Military, War, and Peace Commons^™

Procedure In Emergency Price Fixing, Paul B. Rava

Michigan Law Review

The Emergency Price Control Act is now on the statute book after six months of Congressional debate. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the administrative procedure set forth by the act.

Administrative Law - Selective Service Act - Finality Of Local Draft Board's Classifications, William H. Shipley

Michigan Law Review

The wife of a registrant who had been placed in class I-A and inducted into the army under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 petitioned the federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus to secure her husband's release, contending that the draft board had acted arbitrarily in classifying him. The petitioner and the registrant became engaged in December, 1939, at which time the date of their wedding was set for January 4, 1941. On November 20, 1940, the registrant filed his questionnaire with his local board, indicating that he then had no dependents but that he …

Neutral Convoys In Law And Practice, Benjamin Akzin

Michigan Law Review

The following study, based on law and past practice, aims at clarifying the status of neutral convoys in relation to the problem of convoying American supplies to Great Britain in the present war as it stood under the Neutrality Act of 1939. The question at issue touches both upon international law and American constitutional law. Both these aspects are investigated in the following pages.

Excess Profits Taxation In 1941, Charles Victor Beck Jr., Jamille George Jamra, David L. Loeb

Michigan Law Review

The problems of business taxation are twofold: from the governmental standpoint, the problem is to obtain sufficient revenues at a minimum of cost and with the least resistance; from the business standpoint, the problem is to obtain lighter taxation where possible at a minimum of cost and with the greatest simplicity and uniformity. The excess profits tax has been devised by the economists of the several nations with the object of bolstering national taxing systems in extraordinary periods which demand abnormal revenues. With the advent of the excess profits tax, the desire for simplicity and low cost in taxation was …

Niemeyer On Law Without Force, Josef L. Kunz

Michigan Law Review

Whereas Lauterpacht tried to determine the function of law in the international community, Niemeyer investigates the function of politics in international law. His book is on politics, but it is theoretical in its treatment and not political. The book not only represents an ambitious work, but is certainly interesting and stimulating. As to his ideas, Niemeyer derives from Herman Heller, to whom the book is dedicated. Heller's theory of the States is not a legal, but a sociological, a functional theory of the modern, occidental State as it developed since the Renaissance, a theory which stands halfway between Kelsen's "pure …

Some Aspects Of Military Service, Philip Marcus

Michigan Law Review

Men find themselves in uniform either by volition or conscription. This paper discusses some of the legal and factual elements involved in creating military forces by volunteer and draft methods.

Neutrality And The European War 1939-1940, Josef L. Kunz

Michigan Law Review

Obviously it is still impossible and will be impossible for some time to make a definitive legal research into the problem of neutrality during the present European war. Most important facts and documents are still unpublished, inaccessible or shrouded in the fog of contradictions and propaganda. The duration and the outcome of the war are still uncertain and nobody can foresee what type of world will emerge from this war and what the future of neutrality in this type of world will be.

The Constitution And A "Planned Economy", Henry Rottschaefer

Michigan Law Review

A little more than a decade has passed since the collapse of the wildest speculative orgy ever indulged in by a nation not markedly given to underestimating its own economic and financial potentialities. It came at a time when the conjuncture of world-wide economic forces combined with almost world-wide unsound practices in the fields of international trade and finance had created an extremely unstable economic situation throughout the world. It would require a degree of optimism as large as that entertained by the speculative community during the "boom period" to believe that the measures and policies adopted and followed during …

Corporate Nationality And The Neutrality Law, Paul Weidenbaum

Michigan Law Review

Even a superficial reading of the neutrality law indicates that certain problems of corporate entity and nationality are of utmost importance for its future working. This act seeks to give protection from certain real or assumed dangers. The problem arises whether such purpose cannot be wholly frustrated by the simple means and ways afforded by incorporation. This problem has never been hidden.

The Effect Of Inflation On Private Contracts: United States, 1861-1879, John P. Dawson, Frank E. Cooper

Michigan Law Review

The Northern inflation coincided almost exactly in its early stages with the inflation in the South, and was produced by the same basic factor - a budgetary deficit due to war expenditure. The financial mobilization of the North was handicapped at the outset by a deficit inherited from the previous administration and by an impaired national credit. The prompt response of the Northern banks enabled the Treasury to overcome this initial handicap and to finance the greatly increased expenditure through the early months of the war. How long orthodox methods of borrowing would have sufficed has been ever since a …

The Effect Of Inflation On Private Contracts: United States, 1861-1879, John P. Dawson, Frank E. Cooper

Michigan Law Review

The American Civil War provides ample material for studying the legal consequences of currency depreciation. The sudden demands of war on government budgets made it necessary in both North and South to issue a large volume of paper money, which produced a general rise in prices, a premium on gold, and all the other indices of major monetary inflation. American history had already illustrated the dangers in the use of unstable monetary standards and in too rapid an expansion of the monetary supply. The period of the Civil War is of peculiar interest to lawyers, however, because the record of …

The Economic Aspects Of Inflation, Leonard L. Watkins

Michigan Law Review

In every large industrial country there is a considerable group that urges inflation as a path to national prosperity. They have made least impression on monetary policies in countries that experienced severe inflation during the war and post-war years. But in the United States, where war-time inflation was relatively moderate and where losses in the recent depression have been especially severe, inflationary measures have been adopted and agitation persists for the adoption of still more radical policies.

Effects Of Inflation On Private Contracts: Germany, 1914-1924, John P. Dawson

Michigan Law Review

The German experience with inflation is unique not only in the magnitude of the ultimate disaster but in the wealth and variety of the record which it left behind. From that experience we may still learn much. The problems presented at successive stages of the German inflation differ in degree but not in kind from those which appear in any major shift in the general level of prices. The devices, legal and economic, for restoring an equilibrium thus destroyed must be essentially the same in any great country organized, as Germany was, for specialized, large-scale production. From a study of …

Housing Legislation And Housing Policy In The United States, Ernest M. Fisher

Michigan Law Review

Passage by Congress of the "Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932" just prior to adjournment in July has served to arouse widespread hope for a revival of the construction industry as a whole, and especially those activities of the industry that are bent upon producing new housing facilities. One of the provisions of the Act authorized the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to "make loans to corporations, formed wholly for the purpose of providing housing for families of low incomes, or for reconstruction of slum areas, which are regulated by state or municipal law as to rents, charges, capital structure, rate …

The New Spanish Constitution And International Obligations, Jesse S. Reeves

Michigan Law Review

The promulgation of a Constitution for the Republic of Spain, of date of December 9, 1931, invites attention to certain provisions therein relating to international law, treaties, and related topics.

The Constitution of Esthonia, dated June 15, 1920, Article 4, contains apparently the earliest constitutional provision as to the relation of international to the municipal law: "The universally recognized general rules of international law are an integral part of the laws of Esthonia." The German Constitution of August II, 1920, Article 4, provides that "the generally recognized rules of international law are valid as binding constituent parts of the law …

A Reference Work On Post War Treaties

Michigan Law Review

A review of POSTWAR TREATIES FOR THE PACIFIC SETTLEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL DISPUTES. By Max Habicht

Judicial Attitudes In The Customs-Union Case, Robert Elden Mathews

Michigan Law Review

The World Court decision of last September in the Austro-German Customs case has given rise in many quarters to an attack upon the Court itself.

The criticism has not been based solely upon the eight-to-seven vote of the judges. We have too many one-man majorities in our own judiciary to find much concern there. But the alignment of nationalities from which the two groups of judges come has been the source of the greatest adverse comment. For it so happens that the majority, holding illegal the proposed Customs Union, was composed of judges many of whose nations were opposed to …

Constitutional Law-Just Compensation Under The Fifth Amendment- Rights Of Russian Citizen

Michigan Law Review

The petitioner was a corporation organized under the laws of the Russian Czarist government, and in January, 1917, became an assignee for value of contracts for the construction of two vessels. In August, 1917, the United States requisitioned these contracts, and the vessels being constructed thereunder, for use in the War. The requisition was made under an act of Congress of June 15, 1917, 40 Stat. 183, which provided for compensation as follows: "Whenever the United States shall * * * requisition any contract * * * or take over any ship, * * * in accordance with the provisions …

Treaties-Effect Of War On Commercial Treaties

Michigan Law Review

The Sophie Rickmers, a German merchant vessel registered at Hamburg and owned by a German corporation with principal place of business there, entered New York Sept. 27, 1921. Upon its entry a tonnage duty of fifty cents per ton was collected under U. S. Rev. Stat. sec. 4219 as amended by 19 Stat. 250 (46 U. S. C. A. 121), and sec. ,4225 (46 U. S. C. A. 128), in addition to the six-cent tonnage duty under 36 Stat. 111 (46 U. S. C. A. 121). The treaty of the United States made in 1827 with the Hanseatic Republics, 1 …

Cases On International Law, Hector G. Spaulding

Michigan Law Review

A Review of CASES ON INTERNATIONAL LAW By Manley O. Hudson.

Aliens-Right To Hold Propsrty-Effect Of Statutes

Michigan Law Review

An alien testator devised land to her son, which property was seized during the World War by the defendant Alien Property Custodian as belonging to an alien enemy. Von Zedtwitz v. Sutherland, 58 App. D. C. 153, 26 F.(2d) 525. The plaintiffs sued the son in Kentucky, where part of the land was located, and the Alien Property Custodian in this suit to recover the property on the theory that after the eight-year period which the laws of Kentucky allowed the alien heir in which to dispose of the realty, the title vested in them as next of kin …

The United States And The League Of Nations, Clarence A. Berdahl

Michigan Law Review

With the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles by the necessary number of Powers on January 10, 1920, there came into existence that new experiment in international cooperation and government known as the League of Nations. It has grown from a membership of 43 states in 1920 to 55 in 1929. Including Great Powers and Small Powers, states of Europe, Asia, Africa, South, Central, and even North America, it can in no sense of the word be properly characterized as a European league merely, or another Holy Alliance, but is truly a world organization. Only Afghanistan, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, Russia, …

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

The New Law Of Nations, Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

"In these disillusioned years which are the aftermath of the World War the law of nations has come to be regarded in many quarters with a kind of sophisticated skepticism. It is freely asserted that the law has proved a futile reliance, that it has broken down, and it is asked--with an air of unbelief too obvious to be misunderstood--What is there that is ever likely to be done about it?"

The Effect Of Martial Law Upon The Soldier's Liability To The Citizen

Michigan Law Review

The recent case of Bishop v. Vandercook, 228 Mich. 299, raises a group of problems of grave importance, seldom discussed in the courts. Can martial law ever exist under our constitutional form of government, so that a soldier becomes privileged, for the time being, to invade the interests of private citizens in a way which the ordinary police powers would not warrant? When may such extraordinary law and extraordinary privilege exist? Is a soldier ever justified in acting under orders given by his superior under supposed martial law when martial law for some reason is not in force?

The United States And The Mandates, Quincy Wright

Michigan Law Review

Although the United States has not yet become a member of the League of Nations nor burdened itself with any responsibilities in regard to the mandatory system established by that instrument for the government of former German and Turkish colonies, nevertheless (1) American influence was all important in gaining acceptance of the system by the Paris Peace Conference. (2) American influence was again felt in the process of putting the system into practical operation. (3) Finally the right of America to influence the future operation of the mandates irrespective of her ultimate relation to the League of Nations has been …

The Reckoning Of Damages In Fluctuating Exchange, Joseph H. Drake

Michigan Law Review

Not the least serious of the evil effects of the Great War has been the resultant collapse in value of the currencies of foreign countries and the consequent dislocation of exchanges. The case of Sirie v. Godfrey, decided in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, presents clearly one of the legal problems arising out of this situation. Goods were bought by an American lady in Paris, in 1913 and 1914, at a cost of about 10,000 francs. These goods were delivered in due time but were not paid for. At the time the goods were …

War Crimes, Elbridge Colby

Michigan Law Review

Grant that as far as military jurisdictions are concerned, the superior order justifies the act of the subordinate. Yet is such a judgment valid outside of military circles? Grant that public armed troops and soldiers have generally been held exempt when acting under the orders of their sovereign, and are responsible only to their own government. Is this an absolute protection? Is it true that, by the authority vested in him, "the commanding general determines what measures are necessary unless restrained by the orders of his government, which alone is his superior." Are there no qualifications to the idea that …

War Crimes, Elbridge Colby

Michigan Law Review

It is not necessary to enumerate exactly what may now be considered war crimes or violations of the laws of war. The list will change from time to time, by the addition of new offences and the omission of those now so considered. Most of the Hague Conventions and rules and regulations are sufficiently well furnished with the signatures of world wide plenipotentiaries and adequately ratified to insure of their being accepted as international law on the points covered. There are only a few exceptions. In general the precepts are valid. Indeed, most modern writers on international law, when they …

International Law, Edwin D. Dickinson

Reviews

Professor Dickson reviews "International Law," by C. G. Fenwick, noting that there are many such books available on the topic: monographs, casebooks, digests, collections of documents etc. He finds some of the material worthy of passing criticism and notes that "The chapters vary somewhat in quality and quantity." But Dickinson also praises "the fine tone of impartiality which makes it possible to present matters both recent and controverted in the restrained and temperate manner of the true scientist."