Legal History Commons^™

Congress's Power To Regulate The Federal Judiciary: What The First Congress And The First Federal Courts Can Teach Today's Congress And Courts , Paul Taylor

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The New Victims Of The Old Anti-Catholicism, Christopher C. Lund

Law Faculty Research Publications

Santayana once said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, the implication being that we can avoid future mistakes by paying better attention to past ones. Perhaps this is so. Or perhaps it is as George Bernard Shaw once said-that we learn from history only that we learn nothing from history. Yet one thing is surely clear. To the extent that modern injustices have identifiable historical antecedents, we rightly stand doubly condemned for them.

This Essay looks at four modern church-state cases which span the First Amendment spectrum. The plaintiffs are religiously diverse-one is a …

Dean’S Column: Collaborations With Professional Associations, Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

This co-authored article documents the cooperation and synergies between the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association (LVNBA). The LVNBA is the local affiliate of the National Bar Association, which is the nation’s oldest minority bar and largest national association of over 44,000 predominately African-American lawyers, judges, professors, and law students. The article is part of a special Black History Month issue of the Nevada Lawyer, the official publication of the State Bar of Nevada. That issue highlights the achievements and contributions of African-American …

Timeline Of African-American Legal History In Nevada (1861-2011), Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

For the first time in Nevada history, this timeline depicts selected events in the history of African-American lawyers, civil rights, and diversity in Nevada's bar and bench. It includes many historically significant pictures and is part of a special Black History Month issue of the Nevada Lawyer, the official publication of the State Bar of Nevada. That issue highlights the achievements and contributions of African-American lawyers in Nevada in honor of the 51st anniversary of the first African American (Charles L. Kellar) passing the Nevada state bar examination, the 48th anniversary of the first two African Americans admitted to the …

Preserving The Past In The Present For The Future: Las Vegas Chapter Of The National Bar Association Archive At The Wiener-Rogers Law Library, Jeanne Price, Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

This co-authored article documents the establishment of the Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association (LVNBA) Archive in 2011 at the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law, which may be the first of its kind in the nation. The LVNBA archive was established in cooperation with the LVNBA, the local affiliate of the National Bar Association, which is the nation’s oldest minority bar and largest national association of over 44,000 predominately African-American lawyers, judges, professors, and law students. Materials donated by the LVNBA and its members document the role …

Brief Of Committee Of Law Professors And Historians As Amici Curaie, In Support Of Plaintiffs-Appellant, Coalition To Defend Affirmative Action V. Brown, 674 F.3d 1128 (2012) (No. 11-15100, 11-15241), Wilson Huhn

Con Law Center Amicus Briefs

The purpose of this brief is to place the dispute over affirmative action in California’s public universities within a broader historical context.  State constitutional amendments such as Proposition 209 are not uncommon in American history.  In reaction to calls for reform from a minority group – whether it be the end of slavery, the enactment of non-discrimination laws, or the adoption of voluntary programs of racial integration – the majority has often responded by attempting to prevent the debate from occurring, by denying members of the minority group the opportunity to participate in the political process, or by making it …

Overinterpreting Law, Robert F. Blomquist

Law Faculty Publications

Overinterpretation has attracted considerable attention in other fields, such as literary studies, science, and rhetoric, but it is undertheorized in law. This Article attempts to initiate a theory of legal overinterpretation by examining the rhetorical nature of excess, the sociological dimensions of roles in team performances, and citation to legal and non-legal sources that have discussed overinterpretation. The Article concludes by positing illustrative categories of potential legal overinterpretation, and providing an examination of ways to minimize legal overinterpretation through a judicious, pragmatic balance between abstract considerations and concrete considerations in law.

The Decline Of Oral Argument In The Federal Courts Of Appeals: A Modest Proposal For Reform, David R. Cleveland, Steven Wisotsky

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay introduces the Chicago-Kent Symposium on Women's Legal History: A Global Perspective. It seeks to situate the field of women's legal history and to explore what it means to begin writing a transnational women's history which transcends and at times disrupts the nation state. In doing so, it sets forth some of the fundamental premises of women's legal history and points to new ways of writing such histories.

Social Movements, Legal Change, And The Challenges Of Writing Legal History (Book Review), Christopher W. Schmidt

All Faculty Scholarship

This Essay identifies the key contributions that Tomiko-Brown Nagin’s Courage to Dissent makes to the legal history of the civil rights movement. It situates the book among several other prominent legal histories of the civil rights era and offers thoughts on the challenge of creating historical accounts that illuminate the complex intersections of legal change and social activism. The Essay argues that Courage to Dissent is among the most thorough and ambitious efforts to confront this challenge in the literature today.

Sealand, Havenco, And The Rule Of Law, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

In 2000, a group of American entrepreneurs moved to a former World War II anti-aircraft platform in the North Sea, seven miles off the British coast, and launched HavenCo, one of the strangest start-ups in Internet history. A former pirate radio broadcaster, Roy Bates, had occupied the platform in the 1960s, moved his family aboard, and declared it to be the sovereign Principality of Sealand. HavenCo's founders were opposed to governmental censorship and control of the Internet; by putting computer servers on Sealand, they planned to create a "data haven" for unpopular speech, safely beyond the reach of any other …

Florida's First Constitution, M C. Mirow

Faculty Books

The central square of St. Augustine, Florida, the Plaza de la Constitución, is not named for the United States Constitution. Instead, its name comes from Florida’s first constitution, the Spanish Constitution of Cádiz of 1812. Daily political life in Florida’s Spanish colonial cities was governed by this document, and cities like St. Augustine ordered their activities around the requirements, rights, and duties expressed in this constitution. The Constitution of Cádiz was the first truly transatlantic constitution because it applied to the entire Spanish empire, of which St. Augustine and Pensacola were just a part. It was drafted by representatives from …

British 1812 Wartime Policy On The High Seas And Maryland Maritime Insurance: Carrere V. Union Insurance Co. Of Md. (1813), Thomas R. Riley

Legal History Publications

Places Carrere v. Union Insurance Co. of Md (1813) into its historical setting considering the role of maritime insurance and British wartime policy on the high seas.

Marine Insurance And Mercantile Enterprise Through The Lens Of The Baltimore Insurance Company V. Mcfadon 4 H.& J. 31 (1815), Catherine Gonzalez

Legal History Publications

This essay contextualizes the case of The Baltimore Insurance Company v. McFadon, tracing the dispute from its origin to its disposition in the Maryland Court of Appeals in 1815. The case, which centered on whether mutual claims could be set-off against each other in a suit involving an open insurance policy, is illuminating as to the evolution of marine insurance, trade between Baltimore and the West Indies in the late eighteenth century, and the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on American mercantile enterprise. By examining the case through the lens of this historical study, it becomes apparent that the …

Barney V. Smith (Md 1819) Congressman Versus The Commodore, Angelisa Hicks

Legal History Publications

A historical outlook on the events surrounding the Barney v. Smith Case. The Article discusses the impact of the French and British conflict on United States trade, as well as some of the measures taken by the United States in order to insulate themselves from the adverse fiscal impacts on the economy due to this conflict. Also discussed are the key individuals involved in the case and their intertwining relationships. There is a comprehensive breakdown on the attorney’s arguments and subsequent judicial holding.

Baptiste V. De Volunbrun 5 H. & J. 86 (Md 1820): The Events Surrounding An Early Nineteenth-Century Freedom Petition Before The Maryland Court Of Appeals, Kurt Ellerbe

Legal History Publications

BAPTISTE V. DE VOLUNBRUN 5 H. & J. 86 (Md. 1820): In Jean Baptiste’s 1820 freedom petition we have not only a slavery case typical of the region and period, but also a compelling and informative narrative from the beginning of the end of North America’s nearly two hundred and fifty year era of slavery. This epic has its roots in the some of the earliest African arrivals to the new world and was significantly influenced by the major trends in philosophy that immediately preceded its commencement, as well as a concurrent and burgeoning American abolitionist movement. It features questionable …

Kennedy V. The Baltimore Insurance Company, 3 H. & J. 367 (1813): The Story Of One Baltimore Merchant Among Many Fighting An Insurance Company In Times Of War, Jon F. Watson

Legal History Publications

The Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800’s resulted in many Baltimore merchants obtaining insurance for their vessels and cargo. During this period of unrest, Lemuel Taylor and John F. Kennedy insured a Baltimore vessel which was subsequently captured by the British. This paper contextualizes the case of Kennedy v. The Baltimore Insurance Company within this period and illustrates the struggles faced by many merchants who sought to be reimbursed for their losses. I also tried to focus on the historical backgrounds of the key players to the case, especially Lemuel Taylor and John F. Kennedy. All together, the case of …

The Possibility Of Compromise: Antiabortion Moderates After Roe V. Wade, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

Did Roe v. Wade destroy the possibility for compromise in the abortion debate? Leading studies argue that Roe itself radicalized debate and marginalized antiabortion moderates, either by issuing a sweeping decision before adequate public support had developed or by framing the opinion in terms of moral absolutes. Others rely on this history in criticizing the sweeping privacy framework set out in Roe, attributing the radicalization of the general discussion and the antiabortion movement to the timing, reach, or framing of the abortion right in the opinion.

The polarization narrative on which leading studies rely obscures important actors and arguments that …

Liberty Of The Exercise Of Religion In The Peace Of Westphalia, Gordon A. Christenson

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This essay honors my dear friend of half a century, Burns Weston. In it, I take a fresh look at the backdrop and structure of toleration and religious freedom in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and in the American Constitution, with special focus on a recent unanimous Supreme Court decision of first impression. That important decision protects inner church freedoms in ecclesiastical employment, the so-called "ministerial exception" to federal and state employment discrimination laws.

"Of all the great world religions past and present," writes the noted historian Perez Zagorin, "Christianity has been by far the most intolerant." Violence and …

Originalism And Loving V. Virginia, Steven G. Calabresi, Andrea Matthews

Faculty Working Papers

This article makes an originalist argument in defense of the Supreme Court's holding in Loving v. Virginia that antimiscegenation laws are unconstitutional. This article builds on past work by Professor Michael McConnell defending Brown v. Board of Education on originalist grounds and by Professor Calabresi defending strict scrutiny for gender classifications on originalist grounds. Professor Calabresi's work in this area was defended and praise recently by Slate magazine online. The article shows that Loving v. Virginia is defensible using the public meaning originalism advocated for by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. This article shows that the issue in Loving …