Confronting Fraud Through the Courts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Milewski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Civil Cases

Chapter 6 examines the fraud cases that black southerners litigated against whites in the first two decades of the twentieth century, in which they accused whites of deception in property dealings. Such cases formed an unusually large proportion of civil cases involving black and white litigants in the state supreme courts examined during the first two decades of the twentieth century. In case after case, black litigants testified about their diligence in attempting to understand contracts, their own ignorance and vulnerability to deception, and their trust in the defendant. As such testimony appealed to white judges’ and jury members’ ideas of racial superiority and paternalism, as well as the legal claims needed to prove fraud, their cases often proved successful despite the widespread loss of rights and fraud occurring around them.

scholarly journals Reframing Black Southerners’ Experiences in the Courts, 1865–1950

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 1113-1140
Author(s):  
Melissa Milewski
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
State Courts ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Southern State ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Civil Cases ◽  
Black Defendants

In civil cases that took place in southern courts from the end of the Civil War to the mid-twentieth century, black men and women frequently chose to bring litigation and then negotiated the white-dominated legal system to shape their cases and assert rights. In some ways, these civil cases were diametrically opposite from the criminal cases of black defendants who did not choose to enter a courtroom and often received unequal justice. However, this article draws on almost 2,000 cases involving black litigants in eight state supreme courts across the South between 1865 to 1950 to argue that in both civil and criminal cases African Americans were at times shaping their cases and fighting for their rights, as well as obtaining decisions that aligned with the interests of white elites. Southern state courts during the era of Jim Crow were thus spaces for negotiating for rights and sites of white domination, in both criminal and civil cases.

scholarly journals Bibliometric Study in the Heartland: Comparative and Electronic Citation Practices of the Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio Supreme Courts (1994–2004)

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dragomir Cosanici
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Bibliometric Study ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Common ◽  
Citation Practices

AbstractThis study by Dragomir Cosanici provides a bibliometric, comparative study of the citation practices of the state supreme courts in the common law jurisdictions of Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio, USA during a recent ten-year span (1994–2004). It focuses on the type of legal materials most frequently cited as authority, examining the importance of both primary and secondary sources. It specifically analyses the growing usage of electronic citations by the four supreme courts.

Fighting for Rights in the Courts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Milewski
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Litigation ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Southern State ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Civil Cases

Chapter 8 traces African Americans’ continuing civil litigation in southern courts from 1921 to 1950. Beginning in the 1920s, African Americans began to litigate a wider range of types of civil cases against whites in southern state supreme courts. Black litigants were no longer forced to rely so heavily on stereotypes and claims of ignorance and vulnerability to win a case. More and more of black litigants’ seemingly ordinary appellate civil cases protested intimidation and violence against African Americans or made claims for larger groups of African Americans, beyond just the individuals litigating the suits. A few cases even directly challenged discriminatory racial regimes, at times using the techniques they had used to win other kinds of civil cases over the past decades. Although some of these cases were orchestrated by racial justice organizations like the NAACP, many others were brought by individual African Americans.

scholarly journals The Sunshine State In Color : The Autochromes Of Charles Zoller

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selina Lamberti
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
The State ◽  
Color Images ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Images

Charles C. Zoller (1856-1934) was prolific photographer and native of Rochester, New York. His archive is held at George Eastman International Museum of Photography and Film and consist of over 8,000 photographic objects, just under 4,000 of which are autochrome plates. This thesis focuses on the approximately 317 Zoller autoochromes of Florida that make up a small fraction of the fonds This thesis furthermore considers the visual representatin of Florida in color in the early twentieth century and compares tropes in this imagery to Zoller's representation of the Sunshine State. Traveling and photographing extensively in North America and Europe, Zoller produced both color images with Lunière Autochrome plates and black-and-white images with various photographic products. Upon return to Upstate New york, Zoller gave lectures on a variety of topics, illustrating these lectures with projected autochromes and lantern slides. Since there are few know autochromes of Florida, Zoller's series are some of the earliest examples of color photographs of the state. While Zoller's images are often predictable representations of Florida, they nevertheless provide a window into how Florida was presented in the early part of the last century. This thesis compares Zoller's autochromes to other popular images of Florida in that time.

The Law of Bodily Injury

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Milewski
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Personal Injury ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Bodily Injury ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
Tort Litigation

Chapter 7 examines the personal injury suits that formed almost half of the civil suits between black and white litigants in eight state supreme courts from 1900 to 1920. Facing terrible pain and loss in the wake of their own or loved one’s injuries, some African Americans turned to the courts to gain damages. There, in a time of encroaching segregation and racial injustice, a number of black litigants found disproportionate success in the realm of tort litigation. During their trials, black litigants shaped their testimony to meet the legal basis of personal injury, emphasizing their own caution at the time of the accident, their continuing pain and weakness from the injury, and the loss of income they had incurred. As in fraud cases, their claims of weakness and vulnerability could reinforce white judges’ and jury members’ ideas about racial inequality, but also allowed them to frequently win such suits.

The Role of Constitutional Features in Judicial Review

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 351-370
Author(s):  
Adam R. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
The State ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
State Constitution ◽  
American State

American state constitutions vary tremendously in their length, amendment rate, and age. These three variables—especially the first two—strongly influence the rate at which state supreme courts strike down state actions for violating the state constitution. Longer, more detailed constitutions reduce policy flexibility, increasing judicial invalidations; rarely updated constitutions may fail to address modern concerns, increasing invalidations; and recently adopted constitutions may contain fragile logrolls and similar shortcomings, also increasing invalidations. These findings add new considerations to a rich literature on judicial review in state supreme courts.

Toward A Positive Theory of State Supreme Court Decision Making

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (01) ◽  
pp. 7-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo T. Spiller ◽  
Richard G. Vanden Bergh
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The State ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Judicial Selection ◽  
State Supreme Court

State Supreme Courts have grown in importance during the last thirty years in the formation of public policy. Their judgements determine many aspects of constitutional law, tort reform, judicial selection, and campaign finance reform, among others. A vast body of literature has been developed that analyzes State Supreme Court decision making, which emphasizes the conditioning effects of the legal and institutional environment. This article expands on this previous work by incorporating the interaction of the judiciary with other government institutions, and applies the Positive Political Theory approach to law and legal institutions to the State Supreme Court. In addition, the neo-institutionalist literature of the selection process is incorporated to defend a systematic approach towards decision making. Towards that end, this article explores how judicial decisions are conditioned by institutional rules, resulting in a formal modeling of how the State Supreme Courts interact with political actors to form constitutional interpretation. This model includes the judicial selection process'retention or competitive reelection—and is extended to constitutional amendment rules, explaining how these two interact rather than acting independently. Finally, the hypothesis is tested that when State Supreme Court judges face retention elections and political preferences are homogeneous, the probability increases of observing constitutional amendment prosposals.

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