Legal History Commons^™

The Haitian Revolution, Anti-Haitianism, And The Evolution Of Exclusionary Immigration Policy In The United States, Joseph M. Frengel

Student Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Does The 25th Amendment Merit Reform?: The Challenge Of Determining Presidential Disability, Karena R. Andreassen

Honors Theses

This research project examines the persistent lack of use of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution in its original form, despite many calls for the reform of the language or expansion of its application as situations unfold. Adopted in 1967, the amendment was created to address the challenges of presidential succession and incapacity. However, historical events over the last few decades, such as the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, Reagan’s colon cancer, and the general increase in the age at which presidents assume office, have contributed to scrutiny over the amendments’ provisions. This study will explore why specifically …

John P. Davis And The Joint Committee, Pamela A. Izvănariu

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article uses archival research and social movement theory to recover a critical but untold story about how John P. Davis innovated novel modes of organizational mobilization and multidimensional advocacy to build power and movement at the intersection of race and the economy in the Jim Crow and New Deal era. It examines Davis’s mobilization of the Joint Committee on National Recovery (JCNR), recovers the mobilization and advocacy models Davis engineered, and tells of the fight Davis and the JCNR waged to achieve racial and economic justice and effect a new— and truly emancipatory—New Deal.

Book Review - Quiet Rebels: A History Of Ontario Women Lawyers. Mary Jane Mossman. Published By Wilfrid Laurier University Press. £82.00, Yemisi Dina

Librarian Publications & Presentations

No abstract provided.

Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

Redefining The Relevant Market: Abandonment Or Return To Brown Shoe, Daniel A. Hanley

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Defining a relevant market is arguably the most important requirement in antitrust litigation. Between the 1890s and the 1940s, defining a relevant market was a simple and generalized process, typically undertaken by courts as a cursory matter. However, in the 1960s, defining relevant markets became a centerpiece of antitrust litigation. The modern method originates from the Supreme Court’s landmark 1962 decision in Brown Shoe v. United States. The method commonly known as the Brown Shoe test requires judges to construct relevant markets by carefully analyzing accessible and understandable qualitative data, such as internal corporate documents and consumer surveys. Since the …

The History Of Policing And The Impact On Minority Communities: The Case Against Police Abolition, F. Lee Francis

MC Law Review

This article critically examines the implications of former FBI Director James Comey’s assertions regarding the rise in violent crime and the phenomenon known as “The Ferguson Effect,” which posits that law enforcement officers are increasingly hesitant to engage in proactive policing due to fear of public backlash and viral scrutiny. Comey’s comments, made in a 2015 speech, sparked significant debate about the psychological impact of heightened scrutiny on police behavior and the potential consequences for public safety.

Through a multi-part analysis, the article first traces the historical development of policing in ancient civilizations and its evolution in the United States …

Hampton L. Carson (1852-1929): Attorney General, Bar Leader, Writer And Collector, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Hampton L. Carson (1852-1929) was a law professor, Pennsylvania Attorney General, President of the American, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Bar Associations, noted orator and prolific writer of legal history and biography, and collector of the largest Anglo-American law books and manuscripts. This article will review his life and work.

Should Like Cases Be Decided Alike? A Formal Analysis Of Formal Equality, Benjamin B. Johnson, Richard Jordan

UF Law Faculty Publications

The idea of formal equality—the principle that we should treat like cases alike—is a cornerstone of political and legal theory that supporters have placed at the heart of theories of justice since Aristotle. Critics have rejected it as vacuous or a tool of oppression. Despite its central importance, formal equality has received little formal analysis. In this article, we formalize the like-cases maxim and explore its implications. We show that both Aristotle’s principle of proportionality and Dworkin’s principle of integrity can be directly derived from formal equality. It is therefore not vacuous, but formal equality is more demanding than its …

"May It Please Her Honor": The United States' First Women Judges, 1870-1930, Elizabeth D. Katz

UF Law Faculty Publications

Between 1870 and 1930, hundreds of women served as judges in the United States. While a small number compared to the men who served, these pathbreaking officials were particularly visible and influential in women's efforts to secure political rights and advance in the legal profession. Women's progress in obtaining judgeships developed in a regional pattern, with women in the Midwest and West able to secure earlier and broader jurisdiction positions than their counterparts in the Northeast and South. Seeking access to the judiciary, women in conservative states made gendered arguments about women's supposed superiority in overseeing cases involving women, children, …

May Federal Courts Answer Questions When Not Deciding Cases?, Benjamin B. Johnson

UF Law Faculty Publications

Conventional wisdom says that Article III’s case-or-controversy requirement prevents federal courts from answering legal questions when they are not deciding cases. This is only partially correct. This Article shows conditions under which a federal court may answer questions even when not deciding a case. To do so, it traces the appellate power back to its origins in English common law courts and through the early American judiciary. For centuries, common law judges have answered questions sent to them by lower courts when doing so would help those lower courts to decide pending cases. In England, the “case stated” procedure facilitated …

The Failings Of Post-War Japanese Antitrust Reforms, Gregory Hayes

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This paper discusses the antitrust reform measures taken during the occupation of Japan following the end of World War II. These antitrust reforms included the dissolution of the zaibatsu business groups and the adoption of the Antimonopoly Act. However, the trust-busting and antitrust measures taken by Japan failed to prevent the eventual rise of keiretsu business groups and lower the concentration of corporate ownership in Japan. The primary reasons behind this failure were the inability of the reformers to fully dismantle the zaibatsu business groups and the changing priorities of the reformers due to the growing threat of the spread …

Original Discontent, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

There are many theories of constitutional interpretation. Most, but not all, of them assert that, in interpreting the Constitution’s provisions, we should start by taking seriously the intentions of the enactors, meaning, roughly speaking, its drafters, defenders and ratifiers. This Article argues that, in doing so, judges, scholars and policymakers have underestimated an important feature of the process of constitution-making: the discontent of the enactors themselves with the Constitution they were enacting. Time and again, during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, during the penning of the Federalist Papers, and during the state ratifying conventions, the enactors expressed deep reservations about …

The United States Healthcare System: From Medicare To Post-Pandemic Health Policy, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

My purpose in this essay is to comment on national health policy in the United States over the past sixty years.  My conclusions are less optimistic than what I had hoped when I began my teaching and research career in the 1990s to be able to say in 2025.  In particular, the successful expansion of publicly supported health coverage via the passage of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA” or “Obamacare”) in 2010 seems to have triggered -- though I hesitate to say that it caused – a backsliding from broader commitments to clinical performance, population health, and social solidarity that …

Memory, Resistance, And Doubt, Richard Primus

Articles

Burroughs v. United States is not a famous case. But it could be. Its central character was a famous man. James Cannon, Jr., was a bishop in the Methodist church, a player in the worlds of business and banking, a ruthless political power broker, and a zealous Prohibitionist. In Virginia, where he lived, his role within the Democratic Party earned him the informal title of “the dry boss of the state,” and his influence extended well beyond the Old Dominion. Indeed, the essayist H.L. Mencken identified Cannon as the most important Prohibitionist in the country. “More than any other man,” …

Fiscal Citizenship And Taxpayer Privacy, Alex Zhang

Faculty Articles

Should individual tax data be public or confidential? Within the United States, secrecy has been the rule since the Tax Reform Act of 1976. But at three critical junctures—the Civil War, the 1920s, and the 1930s—Congress made individual tax records open for public inspection, and newspapers published the incomes of the billionaires of the time. Today, Finland, Norway, and Sweden all mandate significant transparency for individual tax information.

This Essay intervenes in the tax-confidentiality debate by building a new analytical framework of fiscal citizenship. Until now, scholars have focused on compliance—whether disclosure incentivizes honest reporting of income, and if it …

Qualified Immunity & Subjective Knowledge, John F. Preis

Law Faculty Publications

There is something weird going on within the doctrine of qualified immunity. The Supreme Court and lower courts routinely claim that officers who “knowingly violate the law” are not entitled to qualified immunity, but then—in almost the same breath—assert that an officer’s knowledge of the law is irrelevant to the qualified immunity analysis. What is even more strange is that these two opposing views can apparently be traced to the foundational case in the field: Harlow v. Fitzgerald.

This Article explores and proposes a resolution to this apparent contradiction. Beginning with Harlow itself, the Article explores the case using the …

In Search Of A State, Maeve Glass

Faculty Scholarship

This article offers a legal history of one of America’s earliest campaigns of state legislative resistance: the effort in Massachusetts to protest the national government’s perceived dismantling of an old Atlantic commercial order from 1803 to 1815. To date, scholars have either condemned this protest as a dangerous harbinger of the Civil War or vindicated it as an inevitable and salutary extension of the Founding. This article steers a different course. By focusing on the evolving language of protest and the complex hybrid of ideas and material realities from which this language emerged, this article illuminates how Federalist leaders who …

As They Think Best: A History Of The "One Crowded Hour" Autograph Manuscript, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.