Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Reappraisal Of Federal Question Jurisdiction, G. Merle Bergman

Michigan Law Review

For some time I have been reading and listening to criticisms directed toward decisions which the Supreme Court has rendered in cases involving federal question jurisdiction. The general 'tenor of this criticism is that these decisions demonstrate a surprising lack of uniformity and conscious purpose. Writers profess to search in vain for sound logic in the Court's opinions. They point up instead the anomaly which is reflected when cases involving a substantial federal issue are tried in state courts, while those in which no real federal issue is involved are nevertheless accepted for trial in the federal courts. This result, …

Mr. Justice William Johnson And The Unenviable Dilemma, A. J. Levin

Michigan Law Review

A policy of judicial avoidance, otherwise referred to as "judicial restraint," has clearly been the dominant trend in the United States Supreme Court since Mr. Justice Holmes began to sit upon that bench at the beginning of this century. There has been an inclination to explain this change as revealing a tendency of the Court to follow a policy of laissez-faire toward the legislative and executive departments, and to stop at this formalistic explanation of this important aspect of the judicial function. The Court's increasing awareness of its own lack of technical competence in dealing with the many complex governmental …

Constitutional Interpretation And Judicial Self-Restraint, Vincent M. Barnett Jr.

Michigan Law Review

The newly reconstituted Supreme Court of the United States has become the center of an earnest controversy with respect to the true role of the Court in constitutional interpretation. The general controversy is, of course, far from new. What makes it of more than ordinary significance is that the Court itself is revealing a tendency substantially to alter the extent, if not the nature, of judicial review. This tendency has not yet become clearly dominant, but it is apparent enough to shake the implicit faith in the Court of many of those to whom, before 1937, any criticism of the …

Curbing The Supreme Court-State Experiences And Federal Proposals, Katherine B. Fite, Louis Baruch Rubinstein

Michigan Law Review

The avalanche of proposals introduced in the last session of Congress seeking to curb the power of the Supreme Court to declare legislative acts unconstitutional and President Roosevelt's recent message to Congress on the judiciary have focused attention on the problem of the function of that Court in our governmental system.

This article does not take sides in the controversy. Its purpose is merely to review the developments in the four states, Colorado, Ohio, North Dakota and Nebraska, which by amendments to their constitutions have sought to place curbs on their supreme courts, and also to classify the proposals which …

Congress And The Appellate Jurisdiction Of The Supreme Court, Ralph R. Martig

Michigan Law Review

A democratic government such as ours, based upon the theory of popular sovereignty, presents many curious political phenomena. For example: in order to insure a proper balance of the powers, it has been necessary for the Supreme Court to assume the onerous task of passing upon the constitutionality of congressional legislation. It is unfortunate, but necessary, that the Court be obliged to exercise this power of judicial review at a time when the entire country is suffering from the effects of a severe and sustained economic depression. It is unfortunate, too, that the legislation under judicial examination should involve questions …

Has The Constitution Gone?, John A. Fairlie

Michigan Law Review

As far back as 1828, Chief Justice Marshall is quoted as saying: "Should Jackson be elected, I shall look upon the government as virtually dissolved." A few years later, when Taney was appointed Chief Justice by Jackson, Daniel Webster wrote: "Judge Story thinks the Supreme Court is gone, and I think so too." Soon afterwards, when the newly constituted Court rendered decisions upholding statutes from which Story dissented, the latter wrote to Judge McLean: "There will not, I fear, ever in our day, be any case in which a law of a State or of Congress will be declared …

State Utilities And The Supreme Court, 1922-1930, Thomas Reed Powell

Michigan Law Review

While enterprises that are "affected with a public interest" or "devoted to a public use" or that come within the class of strict public utilities may be compelled to do a number of things that strictly private enterprise may avoid, the power over utilities is not unlimited. Requirements deemed onerous may be contested as denials of due process of law. The constitutional issue thus raised under the Fourteenth Amendment entitles protestants to start injunction proceedings in federal courts and to seek appeals to the United States Supreme Court from unfavorable decisions of state courts. Often the complaint is not of …

The Supreme Court's Construction Of The Self-Incrimination Clause, Edward S. Corwin

Michigan Law Review

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution reads as follows: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized." The so-called "self-incrimination clause" of Amendment V reads as follows: "No person * * * shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."

Supreme Court's Theory Of A Direct Tax, J H. Riddle

Michigan Law Review

The decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Pollock case of 1895 was the beginning of an attempt on the part of the court to formulate a new definition of a direct tax, and since that time in every case which has called for a decision as to whether a particular tax was a direct tax the court has reverted to and tried to harmonize its decision with the reasoning set forth in the Pollock case. This decision overturned a fairly definite and universally accepted definition of a direct tax which had existed for nearly a century. In …

Corporations And Express Trusts As Business Organizations, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

PRESIDENT BUTLER of Columbia University is reported to have said in an address before the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1911, that "the limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modem times, whether you judge it by its social, by its ethical, by its industrial, or, in the long run--after we understand it and know how to use it,--by its political, effects." 1

Limits To State Control Of Private Business, Thomas M. Cooley

Articles

The present purpose is to inquire whether, in the matter of the regulation of property rights and of business, legislation has not of late been occupying doubtful, possibly unconstitutional grounds. The discussion in the main must be limited to fundamental.-principles, aided by such light as legal and constitutional history may throw upon them, since the express provisions of the constitutions can give little assistance. They always contain the general guaranty of due process of law to life, liberty, and property, but in other particulars they for the most part leave protection to principles which have come from the common law. …

Commentaries On The Constitution Of The United States : With A Preliminary Review Of The Constitutional History Of The Colonies And States Before The Adoption Of The Constitution, Joseph Story, Thomas M. Cooley

Books

From the Editor's Preface: “In preparing for the press a fourth edition of Mr. Justice Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution, it has been thought proper to preserve the original text without alteration or interpolation, and to put in notes all discussions by the editor, as well as all references to subsequent adjudications, public papers, and events, tending to illustrate, support, or qualify the positions assumed in the text. The new amendments, however, seemed to demand treatment in the body of the work, and additional chapters are given for that purpose….”