Legal History Commons^™

This Time For Sure--A Political And Legal History Of Water Control Projects In Lake Okeechobee And The Everglades, David G. Guest

St. Thomas Law Review

For more than a century, efforts have been under way to control water in the Lake Okeechobee/Everglades ecosystem. After years of scheming dating back to the 1840s, drainage projects began in earnest in the 1880s. Although each project was intended to make up for the shortcomings of the last, each was progressively more damaging to the environment, and thus necessitated another more expensive project. Thus, each project had unintended consequences. Throughout this progression of projects, opposing interests repeatedly found themselves in the Florida Legislature and the Florida Supreme Court. In those forums, the zeal for Everglades drainage produced an enlarged …

The Forgotten Trial Of Wyatt Earp, Steven Lubet

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Will The Heavens Fall? De-Radicalizing The Precedent-Breaking Decision, Paul Waldau

Animal Law Review

This article offers an extended analogy for the purpose of posing basic questions about proposals for granting legal rights to some nonhuman animals. The analogy is drawn from the precedent-breaking eighteenth century English case Somerset v. Stewart, which liberated an African slave. The article argues that one can identify features of the eighteenth century debate which illuminate features of today's debate over proposed uses of centrally important legal concepts for some nonhuman animals. Using the comparison for the limited task of highlighting the complex cultural backdrop in each situation, the article suggests that the comparison helps one see the nature …

On The Evolution Of The Canonical Dissent, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Faculty Publications

Legal theorists increasingly have come to recognize and study the existence of a constitutional canon composed of highly authoritative legal texts that command special reverence in the law. Among these highly authoritative texts are a series of dissenting opinions—e.g., Justice Holmes's in Lochner v. New York, and Justice Harlan's in Plessy v. Ferguson—that ironically are more famous than the majority opinions in most other cases. This Article examines the evolution of the dissenting canon, seeking to explain both the methods by which various dissenting opinions became canonized and the motivating factors behind these canonizations.

Specifically, the Article argues that the …

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 …

Chapter 7 - Reflections On The Scholarship Of Elizabeth B. Clark, Kristin Olbertson, Carol Weisbrod, Christine Stansell, Martha Minow

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

Elizabeth Clark's essays on early nineteenth-century reform movements make a compelling case that abolitionists and feminists alike understood individual rights from a profoundly religious perspective. Clark also demonstrates how these reformers advocated the protection of so-called "natural rights" for enslaved African-Americans and white women in the vivid and fervently emotional language of evangelical revivalism. Broader cultural and intellectual trends of resistance to governmental and clerical authority, trends rooted in liberal and evangelical Protestantism, Clark argues, helped fuel attacks on slavery and gender inequality. Rejecting other historians' portrayals of the antebellum reformers as primarily secular in orientation, Clark makes the arresting, …

The Street Locations: Downtown Cleveland, October 31, 1963, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

This appendix to Deciding the Stop and Frisk Cases: A Look Inside the Supreme Court’s Conference, 72 St. John’s L. Rev. 749 (1998), consists of a map drawn by Jill Dinneen (SJU Law '99), based on Sanborn maps from the 1950s and 1960s, photographs and eyewitness descriptions of downtown Cleveland then and now; and a key to marked locations on the map.

State Of Ohio V. Richard D. Chilton And State Of Ohio V. John W. Terry: The Suppression Hearing And Trial Transcripts, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

This appendix to Deciding the Stop and Frisk Cases: A Look Inside the Supreme Court’s Conference, 72 St. John’s L. Rev. 749 (1998), includes Biographical Information on the Participants in the Case; and transcripts of the complete pretrial and trial proceedings in the 1964 criminal prosecutions of Richard Chilton and John Terry, arranged by Prof. Barrett to create the organization reflected in the Table of Contents at the beginning of the appendix. Footnotes were added to provide citations and, in a few instances, to clarify the text. Bracketed material was added to correct obvious slips of the tongue or the …

Canadian State Trials, Vol. 1, Michael Boudreau

Dalhousie Law Journal

In a letter to Deputy Judge Advocate Charles Gould, dated 10 April 1762, General Thomas Gage, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in North America, wrote with regard to the proceedings of the general courts martial in Montreal that "it is a Maxim held by all Civilians That no government can subsist without Law." Over half a century later in Bay Roberts, Newfoundland, William Elenes filed an affidavit with the Harbour Grace Sessions Court alleging that a group of men stole some potatoes from his house. "Late in March of [ 1817]," the statement read, "John McGrath with a gun and two …

Inside The Law: Canadian Law Firms In Historical Perspective, Douglas C. Harris

Dalhousie Law Journal

This collection of essays edited by Carol Wilton' chronicles the changing character of Canadian law firms from the "golden age" of the sole practitioner in the nineteenth century to the mega-firms of the late twentieth. Most of the essays describe the changing profession through a case study of a single lawyer or firm, and Wilton has collected a representative sample of firms from across the country. Some of the firms remained small or disappeared, while others grew into full-service corporate commercial law firms of several hundred lawyers. Most of the essays focus on the personalities of the lawyers involved, their …

The Democratic Intellect: The State In The Work Of Madame Justice Wilson, Philip L. Bryden

Dalhousie Law Journal

It is a great honour to have been asked to provide an essay for this volume of reflections on the contribution Madame Justice Bertha Wilson has made to the development of law in Canada. To a certain extent, this is a matter of pride in finding my own name associated with that of the very learned and respected individuals who have set out their thoughts in this collection of articles. In the main, however, the honour comes from the opportunity to make a public statement of my own respect and admiration for Madame Justice Wilson and the significant role that …

The Fourteenth Amendment: Original Intent And Modern Possibility, Donald E. Lively

St. Thomas Law Review

This essay is derived in part from the author's book THE CONSTITUTION AND RACE (1992). Copyright 1992 by Donald E. Lively.

Of Persons And Property: The Politics Of Legal Taxonomy, David Cohen, Allan C. Hutchinson

Dalhousie Law Journal

To talk of law without politics or history is nonsensical. All lawyers must concede that what they do takes place in historical circumstances and has political consequences. Every piece of law-making and law-application is a governmental act; it relies on political authority and claims binding force. Moreover, all legal activity occurs within a particular historical context; it is intended to respond to or influence a past, existing or anticipated state of affairs. This means that the study of law must concern itself with politics and history generally: it must not confine itself to only the politics and history of law. …

Doorkeepers: Legal Education In The Territories And Alberta, 1885-1928, Peter M. Sibenik

Dalhousie Law Journal

Legal education has been subjected to greater scrutiny in common law jurisdictions since the publication of Lawyers and the Courts in 1967.2 Most of the recent literature has addressed the issue of who received a legal education and became entitled to practise law. It has also examined how a conservative-minded profession regenerated itself, and whether it equipped new recruits with the proper tools to meet the challenges of a changing society.

Legal Fiction, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The "Natural Law Tradition", John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This "tradition of natural law theory" has three main features: First, critique and rejection of ethical scepticism, dogmatism and conventionalism; Second, clarification of the methodology of descriptive and explanatory social theories (e.g., political science, economics, jurisprudence .... ); Third, critique and rejection of aggregative conceptions of the right and the just (e.g., consequentialism, utilitarianism, wealth-maximization, "proportionalism"...).

Book Review, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Commercial Paper In Economic Theory And Legal History, Harold R. Weinberg

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Commercial-paper played a significant role in antebellum America by partially filling the void resulting from the shortage of gold and silver coinage and the absence of a reliable paper currency. Although most legal historians would agree with this premise, a controversy has arisen in recent years concerning negotiability, that collection of legal rules which greatly enhanced the usefulness of bills of exchange and promissory notes in commerce and finance.

Many scholars believe that negotiability, along with other pre-Civil War legal doctrines, was intended to facilitate the development of a national market system and economic growth. This view typically holds that …

The Law/Equity Dichotomy In Maryland, C. Christopher Brown

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Obscenity, The Law And Religion, Thomas A. Long

IUSTITIA

The long history of the relation between Western religion and secular law is both interesting and complex.' In what follows I shall discuss one current social issue which is illustrative of this relation,namely, the relatively recent legal-moral controversy over obscenity.

Law And Today's Crisis-Situations, Thomas E. Davitt

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews, Donald P. Kommers, I. C. Rand

Vanderbilt Law Review

Law and Social Process in United States History:

The excellence of Law and Social Process in United States History in every respect matches the high honor accorded Professor Hurst when invited to deliver the ninth series of the Thomas M. Cooley Lectures under the sponsorship of the University of Michigan Law School. This volume, following upon the heels of his Growth of American Law and Law and the Conditions of Freedom, the latter having won the James Barr Ames prize granted quadrennially by the Harvard Law School, merely affirms his stature as an eminent legal historian. Like the earlier volumes, …

Law And History, C. J. Friedrich

Vanderbilt Law Review

Law is frozen history. In an elementary sense, everything we study when we study law is the report of an event in history, and all history consists of such records or reports. It therefore cannot be my task to develop a sermon on the importance of historical records for the understanding of the law; the tie is too intimate and too obvious to need laboring." The work of Professor Maine on 'Ancient Law,'" wrote Professor T. W. Dwight in his Introduction to that book in the sixties of the last century, "is almost the only one in the English language …

The Essential Nature Of Law, Hugh Evander Willis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.