Legal History Commons^™

The Original Meaning Of Commerce In The Indian Commerce Clause, Gregory Ablavsky

Connecticut Law Review

In Haaland v. Brackeen, the Supreme Court returned to the foundational question of federal authority over relations between the United States and Native nations, long known as “Indian affairs.” The decision reaffirmed well-established precedent affirming broad federal authority in the area, but it also underscored ongoing disagreement, as Justices Gorsuch and Thomas offered lengthy and dueling investigations of the original understanding.

This Essay explores one aspect of that history: the original meaning of “commerce” in the Indian Commerce Clause. Nearly a decade ago, I wrote an article that sought, as its title indicated, to move “beyond the Indian Commerce Clause.” …

Surveys: Who's Asking? Who's Answering? Is Anybody Listening?, Virginia C. Thomas

Library Scholarly Publications

The author examines the historical impact of surveys and opinion polls on the U.S. Congress.

How To Limit The Downstream Costs Of Racially Restrictive Covenants, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

This essay, which is part of the University of Kansas Law Review Symposium on the seventy-fifth (75th) anniversary of Shelley v. Kraemer, is the first to explain how a current successor in interest to a racially restrictive covenant may limit more of their own downstream costs through the use of self-help options. By definition, a downstream cost is any expense that arises after the formation, and in the course of performance, of a valid common law contract. Examples of downstream costs include the time, money and energy that property owners may expend in removing racially restrictive covenants.

The essay does …

American Law In The New Global Conflict, Mark Jia

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article surveys how a growing rivalry between the United States and China is changing the American legal system. It argues that U.S.-China conflict is reproducing, in attenuated form, the same politics of threat that has driven wartime legal development for much of our history. The result is that American law is reprising familiar patterns and pathologies. There has been a diminishment in rights among groups with imputed ties to a geopolitical adversary. But there has also been a modest expansion in rights where advocates have linked desired reforms with geopolitical goals. Institutionally, the new global conflict has at times …

Silencing And Surveillance: The Struggle Of Same-Sex Desire In The Shadow Of The 20th-Century Police State, Ethan Dunn

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This paper investigates the intersection of social perceptions of vice and gender norms in shaping the policing of sexual orientation and sexuality during the turn of the twentieth century. Employing a legal analysis rooted in the law and society movement and critical legal studies, this study examines how social anxieties surrounding vice and vice crimes prompted swift legislative measures at both federal and state levels, resulting in statutes characterized by broad language that granted extensive discretion to law enforcement officials and judges. The emergence of morals and vice police squads further intensified the targeting of individuals who deviated from prevailing …

Rage Rhetoric And The Revival Of American Sedition, Jonathan Turley

William & Mary Law Review

We are living in what Professor Jonathan Turley calls an age of rage. However, it is not the first such period. Professor Turley explores how the United States was formed (and the Constitution was written) in precisely such a period. Throughout that history, sedition has been used as the vehicle for criminalizing political speech. This Article explores how seditious libel has evolved as a crime and how it is experiencing a type of American revival. The crime of sedition can be traced back to the infamous trials of the Star Chamber and the flawed view of free speech articulated by …

Amending The Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act To Promote Accountability For Violations Of Peremptory Norms Of International Law, Joshua Newman

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The current state of the United States legal system, and international law at large, fails to afford victims of violations of international law with proper redress, when those violations were facilitated by a domestic taking. The Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act provides foreign sovereigns immunity from the jurisdiction of United States courts when those foreign sovereigns effectuate of a violation of international law through domestic takings. Courts have attempted to circumvent the restrictions of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act with exceptions such as the genocide exception. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Federal Republic of Germany v Philipp renounced the …

Nato Allies On The Brink Of War: The Cause For Implement-Ing A Dispute Resolution Mechanism Within The North Atlantic Treaty, Samantha Solomotis

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

NATO is the largest peacekeeping military alliance in the world and is not yet done growing. Recent events in Ukraine have reinforced the importance of NATO as a defensive alliance. New threats, both internal and external, are emerging. Intra-alliance conflicts over ideological agreements, border disputes, and member contributions put the fate of the organization at risk. To retain its strength as it grows, NATO must develop stronger cohesion between member states to ensure effectiveness and prevent dissolution. This Note uses the recently reignited conflict between Greece and Turkey—NATO members and belligerent neighbors—to demonstrate the pressing need and peacekeeping utility of …

Addressing The Root Cause Of Covid-19 Hate Crimes Against The Aapi Community: Shifting From Reactive Policies To Preventative Solutions, Alexa A. Panganiban

Journal of Law and Policy

While the COVID-19 Pandemic affected health, social interaction, and politics on a global scale, Asian Americans in the United States faced the added hardship of racism and xenophobia. Unfortunately, anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S. is not unprecedented and has historical roots dating back to at least the nineteenth century. However, with right-wing leaders using condescending labels like “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu” to describe the deadly infection, Asian hate has escalated to astronomical levels. Within one year of the onset of the Pandemic, more than 9,000 reports of Asian hate were filed, and this exponential surge led to the adoption …

Original Public Meaning And Pregnancy’S Ambiguities, Evan D. Bernick, Jill Wieber Lens

Michigan Law Review

Relying on 1868 abortion statutes, the 2022 Supreme Court held in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that no federal constitutional right to abortion exists. Mere months later, a petition for certiorari asked the Court to determine that “person” in the Fourteenth Amendment includes prenatal existence, which would require criminalization of abortion in all states. The petitioners cited Dobbs and claimed the authority of legal history in 1868 and before. These arguments will be heard again, and they are increasingly framed in terms of the “original public meaning” of the Fourteenth Amendment.

This Article refutes these arguments on their own …

Salafi Reformist Fatwas And The Challenge To Traditionalism In Egypt And Arabia, 1895 – 1930, Samuel Scurry

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Studies of the Islamic intellectual movement commonly known as Salafism have long focused either on the modernist reformers in Egypt and Syria in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or on the far more austere and sometimes militant iterations of Salafism from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, often associated with Wahhabism. A handful of scholars have examined the links between the two and the transition from the earlier to the later Salafis, however many works which impacted the evolution of Salafism at the dawn of the twentieth century have been neglected, especially those which do not align …

Ein Bericht Aus Einer Akademie: Writing About Germany's Lost Jewish Scholars, 80 Years On, J.G. Allen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This volume explores the life and work of F.A. Mann—a German-born and (mostly) German-educated jurist who spent the operative parts of his professional life in the United Kingdom (UK). The project on which the volume is based set out to understand Mann’s life as a lawyer and describe his legacy—in English law, and also in German, European, and international law.

Defiance, Lackland H. Bloom Jr

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

An Originalist Approach To Puerto Rico: Arguments Against The Status Quo, Micah Allred

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Few originalists have grappled with a fundamental question about Puerto Rico: whether the Constitution permits the United States to hold the island indefinitely as nonstate territory. There are reasons to doubt that it does. The main purpose of the Constitution’s territorial provisions was to allow Congress to transition the then West-ern Territory into states. And, as a structural matter, Congress’s direct authority over Puerto Ricans conflicts with important constitutional principles such as federalism. But for originalists, arguments from purpose and structure are helpful only insofar as they elucidate the original meaning of the Constitution’s text. This Article lays out two …

Admiralty, Abstention, And The Allure Of Old Cases, Maggie Gardner

Notre Dame Law Review

The current Supreme Court has made clear that history matters. But doing history well is hard. There is thus an allure to old cases because they provide a link to the past that is more accessible for nonhistorian lawyers. This Article warns against that allure by showing how the use of old cases also poses methodological challenges. The Article uses as a case study the emerging doctrine of foreign relations abstention. Before the Supreme Court, advocates argued that this new doctrine is in fact rooted in early admiralty cases. Those advocates did not, however, canvass the early admiralty practice, relying …

Pretrial Commitment And The Fourth Amendment, Laurent Sacharoff

Notre Dame Law Review

Today, the Fourth Amendment Warrant Clause governs arrest warrants and search warrants only. But in the founding era, the Warrant Clause governed a third type of warrant: the “warrant of commitment.” Judges issued these warrants to jail defendants pending trial. This Article argues that the Fourth Amendment Warrant Clause, with its oath and probable cause standard, should be understood today to apply to this third type of warrant. That means the Warrant Clause would govern any initial appearance where a judge first commits a defendant—a process that currently falls far short of fulfilling its constitutional and historical function. History supports …

Proportionalities, Youngjae Lee

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

“Proportionality” is ubiquitous. The idea that punishment should be proportional to crime is familiar in criminal law and has a lengthy history. But that is not the only place where one encounters the concept of proportionality in law and ethics. The idea of proportionality is important also in the self-defense context, where the right to defend oneself with force is limited by the principle of proportionality. Proportionality plays a role in the context of war, especially in the idea that the military advantage one side may draw from an attack must not be excessive in relation to the loss of …

Rethinking Legislative Facts, Haley N. Proctor

Notre Dame Law Review

As the factual nature of legal inquiry has become increasingly apparent over the past century, courts and commentators have fallen into the habit of labeling the facts behind the law “legislative facts.” Loosely, legislative facts are general facts courts rely upon to formulate law or policy, but that definition is as contested as it is vague. Most agree that legislative facts exist in some form or another, but few agree on what that form is, on who should find them, and how. This Article seeks to account for and resolve that confusion. Theories of legislative fact focus on the role …

The Next Thirty Years: Developments In Mandamus Jurisprudence In The Last Thirty Years And Why The General Rule That Mandamus Is Unavailable To Review The Denial Of Summary Judgment Is Inconsistent With Modern Mandamus Jurisprudence Under The In Re Prudential Balancing Test, Timothy Delabar

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Legislating Morality In The Gilded Age And Progressive Era: Moral Panic And The “White Slave” Case That Changed America, Nancy C. Unger

History

This article is based on the presidential address presented to the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era at the meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Los Angeles in 2023. Its focus is Maury Diggs and Drew Caminetti, two white men from Sacramento, California, charged with violating the Mann Act (known as the White Slave Trafficking Act) in 1913. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era obsession with white slavery, a phenomenon that has particular resonance in today’s climate, reveals the power of moral panics. Examining the steps, and missteps, that various legal, social, and political …