Legal History Commons^™

Life, Death And The Law - And Why Capital Punishment Is Legally Insupportable , Peter Fitzpatrick

Cleveland State Law Review

Given that law has an integral commitment to life, in this lecture I want to show how the law should manifest something of a fundamental dissonance, even a terminal incoherence, when law is called upon to deal death. That is what happens in the judicial discourse on the death penalty in the United States. I will approach this demonstration in a way that may at first seem paradoxical, in a way that will bring out the deep affinity between law and death. That affinity is one in which death is, in a sense, the limit of law; a limit that …

From Webster To Word-Processing: The Ascendance Of The Appellate Brief, William H. Rehnquist

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

Chief Justice William Rehnquist analyzed the evolution of Supreme Court advocacy. The discussion begins with the initial preference for oral arguments and the influence of nineteenth century Supreme Court advocate Daniel Webster. The discussion then turns to the Court’s shift from more attention to oral argument to written briefs.

The Arkansas Supreme Court And The Civil War, L. Scott Stafford

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Winter 1999

Bill of Particulars

No abstract provided.

Justice Blackmun's Mark On Criminal Law And Procedure, Kit Kinports

Faculty Scholarship

When Justice Blackmun was nominated to the Court in 1970, Americans were consumed with the idea of crime control. In the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon had called the Supreme Court "soft on crime" and had promised to "put 'law and order' judges on the Court." While sitting on the Eighth Circuit, the Justice had "seldom struck down searches, seizures, arrests or confessions," and most of his opinions in criminal cases had "affirmed guilty verdicts and sentences." Thus, according to one commentator, Justice Blackmun seemed to be "exactly what Nixon was looking for: a judge who believed in judicial restraint, …

"High Crimes And Misdemeanors": Recovering The Intentions Of The Founders, Gary L. Mcdowell

Law Faculty Publications

Such serious charges by so many distinguished historians demand a careful consideration of what the Founders meant by "high Crimes and Misdemeanors": Were they only indictable crimes or did they include what one of the Framers called "political crimes and misdemeanors?" Were they offenses that a President would commit only in "the exercise of executive power" or did they also include a President's malfeasance committed in his private capacity? Were they subject to a reasonably fixed meaning or were they to be determined simply by the exercise of the "awful discretion" of those in Congress called upon to impeach and …

Wigmore's Treasure Box: Comparative Law In The Era Of Information, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article revisits the work of a canonical but quixotic figure in early American comparative law, John Henry Wigmore, as a lens through which to imagine what comparative law's role might be in the era of globalization. Wigmore's "pictorial method", compared here to the "treasure boxes" of Ming and Ch'ing Dynasty Chinese emperors, in which precious objects of different scales and eras were appreciated aesthetically side by side, presents a challenge to the many "modernist" approaches to comparative law in existence today. An exploration of the intellectual history of comparative law through the disjuncture of Wigmore's work engenders a treatment …

The Cutting Edge Of Poster Law, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

Students place tens of thousands of posters around law schools each year – in staircases, on walls, and on bulletin boards. Rarely, however, do formal disputes about postering arise. Students know how far to go – and go no farther despite numerous avenues for postering deviance: blizzarding, megasigns, commercial or scurrilous signs. What is the history of poster law? What are its norms and rules, privileges and procedures? Is poster law effident? Is it just?

Law As Language (Reviewing Peter M. Tiersma, Legal Language (1999)), Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

The jacket of Professor Peter Tiersma’s book Legal Language illustrates the problem inherent in a linguistic study of legal language. The jacket features a legal document in fine print, with an overlay of a magnifying glass that brings some of the indecipherable words into focus. The problem, of course, is that a scholar conducting a linguistic study of language does not have access to a distinct "magnifying glass" that can posit language as an object; he can study language only with language.

Tiersma attempts to avoid the most difficult problems of self-reference that follow from the "interpretive turn" in social …

Regulatory Takings And Original Intent: The Direct, Physical Takings Thesis "Goes Too Far", Andrew S. Gold

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Internal Displacement: Is Prevention Through Accountability Possible? A Kosovo Case Study, Carlyn M. Carey

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chevron, Cooperative Federalism, And Telecommunications Reform, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

Law's Territory (A History Of Jurisdiction), Richard T. Ford

Michigan Law Review

Pop quiz: New York City. The United Kingdom. The East Bay Area Municipal Utilities District. Kwazulu, South Africa. The Cathedral of Notre Dame. The State of California. Vatican City. Switzerland. The American Embassy in the U.S.S.R. What do the foregoing items have in common? Answer: they are, or were, all territorial jurisdictions. A thesis of this Article is that territorial jurisdictions - the rigidly mapped territories within which formally defined legal powers are exercised by formally organized governmental institutions - are relatively new and intuitively surprising technological developments. New, because until the development of modern cartography, legal authority generally followed …

Media & Monopoly In The Information Age: Slowing The Convergence At The Marketplace Of Ideas, Jon M. Garon

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Sovereignty, Compliance, And The World Trade Organization: Lessons From The History Of Supreme Court Review, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

One of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO's) more remarkable and controversial innovations is its mechanism for resolving trade disputes among member states. Traditionally, states have resolved such disputes in "pragmatic" fashion, through negotiation and compromise informed by the relative power of the parties involved. But no longer: the WTO's Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (the DSU) provides that disputes between member states are to be resolved in adversary proceedings before impartial panels of experts." Under the DSU, panels have authority to decide whether members' laws violate international trade norms; panel decisions are essentially binding, though …

No Vehicles In The Park, Pierre Schlag

Seattle University Law Review

This Article poses the question: what does the ordinance really mean? Trying to find out what the ordinance really means requires something that I will call "interpretation as retrieval." By this phrase, "interpretation as retrieval," I mean nothing terribly fancy. Interpretation as retrieval is the attempt to retrieve the meaning of an artifact or text-a meaning that is found in the artifact or text and that you, the interpreter, do not already have.

Commentaries, Paul Magnarella

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

Symposium: Cannibal Democracies: Human Rights and Democracy in Turkey

Bastardy And The Statute Of Wills: Interpreting A Sixteenth-Century Statute With Cases And Readings, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

The Statute of Wills of 1540 created a tax loophole for transfers of property to illegitimate children. Assessments for wardships that would normally be imposed on certain transfers of land to children could be effectively avoided by establishing that the donee was illegitimate, and therefore a stranger to the donor for the purposes of the statute. English lawyers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries educated their colleagues about this newly available loophole. In the inns of court, lawyers discussed the statutory provisions and recent revenue cases from the Court of Wards. This article sets out the loophole, examines how the …

Bringing Dignity Back To Light: Publicity Rights And The Eclipse Of The Tort Of Appropriation Of Identity, Jonathan Kahn

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Regionalism And The Religion Clauses: The Contribution Of Fisher Ames, Marc Arkin

Faculty Scholarship

On August 20, 1789, Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames rose to address the House of Representatives in one of his rare contributions to the debate on the Bill of Rights. 1 The day before, sitting as a Committee of the Whole, the House had concluded its brief discussion of the proposed religion amendment to the federal Constitution by agreeing to New Hampshire Representative Samuel Livermore's formula that "Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience." 2 Now, on the 20th, before the House could formally adopt Livermore's language, Representative Ames proposed a different wording. He moved …

The Cutting Edge Of Poster Law, Michael A. Heller

Articles

Students place tens of thousands of posters around law schools each year in staircases, on walls, and on bulletin boards. Rarely, however, do formal disputes about postering arise. Students know how far to go-and go no farther despite numerous avenues for postering deviance: blizzarding, megasigns, commercial or scurrilous signs. What is the history of poster law? What are its norms and rules, privileges and procedures? Is poster law effident? Is it just?

The Boundaries Of Private Property, Michael A. Heller

Articles

If your house and fields are worth more separately, divide them; if you want to leave a ring to your child now and grandchild later, split the ownership in a trust. The American law of property encourages owners to subdivide resources freely. Hidden within the law, however, is a boundary principle that limits the right to subdivide private property into wasteful fragments. While people often create wealth when they break up and recombine property in novel ways, owners may make mistakes, or their self-interest may clash with social welfare. Property law responds with diverse doctrines that prevent and abolish excessive …

The Importance Of Being Empirical, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Legal scholarship is becoming increasingly empirical. Although empirical methodologies gain important influence within the legal academy, their application in legal research remains underdeveloped. This paper surveys and analyzes the state of empirical legal scholarship and explores possible influences on its production. The paper advances a normative argument for increased empirical legal scholarship.

Lord Denning And The Influence Of William Temple, Andrew B.L. Phang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Lord Denning is probably one of the most influential English judges in the twentieth century,' and is certainly its most colourful. He recently celebrated his one hundredth birthday,2 and a symposium to honour this occasion and celebrate the life of this remarkable man was held at Buckingham University.3 Lord Denning himself was too frail to attend this symposium, although a separate (and quieter) celebration was also held in his honour at his home at the Lawn in Whitchurch. I was deeply saddened to learn that Lord Denning passed away a few weeks after, on 5th March 1999.

The Privilege's Last Stand: The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination And The Right To Rebel Against The State, Michael S. Green

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Tricky Magic: Blacks As Immigrants And The Paradox Of Foreignness, Lolita K. Buckner Inniss

Publications

Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep inner uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the "outsider." Many whites could look at the social position of blacks and feel that color formed an easy and reliable gauge for determining to what extent one was or was not American. Perhaps that is why one of the first epithets that many …

Nineteenth-Century Orthodoxy, Richard B. Collins

Publications

No abstract provided.

Victims' Rights, Rule Of Law, And The Threat To Liberal Jurisprudence, Ahmed A. White

Publications

No abstract provided.

Defending Truth, Cynthia V. Ward, Peter A. Alces

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

Owen Roberts was accused of a variety of things in 1937, but “fidelity” was not among them. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone and Professor Felix Frankfurter were among many who accused Roberts of performing, as Frankfurter put it, a jurisprudential “somersault” “incapable of being attributed to a single factor relevant to the professed judicial process.” To Frankfurter, it was “all painful beyond words,” and gave him “a sickening feeling which is aroused when moral standards are adulterated in a convent.” Yet when Roberts announced his retirement from the Court eight years later, Chief Justice Stone, along with now-Justices Frankfurter and Robert …