Judges Commons^™

Mr. Justice William Johnson And The Unenviable Dilemma, A. J. Levin

Michigan Law Review

A policy of judicial avoidance, otherwise referred to as "judicial restraint," has clearly been the dominant trend in the United States Supreme Court since Mr. Justice Holmes began to sit upon that bench at the beginning of this century. There has been an inclination to explain this change as revealing a tendency of the Court to follow a policy of laissez-faire toward the legislative and executive departments, and to stop at this formalistic explanation of this important aspect of the judicial function. The Court's increasing awareness of its own lack of technical competence in dealing with the many complex governmental …

Unreported Michigan Supreme Court Opinions, 1836-1843, Clark F. Norton

Michigan Law Review

It is a commonly known fact that, although Michigan was admitted to the Union in 1837 (many of her citizens had claimed statehood for more than a year prior to her formal admission), few opinions of the state supreme court written before 1843 have ever been published. Why a period of almost ten years should have elapsed before the first volume of state reports was issued in 1846 ( with the exception of two volumes of chancery reports), or why the early reporters seem, from a casual examination, to have neglected decisions of the court before 1843, or what happened …

Mr. Justice Cardozo And Problems Of Government, Dean G. Acheson

Michigan Law Review

The sorrow with which the entire nation learned of the death of Mr. Justice Cardozo bears witness to the sense of loss felt by the great body of his fellow citizens. Few of the people who mourn him had personal opportunity to know the high qualities of his mind or his saintly character. Yet they truly feel that between him and the thought and spirit of his time there was fundamental sympathy and understanding. In a real sense the cast of his thinking was the product of his age. This awareness of his time was coupled in him with sensitiveness …

Judges -Appointment Of Substitute For Recused Judges - Disqualification Of Judges, Julian Caplan

Michigan Law Review

The problems of the disqualification of judges because of prejudice and of the appointment of substitutes for judges so disqualified were considered in the recent case of State ex rel. Thompson v. Day. One of the defendants in a labor injunction suit had filed with the governor an affidavit setting forth facts showing that the sole judge of the district in which the dispute had arisen had anti-labor tendencies to such extent that the petitioner could not obtain a fair trial and requested that the regular judge be disqualified from hearing the injunction proceedings and a substitute appointed. The …

Judges - De Facto Judge - Special Judge Holding Over After Term Of Assignment Expires, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A district judge, specially assigned to a court other than his own for a term of one week, continued to hold the position after the period had expired under the belief that his assignment covered a longer period, and tried this case after the expiration of the one week period. All attorneys, assuming that the assignment covered a longer period, acted in the case without objection to the judge. The parties did not specifically agree upon him as a special judge. After verdict for defendant, plaintiff moved to vacate. Held, the judge was a de facto judge, and his …

Trials-Right To "Public Trial"-Power Of Judge To Exclude General Public, Francis T. Goheen

Michigan Law Review

Convinced of the desirability of such action, a judge, conducting the trial of a criminal case, wishes to clear the court room of all or a portion of the spectators. To what extent may he legitimately do so? He is necessarily limited by the provision in the constitution of almost every state and in the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States that in "all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial." The extent to which the trial court may go in clearing the court room has been most often tested …

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.

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 …

Federal Practice - Decision Of Questions Preliminary To The Convening Of A Three-Judge Court

Michigan Law Review

Before the district judge can convene a three-judge court, two preliminary questions must be decided. First, is the case within the jurisdiction of the federal courts? Second, is the case one to which the three-judge statute applies?

The Contribution Of Thomas M. Cooley To Bryce's "American Commonwealth", Everett S. Brown

Michigan Law Review

In the preface to The American Commonwealth, James Bryce acknowledged his indebtedness to numerous friends who, in one way or other, aided him in the writing of his book. First on this list is the name of Thomas M. Cooley. An examination of the text and footnotes of The American Commonwealth shows that Bryce was well acquainted with Cooley's published works, especially his Constitutional Limitations and his General Principles of Constitutional Law, which he quoted frequently with approval and respect. Also one finds six references to letters from Judge Cooley or to observations made directly by him to Bryce. But …

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

Six brief book reviews of various law topics.

Review: Stephen J. Field: Craftsman Of Tbe Law., Everett S. Brown

Michigan Law Review

A Review of: STEPHEN J. FIELD: CRAFTSMAN OF TBE LAW

Tenure Of Office Under The Constitution, Everett S. Brown

Michigan Law Review

A review of TENURE OF OFFICE UNDER THE CONSTITUTION By James Hart.

The Technique Of Judicial Appointment, Harold J. Laski

Michigan Law Review

It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the judiciary in the modern state. The work of the executive has become so vast, the powers delegated to it by the legislature are so wide, that judges are, perhaps more than at any previous time, the real safeguard of personal liberty. It is only necessary to recall cases like Coppage v. Kansas, or R. v. Halliday, to realize how nearly judicial activity goes to the very heart of freedom. That is, of course, even more the case when, as with America, the constitution of the state is written, and …

Erring Judges Of The Thirteenth Century, William Renwick Riddell

Michigan Law Review

The Royal Historical Society (of London) has published much material of great interest to lawyers-an humble Fellow, I think none is more interesting than that published in 1906: "State Trials of the Reign of Edward the First, 1289-1293".

The Meaning Of Nationality In The Recent Immigration Acts, Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

Professor Dickinson's commentary on the quotas involved in the Immigration Act of 1921 and of 1924. "Until the more recent enactment the meaning of nationality was obscured in a curious ambiguity ... the Act of 1921 made nationality the basis of the quote plan....

"Whether nationality was used in the scientific sense, however, meaning the character created by allegiance to a recognized nation or state, or whether its significance was arbitrary, referring only to such groupings as might be arranged by census makers or other such administrative officials, remained to be determined by judicial construction."

Professor Dickinson then narrates how …

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

Constructive Contempt Of Court

Michigan Law Review

The recent case of Craig v. Hecht (1923) 44 Sup. Ct. Rep. 103, aroused an extraordinary amount of interest among laymen, and involved some legal questions of importance to lawyers; but perhaps its most significant result was the opportunity it afforded the legal profession to observe the popular attitude of hostility toward certain phases of judicial administration which lawyers are habitually inclined to overlook.

Coke-Parliamentary Sovereignty Or The Supremacy Of The Law?, R. A. Mackay

Michigan Law Review

Few legal authorities have received such conflicting interpretations as Sir Edward Coke. American jurists have turned to him as the legal father of judicial review, English jurists have found in him the authority for Parliamentary Supremacy, The cause of these conflicting interpretations is partly Coke's obscure style. Coke was an encyclopedist rather than a philosopher of the law: his ideas must be dug out and fused together from an heterogeneous mass of apparently unrelated statements. Even his Reports are legal and literary puzzles, a mixture of advocates' pleas, judicial decisions, and probably Sir Edward Coke's personal opinions as well. Hence …

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judges In The Executive Council Of Upper Canada, William Renwick Riddell

Michigan Law Review

When in December, 1791, Upper Canada began her separate provincial career, her first Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel John Graves Simcoe, said that the Constitution of the Province was "the very image and transcript of that of Great Britain."'

Social And Economic Interpretation Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robert Eugene Cushman

Michigan Law Review

For those who love precision and definiteness the question of the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to social and economic problems remains an irritating enigma. The judicial construction of due process of law and the equal protection of the law has from the first discouraged systematic analysis and defied synthesis. More than one writer has emerged from the study of the problem with a neat and compact set of fundamental principles, only to have the Supreme Court discourteously ignore them in its next case. But paradoxical as it may seem, those who long for a wise and forward-looking solution of …

Book Reviews, Nathan Isaacs, Horace Lafayette Wilgus, Arthur H. Basye, Leonard D. White, Victor H. Lane, Edwin D. Dickinson

Michigan Law Review

What does a judge do when he decides a case? It would be interesting to collect the answers ranging from those furnished by primitive systems of law in which the judge was supposed to consult the gods to the ultra-modern, rather profane system described to me recently by a retrospective judge: "I make up my mind which way the case ought to be decided, and then I see if I can't get some legal ground to make it stick." Perhaps the widespread impression is the curiously erroneous one lampooned by Gnaeus Flavius (Kantorowitz). The judge is supposed to sit at …

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Carriers of Passengers - Duty to Stop at Station to Permit Passenger to Alight-Contributory Negligence of Passenger Plaintiff's intestate was riding in the front end of a crowded vestibule car in the coach next to the tender of the eengine. When the train stopped at his station he tried to leave by the front end, but found the door from the vestibule closed. As he did not know how to open it, or was unwilling to be carried by his station, he stepped from his platform to the bumper of the tender and tried to follow it to the side …

Book Reviews, Henry M. Bates, Evans Holbrook, Edwin D. Dickinson

Michigan Law Review

Collected Papers. By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe. i92o. Pp. vii, 316.

Judges In The British Cabinet And The Struggle Which Led To Their Exclusion After 1806, Arthur Lyon Cross

Michigan Law Review

Among the anomalies in the queer and devious course of Eng- £ lish constitutional progress few have been more striking than the number of reforms which have been due to the Conservatives.. One of no little significance was brought about during that period of political stagnation-the era of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. This was the exclusion of judges from the Cabinet, as the result of a political struggle in which the forces of opposition, though temporarily defeated, formulated a policy which was destined henceforth to prevail.

The Law Of Sales, John Barker Waite

Books

I conceive law to be the aggregation of rules which courts of justice feel themselves more or less obligated to follow in deciding controversies. To some extent these rules are formulated and declared by legislative authority. Most of them, however, have been evolved by judges themselves. These latter rules are not always easy to formulate; if they were, there would be no need for real text-books. Even the precise utterances of various judges can not always be accepted as rules. I believe that no judge has power, either practically or theoretically, to bind other judges by any declaration of rule …

Disqualification Of Judges By Prejudice, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

Under the provisions of Section 21 of the Federal Judicial Code, Victor Berger and others, who had been indicted under the Espionage Act in the Northern District of Illinois, filed an affidavit charging Judge Landis with personal bias and prejudice against them as German-Americans, and moved for the assignment of another judge to preside at their trial. The motion was overruled by Judge Landis, and he himself presided at the trial, and the defendants were convicted and sentenced. The Supreme Court of the United States, to which the matter came on certificate, held, three justices dissenting, that Judge Landis could …

Judicial System Of Michigan Under Governor And Judges, W L. Jenks

Michigan Law Review

When the Territory of Michigan came into existence July i, 1805, it found a system of jurisprudence in operation which had been adopted by the Governor and Judges of the Northwest Territory from the laws of Pennsylvania, due no doubt, to the fact that Gov. Arthur St. Clair had lived some years in that State, had been a member of its Board of Censors, a magistrate, and was familiar with its judicial system which provided a-Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace in each county composed of Justices of the Peace, a Court of Common Pleas in each County, …

Note And Comment, Ralph W. Aigler, Edgar N. Durfee, Werner W. Schroeder, Arthur A. Morrow, Harry B. Sutter, Russell H. Neilson

Michigan Law Review

Estates in Fee Tail - Quite generally estates in fee tail under the STATUTE DE DONIS were recognized by the states as a part of the common law. Statutory provisions in the way of modification and abolishment of such estates, however, are very common. The nature and scope of the statutory provisions have varied. See the states classified according to the character of the legislation in BREWSTER, CONVEYANCING, § § 142, 143.