{"title":"Katie Donington, The Bonds of Family: Slavery, Commerce and Culture in the British Atlantic World","authors":"M. Cazzola","doi":"10.1093/ajlh/njaa009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajlh/njaa009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54164,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76017133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anat Rosenberg, Liberalizing Contracts: Nineteenth Century Promises Through Literature, Law and History","authors":"Victoria Barnes","doi":"10.1093/ajlh/njaa002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajlh/njaa002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54164,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY","volume":"76 1","pages":"250-251"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73904692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Despite small victories for black South Carolinians in desegregating Clemson College and the University of South Carolina in 1963, federal court cases dealing with public education in the mid- to late 1960s reveal that South Carolina officials were willing to go to great lengths to preserve segregation. 1963 as a turning point on South Carolina’s desegregation history should be reconsidered. The state had no lack of white politicians, bureaucrats, and parents who continued to appeal to the courts to undermine the transformative intent of Brown v. Board. Despite some minor steps toward desegregation—small steps that whites were willing to allow as long as they helped to forestall any real integration—white South Carolinians were able, through legal delay and obfuscation, to subvert the promise of “integration with dignity.” Ultimately, policy-related efforts failed and by the early 1970s, desegregation had become a reality. However, personal defiance successfully thwarted integration, leading some white parents to permanently quit the public school system.
{"title":"White Subversion of Public School Desegregation in South Carolina, 1963-1970","authors":"S. Lowe","doi":"10.1093/ajlh/njaa003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajlh/njaa003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Despite small victories for black South Carolinians in desegregating Clemson College and the University of South Carolina in 1963, federal court cases dealing with public education in the mid- to late 1960s reveal that South Carolina officials were willing to go to great lengths to preserve segregation. 1963 as a turning point on South Carolina’s desegregation history should be reconsidered. The state had no lack of white politicians, bureaucrats, and parents who continued to appeal to the courts to undermine the transformative intent of Brown v. Board. Despite some minor steps toward desegregation—small steps that whites were willing to allow as long as they helped to forestall any real integration—white South Carolinians were able, through legal delay and obfuscation, to subvert the promise of “integration with dignity.” Ultimately, policy-related efforts failed and by the early 1970s, desegregation had become a reality. However, personal defiance successfully thwarted integration, leading some white parents to permanently quit the public school system.","PeriodicalId":54164,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90964761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In recent decades, accusations of partisanship by the U.S. judiciary have intensified. A consequence has been the erroneous framing of judges within the conventional, and some-times epithetical, political binary of liberalism and conservatism. This article argues that the application of such labels has distorted the full thrust of the complex individuals who have constituted the American judiciary and proposes reframing our perception of judges, both past and present, by seeking more viable standards for measuring judicial performance. To do so, it draws on the early twentieth-century examples of Learned and Augustus Hand of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Despite being praised as symbols of judicial independence, scholars have often framed the judges in political terms. This article draws on the Hands’ public speeches, publications, and private correspondence to argue that they adopted a non-partisan view of judging that transcended political affiliations and displayed a much deeper consideration about their roles as judges than conventional political labels suggest. By inserting greater nuance into our historical understanding of the delicate relationship between politics and law, we can yet save courts from the threat that politically charged language poses to their legitimacy.
{"title":"Political Judging and Judicial Restraint: The Case of Learned and Augustus Hand","authors":"J. Allen","doi":"10.1093/ajlh/njaa006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajlh/njaa006","url":null,"abstract":"In recent decades, accusations of partisanship by the U.S. judiciary have intensified. A consequence has been the erroneous framing of judges within the conventional, and some-times epithetical, political binary of liberalism and conservatism. This article argues that the application of such labels has distorted the full thrust of the complex individuals who have constituted the American judiciary and proposes reframing our perception of judges, both past and present, by seeking more viable standards for measuring judicial performance. To do so, it draws on the early twentieth-century examples of Learned and Augustus Hand of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Despite being praised as symbols of judicial independence, scholars have often framed the judges in political terms. This article draws on the Hands’ public speeches, publications, and private correspondence to argue that they adopted a non-partisan view of judging that transcended political affiliations and displayed a much deeper consideration about their roles as judges than conventional political labels suggest. By inserting greater nuance into our historical understanding of the delicate relationship between politics and law, we can yet save courts from the threat that politically charged language poses to their legitimacy.","PeriodicalId":54164,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY","volume":"85 1","pages":"169-191"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82205192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In nineteenth-century France, liberals assumed that a conservative judiciary was frequently biased in favour of the prosecution, and socialists assumed that juries were dominated by the upper classes and too unrepresentative of the population to render justice equitably. Agitation by the left to combat these perceived biases led to the adoption of two key reforms of the fin de siècle. One was the abolition in 1881 of the résumé, or summing-up of the case by the chief justice of the cour d’assises (felony court). Liberals thought this reform was necessary because judges allegedly often used the résumé to persuade jurors in favour of conviction, a charge repeated by modern historians. The other reform, beginning at about the same time, was to make jury composition more democratic. By 1880, newly empowered liberals (at least in Paris) had begun to reduce the proportion of wealthy men on jury lists. This was followed in 1908 by the implementation of a circular issued by the Minister of Justice ordering the jury commissions to inscribe working-class men on the annual jury lists. However, a quantitative analysis of jury verdicts suggests that the reforms of the early 1880s and 1908 had only modest impacts on jury verdicts. Ideas and attitudes seem to have been more important. This has implications regarding two key controversies among modern jurists: the extent to which judges influence jurors and the extent to which the characteristics of jurors influence their verdicts.
{"title":"Combatting Bias in the Criminal Courts of France, 1870s-1913","authors":"J. Donovan","doi":"10.1093/ajlh/njaa008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajlh/njaa008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In nineteenth-century France, liberals assumed that a conservative judiciary was frequently biased in favour of the prosecution, and socialists assumed that juries were dominated by the upper classes and too unrepresentative of the population to render justice equitably. Agitation by the left to combat these perceived biases led to the adoption of two key reforms of the fin de siècle. One was the abolition in 1881 of the résumé, or summing-up of the case by the chief justice of the cour d’assises (felony court). Liberals thought this reform was necessary because judges allegedly often used the résumé to persuade jurors in favour of conviction, a charge repeated by modern historians. The other reform, beginning at about the same time, was to make jury composition more democratic. By 1880, newly empowered liberals (at least in Paris) had begun to reduce the proportion of wealthy men on jury lists. This was followed in 1908 by the implementation of a circular issued by the Minister of Justice ordering the jury commissions to inscribe working-class men on the annual jury lists. However, a quantitative analysis of jury verdicts suggests that the reforms of the early 1880s and 1908 had only modest impacts on jury verdicts. Ideas and attitudes seem to have been more important. This has implications regarding two key controversies among modern jurists: the extent to which judges influence jurors and the extent to which the characteristics of jurors influence their verdicts.","PeriodicalId":54164,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY","volume":"17 1","pages":"137-168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80197861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The US Army’s war crimes trials of the hundreds of Japanese military personnel tried at Manila from 1945 to 1947 represent an opportunity to gain valuable insights into Allied ‘justice’ at a time when many aspects of war crimes jurisprudence were at a formative stage. Specifically, the Manila trials offer a unique portal into the jurisprudence of the doctrine of command responsibility. The ‘command responsibility trials’ at Manila, as they became known, are important for understanding the jurisprudential path to finding superiors criminally responsible for the criminal acts of their subordinates. This paper examines five trials from the US Army’s Manila trials in relation to the doctrine of command responsibility and in so doing, shows how the Manila trials significantly contributed to the development of the very important doctrine known as command responsibility.
{"title":"Law at a Critical Juncture: The US Army’s Command Responsibility Trials at Manila, 1945-1947","authors":"J. Fellows","doi":"10.1093/ajlh/njaa005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajlh/njaa005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The US Army’s war crimes trials of the hundreds of Japanese military personnel tried at Manila from 1945 to 1947 represent an opportunity to gain valuable insights into Allied ‘justice’ at a time when many aspects of war crimes jurisprudence were at a formative stage. Specifically, the Manila trials offer a unique portal into the jurisprudence of the doctrine of command responsibility. The ‘command responsibility trials’ at Manila, as they became known, are important for understanding the jurisprudential path to finding superiors criminally responsible for the criminal acts of their subordinates. This paper examines five trials from the US Army’s Manila trials in relation to the doctrine of command responsibility and in so doing, shows how the Manila trials significantly contributed to the development of the very important doctrine known as command responsibility.","PeriodicalId":54164,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY","volume":"257 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79567953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This case study explores the experimentation phase of the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms on the criminal justice system in the city of Rusçuk from 1839-64. In particular, it investigates crime and punishment by focusing on police, courts, and prisons and how these institutions responded to reform efforts in Rusçuk, which became the capital of the Danube Province in 1864. It shows that the Ottoman government established new police forces (zaptiye) and modernised prisons in the city in 1846 immediately after their introduction in the imperial capital of Istanbul. At the same time, the government bestowed extensive judicial authority on the meclis-i kebir (a secular administrative council in the provinces), and to a lesser extent on the meclis-i muvakkat (temporary council), over criminal cases. While the Sharia courts continued to enforce Islamic criminal law, the meclis-i kebir took charge of enforcing the new penal codes of 1840, 1851, and 1858, and served as a precursor first to the secular courts of the 1864 Provincial Reform and then to the more centralised and standardised nizamiye courts of the 1870s. This study also analyses the types and frequency of crimes and the penalties they received. Based on Rusçuk’s prison registers, which contain the cases tried by the meclis-i kebir and meclis-i muvakkat, and the records of the meclis-i vala (Supreme Court) in Istanbul, it argues that the crime rate in Rusçuk was much higher than the one represented in the Sharia court’s records.
{"title":"Reforming Criminal Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Police, Courts and Prisons in Rusçuk, 1839-1864","authors":"Mehmet Çelik","doi":"10.1093/ajlh/njaa004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajlh/njaa004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This case study explores the experimentation phase of the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms on the criminal justice system in the city of Rusçuk from 1839-64. In particular, it investigates crime and punishment by focusing on police, courts, and prisons and how these institutions responded to reform efforts in Rusçuk, which became the capital of the Danube Province in 1864. It shows that the Ottoman government established new police forces (zaptiye) and modernised prisons in the city in 1846 immediately after their introduction in the imperial capital of Istanbul. At the same time, the government bestowed extensive judicial authority on the meclis-i kebir (a secular administrative council in the provinces), and to a lesser extent on the meclis-i muvakkat (temporary council), over criminal cases. While the Sharia courts continued to enforce Islamic criminal law, the meclis-i kebir took charge of enforcing the new penal codes of 1840, 1851, and 1858, and served as a precursor first to the secular courts of the 1864 Provincial Reform and then to the more centralised and standardised nizamiye courts of the 1870s. This study also analyses the types and frequency of crimes and the penalties they received. Based on Rusçuk’s prison registers, which contain the cases tried by the meclis-i kebir and meclis-i muvakkat, and the records of the meclis-i vala (Supreme Court) in Istanbul, it argues that the crime rate in Rusçuk was much higher than the one represented in the Sharia court’s records.","PeriodicalId":54164,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86172162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Elizabeth Papp Kamali, Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England","authors":"Sarah B. White","doi":"10.1093/ajlh/njaa007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajlh/njaa007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54164,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY","volume":"95 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83981194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The decision of the New York Court of Appeals in Riggs v. Palmer (1889) is remarkable for the mass of discussion about a variety of fundamental issues that it has generated. Elmer Palmer was convicted of murdering his grandfather Francis, and the court refused to let him inherit under Francis’s will despite the absence of any explicit statutory grounds for voiding the legacy. An exercise in legal archaeology uncovering details that are stated only obliquely (or not at all) in the majority and dissenting opinions corrects a number of errors often made about the case. More speculatively, it suggests a new explanation of the result, one supported by a review of similar cases in other states in the same era and of the composition of the Court of Appeals in 1889: that the decision in Riggs is best understood as an ad hominem one, provoked by the unusually light punishment that Elmer had received for his crime and rationalized by an appeal to legal principles. If it was, much of what has been written about the decision and its significance is called into question.
{"title":"The Background to Riggs v. Palmer","authors":"W. Meyer","doi":"10.1093/ajlh/njz027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajlh/njz027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The decision of the New York Court of Appeals in Riggs v. Palmer (1889) is remarkable for the mass of discussion about a variety of fundamental issues that it has generated. Elmer Palmer was convicted of murdering his grandfather Francis, and the court refused to let him inherit under Francis’s will despite the absence of any explicit statutory grounds for voiding the legacy. An exercise in legal archaeology uncovering details that are stated only obliquely (or not at all) in the majority and dissenting opinions corrects a number of errors often made about the case. More speculatively, it suggests a new explanation of the result, one supported by a review of similar cases in other states in the same era and of the composition of the Court of Appeals in 1889: that the decision in Riggs is best understood as an ad hominem one, provoked by the unusually light punishment that Elmer had received for his crime and rationalized by an appeal to legal principles. If it was, much of what has been written about the decision and its significance is called into question.","PeriodicalId":54164,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY","volume":"5 1","pages":"48-75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73300967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jean-Christophe Gaven, Le Crime de Lèse-nation: Histoire d'une Invention Juridique et Politique","authors":"C. Gazeau","doi":"10.1093/ajlh/njz026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ajlh/njz026","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54164,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY","volume":"1 1","pages":"103-104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87029071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：