Legal History Commons^™

The History Of The Florida Supreme Court, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

This article describes the challenges to writing the history of Florida's colonial courts in the Spanish and British periods from 1513 to 1821. These courts are an important yet understudied aspect of Florida legal history.

Railroad Land Grants In An Incongruous System: Corporate Subsidies, Bureaucratic Governance, And Legal Conflict In The United States, 1850-1903, Sean Kammer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Prequel To Homestead, Thomas Simmons

Faculty Publications

Homestead laws reflect value judgments which balance the free functioning of commercial enterprise and business transactions against a family's interests in shelter and a home. In South Dakota's history, this tension has been displayed in legislative enactments, judicial reasoning, and even statewide referendums. An examination of the significant events at two ends of this chronology reveals the expression of societal values in law and the dynamics of the pre-statehood origins of homestead laws in the context of competing policies and interests. This article proceeds by outlining the general purposes and sources for homestead laws, followed by a sketch of existing …

The Nuremberg Trials: A Summary Introduction, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Legacies Of Nuremberg, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I am very grateful to the leaders and sponsoring organizations that have brought the Dialogs together for ten years, particularly this year in this very special place. I also thank, humbly, Germany and Nuremberg. We are seventy years out from a Nuremberg trial process that was filled with participants who could not have imagined the Germany, the Nuremberg city of human rights, and their sponsorship and teaching, that we all are beneficiaries of today. It is to the great credit of today's generations of German leaders that they have built this Nuremberg.

My topic, "The Legacy of Nuremberg," is …

The Senate Has No Constitutional Obligation To Consider Nominees, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

[After Justice Antonin Scalia's death in 2016 and i]n response to the Senate Republican leadership's stated intention to refuse to consider any nominee to replace Justice Scalia, some began to argue that the Senate has a constitutional obligation to act on a Supreme Court nomination.

The argument that the Senate has a constitutional obligation to act on a Supreme Court nomination is anything but "clear." This claim finds no support in the relevant constitutional text, constitutional structure, or the history of judicial nominations. While there are strong policy and prudential arguments that the Senate should promptly consider any and all …

Symposium Introduction: Beyond The Faa: Arbitration Procedure, Practice, And Policy In Historical Perspective, Carli N. Conklin

Faculty Publications

The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), enacted in 1925, provides a framework for how we think about arbitration procedure, practice, and policy in the United States today. Yet, the FAA, and the interpretive lens it provides, are relatively new on the horizon, historically speaking

Creating A Literature For The King’S Courts In The Later Thirteenth Century: Hengham Magna, Fet Asaver, And Bracton, Thomas J. Mcsweeney

Faculty Publications

The early common law produced a rich literature. This article examines two of the most popular legal treatises of the second half of the thirteenth century, Hengham Magna and Fet Asaver. It has long been recognized that these two treatises bear some relationship to each other. This article will attempt to establish that relationship, arguing that Hengham Magna and Fet Asaver were written by different people; that Fet Asaver borrows from Hengham Magna; and that the authors of both texts had independent access to the Bracton treatise. The article concludes by suggesting a new way to think about the legal …

Book Review Of The Oxford History Of The Laws Of England, Volume Ii, Thomas J. Mcsweeney

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Significance Of The Corpus Juris Civilis: Matilda Of Canossa And The Revival Of Roman Law, Thomas J. Mcsweeney, Michéle K. Spike

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Law In Nazi Germany: Ideology, Opportunities And The Perversion Of Justice (Book Review), Thomas Simmons

Faculty Publications

Review of the book: The Law in Nazi Germany: Ideology, Opportunities and the Perversion of Justice (Alan E. Steinweis & Robert D. Rachlin eds., 2013).

No College, No Prior Clerkship: How Jim Marsh Became Justice Jackson’S Law Clerk, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In his first four years on the Supreme Court, Justice Robert H. Jackson employed, in sequence, three young attorneys as his law clerks. The first, John F. Costelloe, was a Harvard Law School graduate and former Harvard Law Review editor who until summer 1941 was, like then attorney general Jackson, working at the U.S. Department of Justice. Costelloe became Justice Jackson’s first law clerk shortly after his July 1941 appointment to the Court and stayed for a little over two years. Jackson’s next law clerk, Phil C. Neal, came to Jackson in 1943 after graduating from Harvard Law School, …

Law In East Florida 1783-1821, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

Using primary sources from the East Florida Papers, this article explores colonial legality in St. Augustine and the Province of East Florida during the second Spanish period from 1783 to 1821. In addition to discussing the promulgation of the Constitution of Cádiz and its effects, the article reaches into legal records dealing with civil and testamentary cases to explore and to describe aspects of private law in this North American Spanish colony. Economic and social relations are revealed in the sources that are rich in legal information concerning slavery, family, religion, trade, and landholding. The article concludes that the sources …

Reforming High School American History Curricula: What Publicized Student Intolerance Can Teach Policymakers, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This article concerns the way public high schools teach American history under curricula and standards mandated by state law. “We’re raising young people who are, by and large, historically illiterate,” says David McCullough, the dean of American historians.

The article describes three recent nationally publicized incidents in which high school students belittled lynching and the Trail of Tears, evidently without appreciating the episodes’ legal and historical significance to African Americans and Native Americans respectively. Standards and textbooks typically recognize diversity and multiculturalism, but research and surveys indicate that classroom teachers frequently sanitize or avoid discomforting topics that might trigger complaints, …

Magna Carta And The Right To Trial By Jury, Thomas J. Mcsweeney

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Age Of Constitutions In The Americas, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been aptly called the “Age of Codifications.” The same period was also the Age of Constitutions. Although a great deal is known about the migration of prenational and transnational legal sources and ideas that led to national codes of civil and criminal law in Europe and the Americas, much less is known about similar processes on the constitutional level. Constitutional historians have been more parochial than their private law counterparts, most likely because of the relationship between constitutions and nations. In the light of independence, nations immediately needed constitutions to solidify gains and …

Magna Carta, Civil Law, And Canon Law, Thomas J. Mcsweeney

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Theory Of Civil Liability, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Surprising Role Of Racial Hierarchy In The Civil Rights Jurisprudence Of The First Justice John Marshall Harlan, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

The first Justice John Marshall Harlan’s status as one of the greatest Supreme Court Justices in American history rests largely upon his civil rights jurisprudence. The literature exploring the nuances of Harlan’s civil rights jurisprudence is vast. Far less attention has been paid to the reasons for Harlan’s strong civil rights views. Developing a rich sense of Harlan’s thinking has been difficult because Harlan did not leave behind a large trove of non-judicial writings. There is, however, a remarkable source of Harlan’s thought that has been largely overlooked by scholars: Harlan’s constitutional law lectures at George Washington Law School of …

Teaching Legal History In The Age Of Practical Legal Education, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Historian Henry Steele Commager said, “History is useful in the sense that art is useful--or music or poetry or flowers; perhaps even in the sense that religion and philosophy is useful .... For without these things life would be poorer and meaner.” For law students who anticipate a career representing private and public clients and participating in public discussion, however, study of legal history carries rewards beyond intellectual stimulation and personal satisfaction. Law students contemplating client representation should ponder Justice Holmes's advice that “[h]istory must be a part of the study [of law], because without it we cannot know the …

Lost Options For Mutual Gain? The Layperson, The Lawyer, And Dispute Resolution In Early America, Carli N. Conklin

Faculty Publications

In 1786, legal reform activist Benjamin Austin undertook a campaign to promote the use of arbitration over litigation as the primary method of dispute resolution in Massachusetts. Although supported by a groundswell of anti-lawyer sentiment, Austin ultimately failed in securing the triumph of arbitration. Exploring Austin's pamphlet campaign in its historical context not only provides us with a snapshot of the arguments for and against dispute resolution in early America, but also serves as a corrective to the prevailing accounts of arbitration in American legal history. This article explores the context and content of Austin's pamphlet campaign and its implications …

A Bibliography Of Title Ix Of The Education Amendments Of 1972, Christine Iaconeta Dulac

Faculty Publications

It has been thirty-five years since the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972. Title IX provides that no person shall be excluded from participation in any educational program or activity that receives federal funding. This legislation is credited with bolstering the participation rates of girls and women in athletics. Although athletics are not explicitly addressed in the statutory language, Title IX requires schools to offer male and female students equal opportunities to play sports, to give male and female athletes their fair share of athletic scholarship money, and to treat male and female athletes equally in …

Introduction Of Chief Justice Roberts, At The Robert H. Jackson Center, May 17, 2013, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

A backdrop to this event is an ongoing, if entirely friendly, War Between the States … or at least between two States.

As a boy, Robert H. Jackson and family moved from the state of his birth to a second state, where he completed grade school and high school and then embarked on life. Our honored guest, John G. Roberts, Jr., did the same thing in his boyhood. In Jackson’s case, following his birth and early boyhood on the family farm in Spring Creek Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania, the move was to Frewsburg, New York, and then to Jamestown—Pennsylvania …

Remarks At The Naming Ceremony, Robert H. Jackson United States Courthouse, Buffalo, New York, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Thank you, Chief Judge Skretny, for that generous introduction. Thank you and congratulations, for vision and dedicated efforts, to Senators Schumer and Gillibrand; Representative Higgins; Chief Judge Skretny and Judge Arcara; Chief Judge Katzmann; Chief Judge Preska; all of their judicial and court colleagues; Administrator Pease; Mayor Brown and city officials; Buffalo law, business and civic leaders; and the people—all of the lucky “Jacksonland” people—of the Western District of New York.

As has been noted, young Robert H. Jackson’s life path ran right through this site. Born in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, Jackson grew up there and then in Chautauqua …

Between England And France: A Cross-Channel Legal Culture In The Late Thirteenth Century, Thomas J. Mcsweeney

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pre-Constitutional Law And Constitutions: Spanish Colonial Law And The Constitution Of Cádiz, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

This article contributes to the intellectual and legal history of this constitutional document. It also provides a close study of how pre-constitutional laws are employed in writing constitutions. It examines the way Spanish colonial law, known as "derecho indiano" in Spanish, was used in the process of drafting the Constitution and particularly the way these constitutional activities and provisions related to the Americas. The article asserts that this pre-constitutional law was used in three distinct ways: as general knowledge related to the Americas and their institutions; as a source for providing a particular answer to a specific legal question; and …

Rehnquist's Missing Letter: A Former Law Clerk's 1955 Thoughts On Justice Jackson And Brown, John Q. Barrett, Brad Snyder

Faculty Publications

"I think that Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed." That's what Supreme Court law clerk William H. Rehnquist wrote privately in December 1952 to his boss, Justice Robert H. Jackson. When the memorandum was made public in 1971 and Rehnquist's Supreme Court confirmation hung in the balance, he claimed that the memorandum reflected Jackson's views, not Rehnquist's. Rehnquist was confirmed, but his explanation triggered charges that he had lied and smeared the memory of one of the Court's most revered justices. This Essay analyzes a newly discovered document—a letter Rehnquist wrote to Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1955, …

Against Theories Of Punishment: The Thought Of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

This paper reflects critically on what is the near-universal contemporary method of conceptualizing the tasks of the scholar of criminal punishment. It does so by the unusual route of considering the thought of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, a towering figure in English law and political theory, one of its foremost historians of criminal law, and a prominent public intellectual of the late Victorian period. Notwithstanding Stephen's stature, there has as yet been no sustained effort to understand his views of criminal punishment. This article attempts to remedy this deficit. But its aims are not exclusively historical. Indeed, understanding Stephen's ideas …

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission And The Politics Of Governmental Investigations, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

In May 2009, Congress passed the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act which created the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, an independent, bipartisan panel tasked to examine the causes of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States.

Franklin Roosevelt never created an independent commission to investigate Wall Street, but the Pecora hearings, the eponymous investigation of Wall Street wrongdoing run by a former New York prosecutor, captivated the country. For sixteen months in the worst depths of the Great Depression, Ferdinand Pecora paraded a series of elite financiers before the Senate Banking and Currency Committee. In one hearing after …

The Constitution Of Cádiz In Florida, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

The article explores the vibrant constitutional community that existed in St. Augustine and the province of East Florida in the final decade of Spanish control of the area. Based on relatively unexplored primary sources, it reveals a great deal of unknown information about the importance of the Constitution in Florida immediately before the territory was transferred to the United States. The article provides full description of the Constitution's promulgation in 1812 and a second promulgation of the Constitution in 1820 (something unknown in the general literature). It also addresses the construction of the St. Augustine monument to the Constitution erected …