Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Constitutional Law - State Action - Effect Of State Court Interpretation Of A Contract, Dudley H. Chapman

Michigan Law Review

Mrs. Doris Walker, president of her local union, was discharged by Cutter Laboratories in 1949 because of membership in the Communist Party and falsification of her employment application. The employer acquired knowledge of these facts in 1947, but did not act at that time to avoid charges of persecuting a union officer. The union, pursuant to the collective bargaining agreement, which authorized discharge for "just cause" only, sought and obtained reinstatement from the arbitration board, which action was affirmed by the district court of appeal, but reversed by the California Supreme Court. On certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, …

Compulsory Joinder Of Parties In Civil Actions, John W. Reed

Michigan Law Review

Compulsory joinder cases involving interests in land display one peculiar and important characteristic: there is almost never any need in the state courts to wrestle with the question of whether a person is indispensable as distinguished from necessary. One hastens to add that this attribute of land cases appears to have gone largely unnoticed, but it exists none the less. It arises out of the fact that in a suit involving real property it is never impossible for the court to obtain jurisdiction over all persons interested therein to an extent which will enable the court to adjudicate controversies over …

Compulsory Joinder Of Parties In Civil Actions, John W. Reed

Articles

The plaintiff in a civil cause ordinarily is permitted to select the persons with whom he will litigate. The initial designation of parties to an action is made by the plaintiff, and if he chooses to sue B and not A,' that is ordinarily of no concern to B or to A or to the court. So also where the plaintiff without A as co-plaintiff sues B. Not always, however, is the plaintiff permitted unfettered choice in naming the parties to his lawsuit. On the one hand there are persons whose relationship to the situation in litigation is outside the …

Patent Office Performance In Perspective, George E. Frost

Michigan Law Review

" the only patent that is valid is one which this Court has not been able to get its hands on."

Justice Jackson's note of despair reflects all too accurately the treatment patents have seemingly received in the hands of the courts since the "new trend" of recent years. It has become the legal fashion to characterize letters patent as something the Patent Office issues and the courts strike down. Statistical support for this conclusion can be readily assembled.

Developments In The Law Of Coerced Confessions, Howard Klemme

Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews, Noel T. Dowling, Hugo L. Black, Jr. (Reviewer), George H. Cate, Sr. (Reviewer), Henry N. Williams (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

On Understanding the Supreme Court

By Paul A. Freund

Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1949. Pp. 130. $3.00

reviewer: Noel T. Dowling

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Courts on Trial

By Jerome N. Frank

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949. Pp. vii, 441. $5.00

reviewer: Hugo L. Black, Jr.

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Hugo L. Black: A Study in the Judicial Process

By Charlotte Williams

Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1950. Pp. vii, 208. $3.50.

reviewer: George H. Cate, Sr.

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Hatch Act Decisions (Political Activity Cases) of the United States Civil Service Commission

By James W. Irwin

Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1949. Pp. 304. $1.50 …

Wendell: Relations Between The Federal And State Courts, Glenn R. Winters

Michigan Law Review

A Review of RELATIONS BETWEEN THE FEDERAL AND STATE COURTS. By Mitchell Wendell.

Book Reviews, E. M. Morgan, Samuel Mermin, Clyde W. Summers, Vernon X. Miller, John Ritchie Iii, Charles Bunn, Douglas B. Magos

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Origin And Development Of The Directed Verdict, William Wirt Blume

Michigan Law Review

Recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States have aroused a new interest in the familiar motion for a directed verdict. In this discussion the writer will undertake a brief examination of the antecedents of the motion, and then will trace its short but significant history.

Constitutional Law-Due Process-Punishment For Direct Contempt Of Court, William R. Worth

Michigan Law Review

Opposing counsel's objection to material in petitioner's opening statement to the jury was sustained. When petitioner rephrased his statement, the trial court, feeling that he was still trying to get inadmissible material before the jury, threatened to "declare a mistrial if you mess with me two minutes and a half, and fine you besides.'' Petitioner took an exception to the conduct of the court, and was immediately fined $25. His protests led to successive increases in penalty, culminating in a $100 fine and three days in jail. The Supreme Court of Texas denied habeas corpus on the ground that the …

Federal Courts-Criminal Procedure-Effect Of Excusing Procedure On Composition Of Jury Panel, Robert P. Griffin

Michigan Law Review

Petitioner was found guilty of violating the Harrison Narcotics Act in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia by a jury composed wholly of federal employees. During the course of voir dire examination, petitioner moved to strike the entire panel, asserting that it did not represent a proper cross-section of the community. This motion was denied. Petitioner exhausted his ten peremptory challenges, and, upon finding that only government employees remained on the jury, then challenged the jury as impaneled for cause. The challenge was overruled. Conviction was affirmed by the circuit court of appeals. On certiorari to the …

Public Utility Valuation, Edwin C. Goddard

Articles

It has been so often remarked that the "valuation" of public utilities is determined by no rule of thumb, that there are no fixed rules or formulas to guide courts or commissions, that determination of value as a rate base is matter of judgment and discretion in each case, Minnesota Rate Cares, 230 U. S. 352, 434, that the statement has come to be believed by reason in part of its much repetition. It is usually accepted as axiomatic. The glorious uncertainty resulting from such an admission will continue so long as judgments of one man or set of men …

Unrecognized Government Or State In English And American Law (Part 2), Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

PROBABLY no one in the British Empire or the United States would question the doctrine that it belongs exclusively to the political departments to recognize new governments or states. The difficulties involved are those which arise in the application of a doctrine so broadly stated. Not every situation involving an unrecognized government or state requires the decision of a question of recognition. If the decision of a political question is not involved, then it is entirely proper for the courts to take cognizance of a mere de facto government or state. In what situations may the courts appropriately take account …

Unrecognized Government Or State In English And American Law (Part 1), Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

From the decision of this novel case, reported as Pelzer v. United Dredging Co., we may infer that the New York courts regard unrecognized Mexico as a sort of legal vacuum. In granting the corporation's motion for judgment on the pleadings, the Supreme Court said: "The administratrix plaintiff is an officer of a foreign court. It is syllogistically true that if the foreign court has no recognized power here she may not assert a right derived through her appointment therefrom. The Mexican government is not de facto here, since recognition alone can make it so. It may have all the …

Social And Economic Interpretation Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robert Eugene Cushman

Michigan Law Review

For those who love precision and definiteness the question of the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to social and economic problems remains an irritating enigma. The judicial construction of due process of law and the equal protection of the law has from the first discouraged systematic analysis and defied synthesis. More than one writer has emerged from the study of the problem with a neat and compact set of fundamental principles, only to have the Supreme Court discourteously ignore them in its next case. But paradoxical as it may seem, those who long for a wise and forward-looking solution of …

Certiorari As Used By The Supreme Court In The Interest Of Harmony Of Opinion And Uniformity Of The Law, W. W. Graves

University of Missouri Bulletin Law Series

It is not my purpose to discuss the writ of certiorari in general, but only such writ as used by the Supreme Court and as directed to the several Courts of Appeals in the interest of harmony of the case law of the state. But whilst this is the purpose I have in mind, yet some general thoughts are not inappropriate. In Missouri we have no general statutes covering the subject of certiorari, as we have covering prohibition, mandamus, habeas corpus and quo warranto. In most respects we use the writ as recognized at common law, and it is no …

Indemnity Act Of 1863 A Study In The War-Time Immunity Of Governmental Officers, James G. Randall

Michigan Law Review

One of the familiar measures of the Union administration during the Civil War was the suspension of the habeas corpus privilege and the consequent subjection of civilians to military authority. The essential irregularity of such a situation in American law is especially conspicuous when one considers its inevitable sequel-namely, the protection of military and civil officers from such prosecution as would normally follow invasion of private rights and actual injury of persons and property. Such protection was supplied by a bill of indemnity passed in 1863, and this law, with its amendment of i866, forms a significant chapter in the …

Supreme Court's Construction Of The Federal Constitution In 1920-1921, Thomas Reed Powell

Michigan Law Review

Cases Arising under the Constitution or Laws of the United States. The question whether a case presents a "federal question," so called, is raised in a number of the controversies in which the asserted federal question was considered and answered. Only a few of these instances need special mention. In Hartford Life Ins. Co. v. Blincoe,3 after reversal by the Supreme Court of a state judgment against a defendant, a second judgment was rendered by the state court on different grounds. These included holding an assessment on an insurance policy to be void for the inclusion of a state tax …

Note And Comment, Edwin C. Goddard, Edson R. Sunderland, George D. Clapperton, Herman A. August

Michigan Law Review

Public Utility Valuations and Rates - In comparing the reports of the public utility commissions with the decisions of the courts on questions of valuation of public utilities, nothing is more striking than this-that as time goes on the commissions are growingly impatient of the cost of reproduction theory, while the courts still insist there is no inflexible method of fixing value, but continue to prefer largely figures as to supposed reproduction cost. This attitude of the commissions is remarkable in view of the fact that every finding may be carried to the courts for review and possible reversal. The …

Note And Comment, Henry M. Bates, Lewis H. Mattern, Paul W. Gordon, Jean Paul Thomas

Michigan Law Review

Freedom of Press and Use of the Mails - Strangely enough, the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution, although it guarantees against federal attack highly important and fundamental rights, has received very little authoritative interpretation by our courts. It remained for the Gr&t War and conditions following in its train to bring before that tribunal almost the first really important controversies relating to freedom of press and of speech. The case of U. S. ex rel. Milwaukee Social Democratic Publishing Company, Plaintiff in Error, v. Postmaster-General Albert S. Burleson, decided March 7, 192i, is the- latest of a series of …

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Adverse Possession - Color of Title - Written Instrument. - Where the defendant under a parol gift of an entire tract of land, but without any "paper" titlq took actual possession of only a part of the tract, but claimed title up to its well-defined boundaries for the statutory period, it was held, in an action by the heirs of the donor, that the defendant had acquired title to the whole tract. Nelson v. Johnson (Ct. of App., Ky., r92o), 226 S. W. 94.

Note And Comment, Horace Lafayette Wilgus, Edson R. Sunderland, Carl G. Brandt, A George Bouchard

Michigan Law Review

Boycott - Clayton Act - In Duplex Printing Press Company v. Deering et al. (January 3, 192I) 41 S. Ct. 172, the facts were: The plaintiff, a Michigan corporation, manufactures at Battle Creek, and sells throughout the United States, especially in and around New York City, and abroad, very large, heavy and complicated newspaper printing presses. Purchasers furnish workmen, but ordinary mechanics alone are not competent to do this, and so they are supervised by specially skilled machinists furnished by plaintiffs. The plaintiffs have always operated on the "open shop" plan, without discrimination against union or non-union labor, either at …

The Newberry Case, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

Senator Newberry of Michigan and sixteen others were convicted in the United States District Court on the charge that they "unlawfully and feloniously did conspire, combine, confederate, and agree together to commit the offense [in the Newberry indictment] on his part of wilfully violating the act of Congress approved June 25, 1910, as amended, by giving, contributing, expending, and using and by causing to be given, contributed, expended and used in procuring his nomination and election at said primary and general elections, a greater sum than the laws of Michigan permitted and above ten thousand dollars," etc. The Act of …

Due Process Of Law In Procedure, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

There are two classes of cases which may arise under the "due process" provisions of the 5th and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution, so far as rules of procedure are concerned. One embraces cases of new remedial processes which may be criticized as too radical. The other consists of cases of old processes which may be criticized as obsolete and out of harmony with prevailing conceptions of justice. Due process may thus be said to fill the wide space between those innovations which carry us so far away from established methods as to remove the safeguards which are …

Verdicts, General And Special, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

The most remarkable thing about this case of Georgia v. Brailsford is that a matter of such elementary importance in the daily administration of the law, after being announced in so dramatic a way by the Supreme Court of the United States at the very threshold of its career, could have dropped into oblivion for a hundred years only to be repudiated in a way hardly less dramatic by a sharply divided court. The controversy here disclosed goes to the very heart of the jury system as it has been developed by the common law and is still almost universally …

Full Faith And Credit And Jurisdiction, Willard T. Barbour

Articles

The judgment of a sister state, when assailed by collateral attack, is often said to occupy a position intermediate between foreign and domestic judgments. Though the older American cases were inclined to examine into the merits of any foreign judgment, the present tendency is toward the adoption of the English view according to which a foreign judgment may be attacked collaterally only for want of jurisdiction or fraud. Dicey, Conflict of Laws (ed. 2) Ch. XVII; see note to Tremblay v. Aetna Life Insurance Co., 97 Me. 547, in 94 Am. St. Rep. 521, 538. But whereas any statement of …

Child Labor Law Case, Commerce Power Of Congress And Reserved Powers Of The States, Henry M. Bates

Articles

The decision in the Child Labor Law case, Hammer v. Dagenhart, - U. S. -, 62 L. ed. -, decided June 3, 1918, would have caused much less surprise twenty-five years ago than it did when announced last June, for it is based upon two constitutional provisions concerning which the much wider and more varied experience of the last quarter century had developed theories, better defined and sounder than those of the earlier period. Those two provisions are the Tenth Amendment regarding the powers reserved to the States and the Commerce Clause. There has been an astonishing amount of faulty …

Inducing Breach Of Agreement By Employees Not To Join A Labor Union, In Order To Compel Unionization Of Plaintiff's Business, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

In Hitchnan Coal & Coke Compazy v. John Mitchell, et al., (Dec. 10, 1917), 38 Sup. Ct. 65, the novel question was presented to the Supreme Court of the United States, as to whether or not members of a labor Union could be enjoined from conspiring to persuade, and persuading, without violence or show of violence, plaintiff's employees, not members of the Union,-and who were working for plaintiff not for a specified time, but under an agreement not to continue in plaintiff's employment if they joined the Union, this agreement being fully known to defendants,-secretly to agree to join the …

Power Of The U.S. Supreme Court To Enforce Judgments Against States, Henry M. Bates

Articles

Four and one-half centuries later the "sovereign state" of Virginia sued the "sovereign state" of West Virginia to recover a sum of money alleged to be due upon the agreement of West Virginia to assume its proportionate share of the debt of the old state of Virginia. The suit was brought in the Supreme Court of the United States, which after prolonged consideration rendered judgment for the plaintiff. No execution or other compulsory process was issued, however. But now after delays for various reasons and pretexts urged by West Virginia the court is compelled to face the problem of what …

A Modern Evolution In Remedial Rights - The Declaratory Judgment, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

In early times the basis of jurisdiction is the existence and the constant assertion of physical power over the parties to the action, but as civilization advances the mere existence of such power tends to make its exercise less and less essential. If this is true, it must be because there is something in civilization itself which diminishes the necessity for a resort to actual force in sustaining the judgments of courts. And it is quite clear that civilization does supply an element which is theoretically capable of entirely supplanting the exercise of force in the assertion of jurisdiction. This …