Legal History Commons^™

Adjudication Is Not Interpretation: Some Reservations About The Law-As-Literature Movement, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Among other achievements, the modern law-as-literature movement has prompted increasing numbers of legal scholars to embrace the claim that adjudication is interpretation, and more specifically, that constitutional adjudication is interpretation of the Constitution. That adjudication is interpretation -- that an adjudicative act is an interpretive act -- more than any other central commitment, unifies the otherwise diverse strands of the legal and constitutional theory of the late twentieth century.

In this article, I will argue in this article against both modern forms of interpretivism. The analogue of law to literature, on which much of modern interpretivism is based, although fruitful, …

The Rise And Fall Of The "Doctrine" Of Separation Of Powers, Philip B. Kurland

Michigan Law Review

As the Constitution of the United States nears its two hundredth anniversary, there is a frenzy of celebration. However awesome the accomplishment, I submit that it is no slander to recognize that the 1787 document was born of prudent compromise rather than principle, that it derived more from experience than from doctrine, and that it was received with an ambivalence in no small part attributable to its ambiguities. Indeed, its most stalwart supporters doubted its capacity for a long life. It should not be surprising, then, that even today there is disagreement over whether the Constitution of 1787 is now …

The National Park System And Development On Private Lands: Opportunities And Tools To Protect Park Resources, Michael Mantell

External Development Affecting the National Parks: Preserving "The Best Idea We Ever Had" (September 14-16)

34 pages.

Contains footnotes.

The Reconstruction Amendments' Debates. Edited By Alfred Avins, Robert M. Ireland

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Revolutionary Constitutionalism In The Era Of The Civil War And Reconstruction , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

The meaning and scope of the fourteenth amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 remain among the most controversial issues in American constitutional law. Professor Kaczorowski contends that the issues have generated more controversy than they warrant, in part because scholars analyzing the legislative history of the amendment and statute have approached their task with preconceptions reflecting twentieth century legal concerns. He argues that the most important question for the framers was whether national or state governments possessed primary authority to determine and secure the status and rights of American citizens. Relying on records of the congressional debates as …

Interstate Transfers Of Water: Many A Slip ‘Twixt The Cup And The Lip, Howard Holme

Colorado Water Issues and Options: The 90's and Beyond: Toward Maximum Beneficial Use of Colorado's Water Resources (October 8)

44 pages (includes maps and tables).

Contains 6 pages of footnotes.

The Rise Of The Supreme Court Reporter: An Institutional Perspective On Marshall Court Ascendancy, Craig Joyce

Michigan Law Review

This Article will first explore the antecedents to, and beginnings of, the reporter system under Alexander J. Dallas and William Cranch. Next, the Article will examine the transformation of the system under the Court's first official Reporter, the scholarly Henry Wheaton. Finally, the Article will recount the struggle between Wheaton and his more practical successor, Richard Peters, Jr., that culminated in 1834 in the Court's declaration that its decisions are the property of the people of the United States, and not of the Court's Reporters.

International Law As Law In The United States, Louis Henkin

Michigan Law Review

"International law is part of our law." Justice Gray's much-quoted pronouncement in The Paquete Habana was neither new nor controversial when made in 1900, since he was merely restating what had been established principle for the fathers of American jurisprudence and for their British legal ancestors. And Gray's dictum remains unquestioned today. But, after more than two hundred years in our jurisprudence, the import of that principle is still uncertain and disputed. How did, and how does, international law become part of our law? What does it mean that international law is a part of our law? What is the …

Empty History, Erwin Chermerinsky

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States, Volume 3: The Political Background of the Federal Convention by William Winslow Crosskey and William Jeffrey, Jr.

Interstate Water Compacts, John A. Carver

New Sources of Water for Energy Development and Growth: Interbasin Transfers: A Short Course (Summer Conference, June 7-10)

33 pages.

Contains references.

Legal Protection For The Exporting Region, Gary D. Weatherford

New Sources of Water for Energy Development and Growth: Interbasin Transfers: A Short Course (Summer Conference, June 7-10)

13 pages.

Contains footnotes and references.

Contains 1 attachment.

The text of a second attachment has been omitted: "Area of Origin Statutes - The California Experience," Ronald B. Robie, Russell R. Kletzing, 15 Idaho L. Rev. 419 (1979).

Constitutional Interpretation, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

"[We] must never forget," Chief Justice Marshall admonished us in a statement pregnant with more than one meaning, "that it is a constitution we are expounding."' Marshall meant that the Constitution should be read as a document "intended to endure for ages.to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."'2 But he meant also that the construction placed upon the document must have regard for its "great outlines" and "important objects."'3 Limits are implied by the very nature of the task. There is not the same freedom in construing the Constitution as in constructing a …

The Distrust Of Politics, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

In this Article, Dean Sandalow considers the justifications advanced by those who favor the removal of certain political issues from the political process by extending the reach of judicial review. He begins by examining the distrust of politics in a different context, discussing the proposals made by the Progressives for reforming municipal government, as a vehicle to expose the assumptions underlying the current debate. His comparison of the two historical settings reveals many similarities between the Progressives' reform proposals and the contemporary justiflcations.[or the displacement of politics with constitutional law. Dean Sandalow concludes that the distrust of politics rests not …

The Role Of Ideas In Legal History, Jay M. Feinman

Michigan Law Review

A review of Patterns of American Legal Thought by G. Edward White

Untangling The Strands Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Ira C. Lupu

Michigan Law Review

This Article explores such trends in the context of several recent cases and in the broader context of established patterns of constitutional law. Section II shows how the different strains of fourteenth amendment activism over the past century have tangled the strands of the fourteenth amendment in a thick, almost impenetrable knot. Section ill studies the tangle's reflection in three cases raising fundamental rights problems - Maher v. Roe, Moore v. City of East Cleveland, and Zablocki v. Redhail. Finally, Section N offers what Sections II and III suggest is missing from fourteenth amendment case law- a theory, abstract …

Ideology And History, David F. Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

I do not dispute the philosophical validity of the theory of natural rights. Indeed, I support much, if not most, of the principles embodied in that theory. What I wish to discuss is that to which Dr. Vieira claims to have limited his discussion, viz., the belief that history, specifically American constitutional history, provides a sufficient base to support a natural rights theory. His attempt to find historical support is an instructive example of how ideology can distort the data of history and cause it to be portrayed in a strange and unreal light. Beyond that, Vieira's historical method also …

Article V: Changing Dimensions In Constitutional Change, Francis H. Heller

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

To anyone raised under the Constitution of the United States, that document's declaration that it is "the supreme law of the land" may appear as a commonplace assertion. In some other nations the constitution is not viewed as law, but is seen as a primarily political document. In fact, some foreign constitutions are formally proclaimed to be "political constitutions." The writers of the American Constitution were well aware that they were engaged in fashioning an arrangement for the exercise of political functions and the peaceful adjustment of political conflict. And, however much validity there continues to be to de Tocqueville's …

Conscription And The Constitution: The Original Understanding, Leon Friedman

Michigan Law Review

The general words of the Constitution-famous phrases such as "due process," "freedom of speech," "interstate commerce," and "raise and support armies"-are not self-evident concepts. As Justice Frankfurter said, "The language of the [Constitution] is to be read not as barren words found in a dictionary but as symbols of historic experience illumined by the presuppositions of those who employed them. Not what words did Madison and Hamilton use, but what was it in their minds which they conveyed?" While the framers obviously could not have foreseen the discovery of electromagnetic radio waves or atomic energy, and had no "intent" concerning …

Dietze: America's Political Dilemma, Paul G. Kauper

Michigan Law Review

A Review of America's Political Dilemma by Gottfried Dietze

The Constitution, Congress, And Presidential Elections, Albert J. Rosenthal

Michigan Law Review

It has been recommended by a prestigious commission of the American Bar Association and endorsed by the ABA's House of Delegates. The Bar Association of the City of New York, which had previously recommended a different proposed amendment, has now shifted its support to direct popular vote, as has Senator Birch Bayh, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. A Gallup poll indicates that 66 per cent of the nation supports this amendment, with only 19 per cent opposed.

It must be remembered, however, that a decision to amend the Constitution is, as …

1787: The Grand Convention, By Clinton Rossiter

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Crosskey And The Constitution: A Reply To Goebel, Sylvester Petro

Michigan Law Review

The immediate purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the inadequacies of the most embittered of the reviews of Crosskey's book which I have read, "Ex Parte Clio,'' written by Professor Goebel (hereinafter sometimes referred to as "the reviewer"). Demonstrating these things will involve repeated reference to the thesis and the methodology of the book, and comparison of the book with the contentions advanced by the reviewer. The reading will probably be as tedious as the writing has been, but that cannot be helped, for the longer aim of this paper cannot be achieved in any other manner. That aim …

Los Poderes Judicial Y Legislativo No Están Comprendidos En La Sección Segunda Capitulo "Oficios Públicos" De La Constitución, Asociación De Ex-Legisladores De La República De Cuba

Mario Diaz Cruz Pamphlets

No abstract provided.

Historical Bases Of Federal Judicial System, John P. Frank

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Revista De Los Registros Y Del Notariado, Jose Raul Sedano Y Agramonte, Ernesto Pereira Cabral

Mario Diaz Cruz Pamphlets

Sumario de este numero:

La constitucion reformada de la Republica

Delegados a la anterior constituyente

Preambulo de la Reforma de 1928

Trato Permanente

Tratado sobre la isla de Pinos

Intrinsic Limitations On The Power Of Constitutional Amendment, George D. Skinner

Michigan Law Review

Just as the war has educated the public in geography, so the question of amending the organic law of the country has stimulated discussion concerning our own legal and political institutions. The amendments providing for the direct election of senators and for federal power to levy an income tax attracted little attention compared with the sudden interest in legal questions which the so-called prohibition amendment has aroused, for it touches upon a matter of very intimate personal concern to many people and one over which very heated controversies have raged. Matters involving, or which are made to involve, moral issues …

The Establishment Of Judicial Review Ii, Edwin S. Corwin

Michigan Law Review

In tracing the establishment of judicial review subsequently to the inauguration of the national government it will be important to bear in mind that there are two distinct kinds of judicial review, namely, federal judicial review, or the power of the federal courts to review acts of the State legislatures under the United States Constitution, and Judicial review proper; or the power of the courts to pass upon the constitutionality of acts of the coordinate legislatures. That the Judiciary Act of 1789 contemplated, in the mind of its author, Ellsworth, the exercise of the power of review by the national …

The Establishment Of Judicial Review (I), Edwin S. Corwin

Michigan Law Review

When Gladstone described the Constitution of the United States as "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man," his amiable intention to flatter was forgotten, while what was considered his gross historical error became at once a theme of adverse criticism. Their contemporaries and immediate posterity regarded the work of the Constitutional Fathers as the inspired product of political genius and essentially as a creation out of hand. Subsequently, due partly to the influence of the disciples of Savigny in the field of legal history, partly to the sway of …

Are Too Many Executive Officers Elective?, Bradley M. Thompson

Articles

We propose very briefly to call attention, to so much of the present constitution of Michigan as has to do with the executive department, and to consider the methods which the people have adopted for selecting those public servants whose official duty it is to enforce the law, to maintain public order and protect private rights.

The Method Of Electing The President, Thomas M. Cooley, Abram S. Hewitt

Articles

Twice in the history of the United States the nation has been brought to the verge of civil war by difficulties growing out of presidential elections. And yet no system was ever devised with more care to preclude any reasonable complaint.