federal Employers' Liability Act, 45 U. S. C. A. sec. 51-59, and the Federal Boiler Inspection Act, 45 U. S. C. A. sec. 22 et …

Origin Of Equity Jurisdiction And Jurisprudence, Edward Murphy

Student Theses

Introductory Statement

It is not our purpose in this thesis to attempt a complete and detailed history of equity as it exists in England and in the United states. To do this would involve little more than a compilation of what has already been quite elaborately treated by some of the great legal minds of England and America.

We propose to treat rather of the nature of Equity as it existed in the Roman Law,its influence in the English law, the primitive condition of the law at the time of the origin of Equity, and of the causes which made …

History Of The Statutory Rules Of Federal Jurisdiction And Procedure, Robert C. Brown

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Jurisdiction Of The Federal Courts Based On Diversity Of Citizenship, Robert C. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Review. Federal Appellate Jurisdiction And Procedure By Elijah N. Zoline, Robert C. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

The Court Of Claims, J. H. Toelle

Michigan Law Review

The Court of Claims was established by Act of Congress in 1855. The original Act provided that at the commencement of each session of Congress, and at the commencement of each month during the session, the Court should report the cases upon which they should have finally acted, stating in each the material facts which they found established by the evidence, with their opinion in the case, and the. reasons upon which such opinion was founded, and the opinion of any judge who should dissent from the majority. It also directed the Court to prepare a bill or bills in …

The Uniformity Of The Maritime Law, George L. Canfield

Michigan Law Review

In 1871, Richard Henry Dana commenced a masterly article on the "History of Admiralty Jurisdiction in the Supreme Court of the United States,'' by writing, "After seventy yea.rs of baffling winds and cross currents in the region of admiralty jurisdiction, the Supreme Court of the United States has sailed out into deep water." In 1924, Charles Merrill Hough concludes his delightful "Admiralty Jurisdiction-of Late Years," with the statement, "The years since 1906 have not increased the certainty of maritime law, and they have impaired the tradition of enforceable customs of the sea." And others writing in current legal periodicals have …

Courts--Jurisdiction To Vacate Order Of Adoption After Term (Comment On Recent Cases), Bernard C. Gavit

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

International Law--Witholding Of Political Recognition--Suit By Russian Corporation In Court Of Equity, Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

"The plaintiff corporation was incorporated in Russia under the Imperial government. Prior to the Russian Revolution it had deposited certain securities and moneys with the defendant, as trustee, as required by the New York statutes, for the protection of policy-holders and creditors. In this suit to compel the return of the funds the defendant claimed that the plaintiff corporation was no longer in existence because of the Russian Soviet decrees.... Held, that although the court cannot recognize the legal validity of the decrees of the Soviet government, the facts of the situation are such that justice and reason require …

The Russian Reinsurance Case, Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

Professor Dickinson's second commentary on Russian Reinsurance Company v. Stoddard and Bankers Trust Company: "The facts in the Russian Reinsurance Company case were without precedent. The Reinsurance Company had been incorporated in Russia in 1899 under a special statute constituting its charter and by-laws.... In 1917 the revolutionary Soviet Government was established in Russia and seven of the eight persons constituting the company's board of directors was driven into exile. In 1918 Soviet decrees nationalized the company, confiscated its property, and apparently terminated its corporate existence. Nevertheless, the exiled directors held meetings in Paris and continued to direct the …

International Political Questions In The National Courts, Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

"Much has been made of the principle, in England and America, that international law is part of the national law to be applied by national courts in appropriate circumstances. As Mr. Justice Gray has expressed it, in the Paquete Habana: 'International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as question of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination...'

This principle is useful, where it is applicable, but it is subject to limitations which are sometimes inadequately appreciated ..."

Permanent Court Of International Justice, Edwin D. Dickinson

Reviews

"The author of this volume of collected papers and addresses is well known as the Bemis Professor of International Law in Harvard Law School, sometime member of the Legal Section of the Secretariat of the League of Nations, and the most efficient advocate of the new Permanent Court of International Justice in America. His enterprise as an advocate is sufficiently attested by the fourteen brilliant papers reproduced in this volume and the nine other titles of similar nature listed in the bibliography, all of them produced during the last three years....

"The exceptional timeliness of the book and the quality …

Contracts With The United States, Grover C. Grismore

Michigan Law Review

It has been settled since a comparatively early day in the history of our government that "the United States being a body politic, may, within the sphere of the constitutional powers confided to it, and through the instrumentality of the proper department to which those powers are confided, enter into contracts not prohibited by law, and appropriate to the just exercise of those powers." While this proposition became established without much of a struggle, it has not been so freely admitted that such contracts are to be given the same construction and effect as the contracts of individuals. In Smoot's …

Cases On Procedure Annotated. Trial And Appellate Practice, Edson R. Sunderland

Books

“A dozen years ago the present editor published a case-book for law school use on Trial Practice. It was then a subject unknown in the law school curriculum. But in the years that have passed the teaching of trial practice has become a common feature in American legal education….

The editor’s earlier volume on Trial Practice has not been incorporated in the present book, but that subject has been entirely reorganized and rewritten. Legal Ethics in connection with trial work has been treated more adequately, new sections on the Verdict and Judgment have been added, certain topics, such as Instructing …

The Permanent International Court Of Justice

Michigan Law Review

The writer has already commented, in an earlier number of this Review, upon the plan for a Permanent Court of International Justice which was formulated by a committee of jurists at The Hague in the summer of 1920 and amended and approved by the Council and Assembly of the League of Nations in December of the same year. 19 MICH. L. REV. 413. The plan became operative upon ratification by a majority of the members of the League in September, 1921, and judges were elected immediately thereafter. The Court's first session opened at The Hague in January, 1922. The present …

Divorce Problems In The Conflict Of Laws, Herbert F. Goodrich

Articles

Divorce may be considered as the termination of the legal relationship between husband and wife by an act of the law. With the purely local aspect of legal questions regarding divorce, Conflict of Laws is not concerned. If a husband and wife are married and have their home in one state, legal questions concerning their divorce are local matters only. These will include the grounds for divorce, the particular court in which the action is brought, the procedure to be followed from commencement to termination of the action. In such a case it is only when some question concerning the …

Indemnity Act Of 1863 A Study In The War-Time Immunity Of Governmental Officers, James G. Randall

Michigan Law Review

One of the familiar measures of the Union administration during the Civil War was the suspension of the habeas corpus privilege and the consequent subjection of civilians to military authority. The essential irregularity of such a situation in American law is especially conspicuous when one considers its inevitable sequel-namely, the protection of military and civil officers from such prosecution as would normally follow invasion of private rights and actual injury of persons and property. Such protection was supplied by a bill of indemnity passed in 1863, and this law, with its amendment of i866, forms a significant chapter in the …

Methods For Relieving Courts Of Last Resort From The Growing Burden Of Appeals, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

"At the last meeting of the Michigan State Bar Association, held in Detroit in June, 1920, the question of employing an intermediate appellate court in this state, as a means for relieving the Supreme Court and expediting the disposal of appeals, was discussed at some length, and it was thereupon moved and carried that the whole subject be referred to the Committee on Legislation and Law Reform to be investigated, and that the Committee report upon the matter at the next meeting of the Association."

Supreme Court's Construction Of The Federal Constitution In 1920-1921, Thomas Reed Powell

Michigan Law Review

Cases Arising under the Constitution or Laws of the United States. The question whether a case presents a "federal question," so called, is raised in a number of the controversies in which the asserted federal question was considered and answered. Only a few of these instances need special mention. In Hartford Life Ins. Co. v. Blincoe,3 after reversal by the Supreme Court of a state judgment against a defendant, a second judgment was rendered by the state court on different grounds. These included holding an assessment on an insurance policy to be void for the inclusion of a state tax …

Requisitioned And The Government-Owned Ship, J. Whitla Stinson

Michigan Law Review

Jurisdiction over requisitioned and government-owned merchantmen and their liabilities under maritime laws are questions which present no real novelty. They were regarded by the ancient sea-law and were as familiar to it as they have recently become,-on account of the exigencies of the late war, to the admiralty systems of to-day. The maritime law of Rome supplies modem cases with the most cogent parallels and is reflected today in the jurisprudence of France and other continental and Latin countries. The jurisdictional question which figures most prominently in these cases relates to the authority to arrest or libel the property of …

Acquiring Jurisdiction Without Personal Service, Seizure Of Aid Of Statute, John R. Rood

Articles

It is often assumed that courts can acquire jurisdiction only by personal service to give jurisdiction in personam, or by a seizure to give jurisdiction in rem; but it is not so. The assumption is induced no doubt by the fact that in the ordinary common law actions jurisdiction is acquired in that way. Mr. Justice Field very distinctly pointed out in the case of Pennoyer v. Neff (1877), 95 U. S. 714, that it was not the fact that the land was not seized that rendered the judgment void. It was the fact that the land was not the …

Full Faith And Credit And Jurisdiction, Willard T. Barbour

Articles

The judgment of a sister state, when assailed by collateral attack, is often said to occupy a position intermediate between foreign and domestic judgments. Though the older American cases were inclined to examine into the merits of any foreign judgment, the present tendency is toward the adoption of the English view according to which a foreign judgment may be attacked collaterally only for want of jurisdiction or fraud. Dicey, Conflict of Laws (ed. 2) Ch. XVII; see note to Tremblay v. Aetna Life Insurance Co., 97 Me. 547, in 94 Am. St. Rep. 521, 538. But whereas any statement of …