Legal History Commons^™

Civil And Common Law: A Historical Analysis Of Colonial And Postcolonial Canada, Patrick S. Stroud

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

Legal historians divide European law into two principal families: common law (British law) and civil law (continental European law). Common law judges favor cases; courts “discover” law on a case-by-case basis and those cases make precedents for future ruling. Civil law courts favor codes; courts compare cases to existing laws and those laws control judges’ rulings. The two rarely interact, save one prominent example: Canada. British common law supposedly superseded French legal traditions in colonial Canada. But is history so binary? Did British common law truly “conquer” French civil law? Through analysis of Canadian legal history, this article demonstrates how …

A Defense Of The Corporate Law Duty Of Care, Julian Velasco

Journal Articles

Most people would acknowledge the importance of the duty of loyalty, but the same is not true of the duty of care. Historically, the corporate law duty of care has been underenforced at best, and arguably unenforced entirely. Some scholars do not consider the duty of care to be a fiduciary duty at all, and there are those who would do away with it entirely. In this paper, I intend to provide a comprehensive defense of the corporate law fiduciary duty of care. I hope to show that the duty of care is not simply an ill-fitting appendage to the …

The Arduous Virtue Of Fidelity: Originalism, Scalia, Tribe, And Nerve, Ronald Dworkin

Fordham Law Review

    Proper constitutional interpretation takes both text and past practice as its object: Lawyers and judges faced with a contemporary constitutional issue must try to construct a coherent, principled, and persuasive interpretation of the text of particular clauses, the structure of the Constitution as a whole, and our history under the Constitution—an interpretation that both unifies these distinct sources, so far as this is possible, and directs future adjudication. They must seek, that is, constitutional integrity. So fidelity to the Constitution's text does not exhaust constitutional interpretation, and on some occasions overall constitutional integrity might require a result that could …

A Government Of Laws Not Of Precedents 1776-1876: The Google Challenge To Common Law Myth, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

The United States, it is said, is a common law country. The genius of American common law, according to American jurists, is its flexibility in adapting to change and in developing new causes of action. Courts make law even as they apply it. This permits them better to do justice and effectuate public policy in individual cases, say American jurists.

Not all Americans are convinced of the virtues of this American common law method. Many in the public protest, we want judges that apply and do not make law. American jurists discount these protests as criticisms of naive laymen. They …

The Original Meaning Of "God": Using The Language Of The Framing Generation To Create A Coherent Establishment Clause Jurisprudence, Michael I. Meyerson

Marquette Law Review

The Supreme Court’s attempt to create a standard for evaluating whether the Establishment Clause is violated by religious governmental speech, such as the public display of the Ten Commandments or the Pledge of Allegiance, is a total failure. The Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence has been termed “convoluted,” “a muddled mess,” and “a polite lie.” Unwilling to either allow all governmental religious speech or ban it entirely, the Court is in need of a coherent standard for distinguishing the permissible from the unconstitutional. Thus far, no Justice has offered such a standard.

A careful reading of the history of the framing …

Defining "Navigability": Balancing State-Court Flexibility And Private Rights In Waterways, Maureen E. Brady

Cardozo Law Review

Over the course of American history, state courts have eliminated property rights in waterways through a quirk of public trust law: declaring the water in question to be "navigable" makes it public property, while declaring it "non-navigable" leaves the water subject to private control. The historical record is flooded with examples of these declarations by state courts. While some navigability rulings have protected public rights in waters against irrational private claims, others have abused this peculiarity to seize private property to placate irate, and even violent, interest groups.

The scope of this authority to craft navigability doctrine - especially whether …

What Is Criminal Law About?, Guyora Binder, Robert Weisberg

Journal Articles

In a recent critique, Jens Ohlin faults contemporary criminal law textbooks for emphasizing philosophy, history and social science at the expense of doctrinal training. In this response, we argue that the political importance of criminal law justifies including reflection about the justice of punishment in the professional education of lawyers. First, we argue that both understanding and evaluating criminal law doctrine requires consideration of political philosophy, legal history, and empirical research. Second, we argue that the indeterminacy of criminal law doctrine on some fundamental questions means that criminal lawyers often cannot avoid invoking normative theory in fashioning legal arguments. Finally, …

Picking Up The Remnants Post-Waller: Properly Limiting The Scope Of Uneconomic Remnant Claims In Wisconsin Eminent Domain Proceedings, Samuel A. Magnuson

Marquette Law Review

Statutory interpretation often requires a court to review the legislative intent behind the statute. However, this task is not always easily undertaken when the intent of the legislature is itself unclear. A recent Wisconsin Supreme Court case illustrates the difficulty in properly interpreting arguably ambiguous statutory language. Nevertheless, this Comment hopes to demonstrate that by examining the history of remnant theory, it should be clear that uneconomic remnant claims in eminent domain proceedings were intended to be limited to situations where the partial taking creates either a physical remnant or a financial remnant. Furthermore, this Comment argues that the Wisconsin …

Constitutionalism And The Foundations Of The Security State, Aziz Rana

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Scholars often argue that the culture of American constitutionalism provides an important constraint on aggressive national security practices. This Article challenges the conventional account by highlighting instead how modern constitutional reverence emerged in tandem with the national security state, critically functioning to reinforce and legitimize government power rather than primarily to place limits on it. This unacknowledged security origin of today’s constitutional climate speaks to a profound ambiguity in the type of public culture ultimately promoted by the Constitution. Scholars are clearly right to note that constitutional loyalty has created political space for arguments more respectful of civil rights and …

Constructed Constraint And The Constitutional Text, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, constitutional theorists have attended to the unwritten aspects of American constitutionalism and, relatedly, to the ways in which the constitutional text can be “constructed” upon by various materials. This Article takes a different approach. Instead of considering how various materials can supplement, implement, or interact with the constitutional text, the Article focuses on how the text itself is often partially constructed in American constitutional practice. Although interpreters typically regard clear text as controlling, this Article contends that whether the text is perceived to be clear is often affected by various “modalities” of constitutional interpretation that are normally …

Saving Originalism, Robert J. Delahunty, John Yoo

Michigan Law Review

It is sometimes said that biographers cannot help but come to admire, even love, their subjects. And that adage seems to ring true of Professor Amar, the foremost “biographer” of the Constitution. He loves it not just as a governing structure, or a political system, but as a document. He loves the Constitution in the same way that a fan of English literature might treasure Milton’s Paradise Lost or Shakespeare’s Macbeth. He loves the Constitution not just for the good: the separation of powers, federalism, and the Bill of Rights. He also loves it for its nooks and crannies, idiosyncrasies, …

The Original Meaning Of "God": Using The Language Of The Framing Generation To Create A Coherent Establishment Clause Jurisprudence, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s attempt to create a standard for evaluating whether the Establishment Clause is violated by religious governmental speech, such as the public display of the Ten Commandments or the Pledge of Allegiance, is a total failure. The Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence has been termed “convoluted,” “a muddled mess,” and “a polite lie.” Unwilling to either allow all governmental religious speech or ban it entirely, the Court is in need of a coherent standard for distinguishing the permissible from the unconstitutional. Thus far, no Justice has offered such a standard.

A careful reading of the history of the framing …

The Normalising Power Of Marriage Law: An Irish Genealogy, 1945-2010, Deirdre Mcgowan

Other resources

Marriage law is often conceptualised as an instrument of power that illegitimately imposes the will of the State on its citizens. Paradoxically, marriage law is also offered as a route to liberation. In this thesis, I question the efficacy of this type of analysis by investigating the actual power effects of marriage law. Using Michel Foucault’s concepts of bio-power and government, and his genealogical approach to history, I identify the role played by marriage law in governing the social domain over a discrete period of Irish history. Drawing on this analysis I suggest that marriage law is part of a …

The Rejection Of Horizontal Judicial Review During America's Colonial Period, Robert J. Steinfeld

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

From The Shoals Of Ras Kaboudia To The Shores Of Tripoli: The Tunisia/Libya Continental Shelf Boundary Delimitation, Donna R. Christie

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Dean Rusk Award 1983-1984: The Export Trading Company Act Of 1982: Theory And Application, Mark Grambergs

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Changing International Law Framework For Exports: The General Agreement On Tariffs And Trade, John H. Jackson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Progressive Legal Thought, Herbert Hovenkamp

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Survey Of The History Of The Death Penalty In The United States, Sheherezade C. Malik, D. Paul Holdsworth

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Acknowledgements, Leah Stiegler

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.