Legal History Commons^™

How Serious Is The Threat Of Impeachment? And To Whom?, Harold Baer Jr.

Michigan Law Review

While a slender volume, The Federal Impeachment Process offers the reader a variety of different insights on this topic, beginning with the debates at the Constitutional Convention and running to the modem-day practice of impeachment trials by committee rather than by the full senate. Impeachment is valuable reading, not just for those of us interested in American history, or those of us who are public officers of the United States, but for every American who wants to understand his or her morning newspaper better. Not only does it lift the veil of darkness surrounding the impeachment process, it provides a …

The Constitution's Forgotten Cover Letter: An Essay On The New Federalism And The Original Understanding, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Law Review

At the end of the summer of 1787, the Philadelphia Convention issued two documents. One was the Constitution itself. The other document, now almost forgotten even by constitutional historians, was an official letter to Congress, signed by George Washington on behalf of the Convention. Congress responded with a resolution that the Constitution and "letter accompanying the same" be sent to the state legislatures for submission to conventions in each state.

The Washington letter lacks the detail and depth of some other evidence of original intent. Being a cover letter, it was designed only to introduce the accompanying document rather than …

The Constitution Besieged: The Rise And Demise Of Lochner Era Police Powers Jurisprudence, C. Ian Anderson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Constitution Besieged: The Rise and Demise of Lochner Era Police Powers Jurisprudence by Howard Gillman

Initiative Enigmas, Richard Collins

Publications

No abstract provided.

Strangers On A Train, Peirre N. Leval

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment by Anthony Lewis

American Indian Influence On The United States Constitution And Its Framers, Robert J. Miller

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rouge Et Noir Reread: A Popular Constitutional History Of The Angelo Herndon Case, Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

In 1932, Eugene Angelo Braxton Hemdon, a young Afro-American member of the Communist Party, U.S.A., was arrested in Atlanta and charged with an attempt to incite insurrection against that state's lawful authority. Some five years later, in Herndon v. Lowry, Herndon filed a writ of habeas corpus asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of the Georgia statute under which he had been convicted. Two weeks before his twenty-fourth birthday, the Court, voting 5-4, declared the use of the Georgia political-crimes statute against him unconstitutional on the grounds that it deprived Herndon of his rights to freedom …

Book Review. The Magic Mirror: Law In American History By Kermit L. Hall, Michael Grossberg

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Some Problems With "Origins", Stephen A. Conrad

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Review. Conceptual Change And The Constitution, Stephen A. Conrad

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Beginning Of The Constitutional Era: A Bicentennial Comparative Study Of The American And French Constitutions, Rett R. Ludwikowski

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article is intended only to be introductory. The author is quite aware that the period surrounding the creation of the American Constitution has been profoundly studied; thorough analysis has been provided concerning both the origin and historical development of the American Constitution, as well as the intellectual background of the "founding generation." Characteristically, these studies have focused on the "American constitutional tradition," which means that they have been limited to little more than two centuries of colonial experience. This essay follows a different vein of inquiry. The author's purpose is not to add another article to the numerous works …

Reconstituting "Original Intent": A Constitutional Law Encyclopedia For The Next Century, David M. Skover

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Encyclopedia of the American Constitution by Leonard Levy, Kenneth Karst and Dennis Mahoney

The Enduring Constitution: A Bicentennial Perspective, Robert F. Drinan

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Enduring Constitution: A Bicentennial Perspective by Jethro K. Lieberman

Original Understanding And The Constitution, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review. The Constitutionalism Of "The Common-Law Mind", Stephen A. Conrad

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay reviews the following: Constitutional History of the American Revolution, Vol. 1: The Authority of Rights by John Phillip Reid and Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607-1788 by Jack P. Greene.

Origins Of The American Constitution, Harry Tepker

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth Amendment And The Bill Of Rights, Mark A. Grannis

Michigan Law Review

A Review of No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights by Michael Kent Curtis

Toleration And The Constitution, Judith L. Hudson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Toleration and the Constitution by David A.J. Richards

Luther Martin, Maryland And The Constitution , William L. Reynolds Ii

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Habeas Corpus: Its History And Its Future, Charles Alan Wright

Michigan Law Review

A Review of A Constitutional History of Habeas Corpus by William F. Duker

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.

Governmental Secrecy And The Founding Fathers: A Study In Constitutional Controls, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Governmental Secrecy and the Founding Fathers: A Study in Constitutional Controls by Daniel N. Hoffman

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 …

The Road From Runnymede, Magna Carta And Constitutionalism In America, A. E. Dick Howard, Wilfred J. Ritz

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Emerson: Political And Civil Rights In The United States, T. A. Smedley

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Political and Civil Rights in the United States. 3d ed. 2 vols. by Thomas I. Emerson, David Haber, and Norman Dorsen

History Of Michigan Constitutional Provision Prohibiting A General Revision Of The Laws, W L. Jenks

Michigan Law Review

Alone among the states of the Union, Michigan has, since i85o, pr6hibited any general revision of the laws and permits only a compilation of laws in force without alteration. As practically all the neighboring states, as well as New York, from which much of the early legislatiorf of Michigan was derived, have continued to revise their statutes from time to time, it may be interesting to see why Michigan alone has thought it desirable not only to stop the practice which it followed until I85o, but to prevent effectually its legislature from ever attempting it in the future.

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 Pelatiah Webster Myth, Edward S. Corwin

Michigan Law Review

For several years Mr. Hannis Taylor has been endeavoring to persuade the American public that the Constitution, instead of being the work of the Convention of 1787, acting under the guidance of men like Madison, Hamilton, Pinckney, Patterson, Ellsworth, and others of similar caliber, was really the invention of a single individual, Pelatiah Webster by name, whose fame, till Mr. Taylor's resurrection of it in The North American Review for August, 1907, had dropped quite out of historical notice. Since this first publication of his discovery, Mr.Taylor has returned to the attack time and time again, now in a memorial …