Legal History Commons^™

The Origins, Nature, And Promise Of Empirical Legal Studies And A Response To Concerns, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article describes the origins of three movements in legal academia: empirical legal studies (ELS), law and society, and law and economics. It then quantifies the distribution across scholarly fields (for example, economics and psychology) of authors in these movements’ journals and reports the impact of the movements’ scholarly journals. By focusing on two leading law and economics journals, this Article also explores the effect of a journal being centered in law schools rather than in a social science discipline. It suggests that ELS has achieved rapid growth and impact within the academic legal community because of (1) its association …

Copyright And Social Movements In Late Nineteenth-Century America, Steven Wilf

Faculty Articles and Papers

The cultural turn in copyright law identified authorship as a rhetorical construct employed by economic interests as a mechanism to establish claims to property rights. Grassroots intellectual property political movements have been seen as both a means of countering these interests’ ever-expanding proprietary control of knowledge and establishing a more public regarding copyright system. This Article examines one of the most notable intellectual property political movements, the emergence of late nineteenth-century agitation to provide copyright protection for foreign authors as a social movement. It places this political and legal activism within the larger framework of Progressive Era reform. During this …

Law/Text/Past, Steven Wilf

Faculty Articles and Papers

How might legal historians read text? What is particular about their modes of reading as opposed to those employed by readers in other disciplines? This essay will analyze the distinctive features of legal texts such as those stemming from the pervasive reliance upon conventions or boilerplate as part of a bricolage construction, the focus upon legitimizing gestures to official authority, and the normative, almost instrumental nature of many legal texts. While other sorts of texts might be more expressive, statutes, for example, always include a sanction. Drawing upon numerous examples, the paper identifies an expansive array of texts, including extra-official …

The United States And International Law: The United Nations Finds A Home, Mark Weston Janis

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Property In Law: Government Rights In Legal Innovations, Stephen Clowney

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

One of the most enduring themes in American political thought is that competition between states encourages legal innovation. Despite the prominence of this story in the national ideology, there is growing anxiety that state and local governments innovate at a socially suboptimal rate. Academics have recently expressed alarm that the pace of legal experimentation has become "extraordinarily slow," "inefficient," and "less than ideal." Ordinary citizens, too, seem concerned that government has been leeched of imagination and the dynamic spirit of experimentation; both talk radio programs and newspapers remain jammed with complaints about legislative gridlock and do-nothing politicians who cannot, or …

The Pennsylvania Law Record (1879-1880), Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

The Pennsylvania Law Record is another short-lived legal periodical/ newspaper published in Philadelphia for slightly over a year between June 3, 1879 and June 29, 1880.

Review Of George Athan Billias, American Constitutionalism Heard Round The World, 1776-1989: A Global Perspective., John Paul Jones

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Dred Scott V. Sandford: A Prelude To The Civil War, Faith Joseph Jackson

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

This article will first review the foundational cracks that slavery left in the creation of the United States' Constitution. It will then examine the ensuing legislative efforts to contend with the political and societal consequences of the slavery divide. Next, it will discuss the history behind the Scott case, and the course and resolution of the case in the court system. It will then describe the notoriety of the case and the impact it had on the events leading up to the war. It will conclude with an analysis of Dred Scott's position at the locus of only real conflict …

Whiskey, Soldiers, And Voting: Western Virginia Elections In The 1790s, Jud Campbell

Law Faculty Publications

Editor's Note: Elections in eighteenth-century Virginia were conducted quite differently than current elections. In this article, the author presents revealing descriptions of early elections in Montgomery County, Virginia immediately following the birth of the United States. The behavior and motivations of the electorate, as well as the candidates, provide interesting insight regarding the social structure o/that era.

Informal Law-Making In England By The Twelve Judges In The Late 18th And Early 19th Centuries, James Oldham

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 1848, Parliament created the Court for Crown Cases Reserved, in which all of the common law judges heard and decided questions reserved by trial judges in criminal cases. As Sir John Baker explains, this was “a court of record, which would now sit in public and give reasons for its decisions,” even though “the reservation of cases was still at the discretion of the trial judge and the court did not have the powers of the court en banc in civil cases.” The Court for Crown Cases Reserved formalized an off-the-record procedure that had been followed for centuries. When …

Carl Schmitt And The Critique Of Lawfare, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

“Lawfare” is the use of law as a weapon of war against a military adversary. Lawfare critics complain that self-proclaimed “humanitarians” are really engaged in the partisan and political abuse of law—lawfare. This paper turns the mirror on lawfare critics themselves, and argues that the critique of lawfare is no less abusive and political than the alleged lawfare it attacks. Radical lawfare critics view humanitarian law with suspicion, as nothing more than an instrument used by weak adversaries against strong military powers. Casting suspicion on humanitarian law by attacking the motives of humanitarian lawyers, they undermine disinterested argument, and ultimately …

Lyondell: A Note Of Approbation, William W. Bratton

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Wilkes V. Springside Nursing Home, Inc.: A Historical Perspective, Mark J. Loewenstein

Publications

No abstract provided.

Law, Politics, And The Erosion Of Legitimacy In The Delaware Courts, Kent Greenfield

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Short, But Interesting Life Of Good Faith As An Independent Liability Rule, Robert B. Thompson

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Good Faith In Revlon-Land, Christopher M. Bruner

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Producing Corporate Text: Courtrooms, Conference Rooms, And Classrooms, Mae Kuykendall

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Constitution As An Exploding Cigar And Other “Historian’S Heresies” About A Constitutional Orthodoxy, R.B. Bernstein

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tort Reform And American Political Economy, Ian J. Drake

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The expansion of tort liability throughout the last century was a unique period of American legal history. In the field of products liability the expansion was dramatic; so much that it can be considered revolutionary. Also, the reaction to this expansion was so forceful that it thwarted the larger goals of the expansionary movement. This paper will review the purposes of the expansion of tort law in the twentieth century and the purposes and effects of the reaction it spurred at the state level. In short, it is my conclusion that the expansion of products liability after World War II--the …

Law's Visual Afterlife: Violence, Popular Culture, And Translation Theory, Naomi Mezey

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Walter Benjamin’s essay, “The Task of the Translator,” Benjamin argues that translations enable a work’s afterlife.  Afterlife is not what happens after death but what allows a work (or event or idea) to go on living and to evolve over time and place and iteration.  In its afterlife, the original is transformed and renewed.  In this piece I explore film’s visual translation of law and the role film plays in law’s afterlife.  Film translates law not by translating from one language to another, but by translating between media and discourses.  The cultural-critical lens of translation highlights the discursive similarities …

New Mexico’S Major Reservoirs: An Overview, Susan Kelly, Diego Urbina

Water Matters!

This paper describes the salient facts about the major water storage reservoirs in New Mexico. For each reservoir, we address the purposes of water storage allowed by law, storage capacity, the responsible operating agency, and some key operational issues. This is by necessity a vast simplification of the topic.Books, articles, research reports, operation manuals, and other materials on these topics run into the hundreds. Millions of dollars have been spent on technical studies and computer models to understand,and sometimes alter, the operations of various dams and reservoirs.

Law "In" And "As" History: The Common Law In The American Polity, 1790-1900, Kunal Parker

Articles

No abstract provided.

Cracks In The Wall, A Bulge Under The Carpet: The Singular Story Of Religion, Evolution, And The U.S. Constitution, Susan Haack

Articles

No abstract provided.

Ferdinand Pecora: The Hellhound Of Wall Street, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

Few Americans today know who Ferdinand Pecora was, although he was once a media superstar, a nearly daily fixture in newspapers and radio broadcasts across the country. With the onset of our current economic woes his name has slowly begun to crop up again. In April 2009, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for a new "Pecora Commission" to investigate "what happened on Wall Street." The next week, the Senate invoked Pecora's name in voting to create an independent committee to investigate the financial crisis, and in January 2010 the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission held its first hearings.

Pecora, a diminutive …

The Price Of The Ottoman Failure, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The question of the implications of secularization for Christian communities in today’s Middle East is a difficult one, both because the extent of contemporary secularization in the region is contested, and because the term itself has so many different meanings. Nonetheless, a preliminary consideration imposes itself. Whatever else it means, secularization means legal equality for religious minorities, including Christians. Formal equality often exists in the Middle East today. Yet legal restrictions – apostasy prosecutions, limitations on clergy and churches, and so on – continue to pose real threats to Christians. Moreover, as Abdullahi An-Na‘im notes, ‘tension with the traditional …

Failed Constitutional Metaphors: The Wall Of Separation And The Penumbra, Louis J. Sirico Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

On Equality: The Anti-Interference Principle, Donald J. Kochan

University of Richmond Law Review

This essay seeks to summarize the general equality concept and proposes that equality requires that the government engage in anti-interference with individual choices and activities, so long as these things create no negative externalities for others. If we are serious about respecting equality, such interference actions should be avoided. Adopting an "anti-interference principle" is a necessary foundation for achieving the goal of true equality. The primary point is that equality matters. The purpose of this essay is not to survey the vast political, jurisprudential, and academic debate on equality, but instead, to take a broad look at the philosophical concept …

Putting Rationality Back Into The Rational Basis Test: Saving Substantive Due Process And Redeeming The Promise Of The Ninth Amendment, Jeffrey D. Jackson

University of Richmond Law Review

This article argues for the adoption of a strengthened rational basis test that would allow courts to scrutinize the actual purpose behind legislation and demand that the legislation actually be reasonably related to its valid legislative purpose. Part II looks at the question of why it is desirable to save substantive due process rather than replace it with some other doctrine. Part III examines how substantive due process came to be the dominant form of protection for unenumerated rights, and how it has evolved from its antecedents in English law to the current test. It concludes that substantive due process …

Blowing Out All The Candles: A Few Thoughts On The Twenty-Fifth Birthday Of The Sentencing Reform Act Of 1984, J. C. Oleson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

International Advocate For Peace Award Acceptance Speech, Abigail E. Disney

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

In a few weeks, we will all be gathering around our mothers to celebrate one of the most shamelessly trumped-up, commercialized and corny-and I might add, one of my very favorite-holidays on the American calendar: Mother's Day. I do not want to sound cynical; it is truly a wonderful thing for us to stop and honor those women in our lives who have shaped us, for better or for worse. And who does not love a little tribute made out of glitter and doilies and Elmer's glue?