“Beings of an Inferior Order”

2021 ◽  
pp. 59-76
Author(s):  
Peter Irons

This chapter discusses the role of the legal system, including the Supreme Court, in upholding the constitutionality of slavery. It first examines the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania in 1842, in which the Supreme Court reversed the conviction in state court of Edward Prigg, a professional slave-catcher, for kidnapping Margaret Morgan, who escaped from slavery in Maryland to the free state of Pennsylvania. Ruling that state officials could not hinder enforcement of the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, the Court also held that state officials could decline to aid slave-catchers, leading to mass demonstrations in Boston over the “rendition” of escaped slaves George Latimer and Anthony Burns. The chapter includes a recounting of the infamous Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, in which Chief Justice Roger Taney held that no Black person was a citizen and that Blacks were “an inferior order of beings” who had “no rights that the white man was bound to respect.” The chapter concludes with a discussion of the impact of the Dred Scott ruling on the presidential campaign of 1860, in which Abraham Lincoln denounced the decision and provoked the slave states to secede from the Union and launch the Civil War.

Author(s):  
William F. Moore ◽  
Jane Ann Moore

This chapter examines Abraham Lincoln and Owen Lovejoy's criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1857 ruling in the case of Dred Scott. The Dred Scott decision, written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, affirmed that slaves were not citizens and indeed “had no rights which a white man was bound to accept.” Lincoln and Lovejoy denounced the Supreme Court's interpretation that the Constitution provided federal authority to reduce human beings to property without rights, accusing it of political abuse of judicial power. This chapter begins with a discussion of the Illinois Supreme Court's previous rulings in connection with the slave transit law, along with Lincoln and Lovejoy's argument that humans could not legally be reduced to property under the Constitution. It then considers the two men's views on religion and politics as well as their response to the Dred Scott decision. It also looks at Lincoln and Lovejoy's preparations for the 1858 elections.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filippo Mezzanotti

I examine how patent enforcement affects corporate research and development (R&D), exploiting the legal changes induced by the Supreme Court decision eBay v. MercExchange. This ruling increased courts’ flexibility in remedying patent cases and effectively lowered the potential costs of patent litigation for defendants. For identification, I compare innovative activity across firms differentially exposed to patent litigation before the ruling. Across several measures, I find that the decision led to a general increase in innovation. This result confirms that the changes in enforcement induced by the ruling reduced some of the distortions caused by patent litigation. Exploring the channels, I show that patent litigation negatively affects investment because it lowers the returns from R&D and exacerbates its financing constraints. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.


Federalism-E ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Goldlist

The role of the Supreme Court in the practice of Canadian federalism, specifically the extent of its power and the effects of that power, is a hotly contested issue in Canadian political science. While some scholars have argued that the Court has taken on too political of a role that must be restricted, this paper develops the Court as a constitutional ‘umpire,’ whose rulings serve the important, but limited, functions of allocating political resources to incentivize negotiation, and establishing jurisdictional boundaries for said negotiations, leaving specific policy decisions to political, as opposed to legal, actors. Concerning the net outcome of the Court’s jurisprudence on the distribution of legislative powers, this paper illustrates the Court’s overall balancing approach, with grants of power to one level of government met with increases in authority to the other, in all major policy areas. Thus, ultimately shown to embrace both a limited and impartial approach to constitutional adjudication, the Court has done much to enhance its democratic legitimacy and constitutional utility.


Author(s):  
Gary Watt

Without assuming prior legal knowledge, books in the Directions series introduce and guide readers through key points of law and legal debate. Questions, diagrams and exercises help readers to engage fully with each subject and check their understanding as they progress. This book explains the key topics covered on equity and trusts courses. The content of the text is designed to emphasise the relationship between equity, trusts, property, contract and restitution to enable students to map out conceptual connections between related legal ideas. There is also a focus on modern cases in the commercial sphere to reflect the constantly changing and socially significant role of trusts and equity. The book starts by introducing equity and trusts. It then includes a chapter on understanding trusts, and moves on to consider capacity and formality requirements, certainty requirements and the constitution of trusts. Various types of trusts are then examined such as purpose, charitable, and variation trusts. The book then describes issues related to trusteeship. Breach of trust is explained, as is informal trusts of land. There is a chapter on tracing, and then the book concludes by looking at equitable liability of strangers to trust and equitable doctrines and remedies. This new edition includes coverage of significant recent cases, including the Supreme Court decision on interest to be paid by tax authorities on monies owed; the Supreme Court decision on the test of dishonesty applicable to civil matters; the Privy Council decision on the division of investment property acquired by cohabitants; the Court of Appeal decisions on Quistclose trusts; fiduciary duties in arms-length contracts; transactions prejudicing creditors; beneficiary anonymity in variation of trust cases; exemption clauses; discretion exercised beyond trustee’s authority; implications of GDPR for trustee disclosures; trustee personal liability; causation and equitable compensation; statutory relief for a professional trustee’s breach of trust; use of proprietary estoppel to reward work undertaken in farming families; costs of seeking court’s directions; injunctions ordered against persons unknown; equitable jurisdiction to rectify agreements.


2021 ◽  
pp. 86-101
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld

Chapter 6 describes two important breakthroughs in the courts for gay rights. In 1996 the U.S. Supreme Court decided Romer v. Evans in favor of gay plaintiffs from Colorado who had had their rights reduced by a voter referendum. The Supreme Court upheld state court rulings which had overturned the referendum. The Romer decision, written by Anthony Kennedy, was the first Supreme Court decision to affirmatively defend the rights of gay people. In the fall of 1996 in Hawaii a same-sex marriage trial, Baehr v. Miike, showed for the first time that the opponents of marriage equality had no scientific or empirical basis for preventing same-sex marriages from being recognized. The marriage plaintiffs won in court, but the voters of Hawaii reinstated the same-sex marriage ban. Hawaii did not become a marriage equality state until 2013.


1993 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Mishler ◽  
Reginald S. Sheehan

Although normative questions about the role of the Supreme Court as a countermajoritarian institution have long excited controversy in democratic theory, empirical questions about how far the Court acts contrary to majoritarian opinion have received less attention. Time series analyses for the period 1956–89 indicate the existence of a reciprocal and positive relationship between long-term trends in aggregate public opinion and the Court's collective decisions. The Court's ideological composition changes in response to previous shifts in the partisan and ideological orientation of the president and Congress. The Court also responds to public opinion at the margins even in the absence of membership change. Since 1981, the relationship has vanished or turned negative in direction. The Court's ideological balance has been upset by an unbroken string of conservative-to-moderate appointments, thereby undermining the dynamics that promote judicial responsiveness and raising questions about the majoritarianism of the contemporary and future Court.


Land Law ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield

This chapter explores some of the wider issues raised by the rules applying to private rights to use land, along with the nature of the challenges faced by judges and Parliament when deciding how best to develop those rules. It begins by discussing the importance of concepts and contexts in land law, as well as the tension between concepts and contexts and the effect of different judicial approaches to land law. It then considers the relative merits of judicial and legislative reform of land law and goes on to examine the impact of statutory reform, particularly of registration statutes, in land law. It also assesses the impact of human rights and regulation on land law, citing the Supreme Court ruling in Scott v Southern Pacific Mortgages Ltd (2015), before concluding with an analysis of the role of non-doctrinal approaches in evaluating land law.


2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 813-851
Author(s):  
Pierre Rainville

Even though section 338 Cr.C. appears in Part VIII of the Criminal Code entitled « Fraudulent transactions relating to Contracts and Trade », the criminal offence of fraud is of a much broader scope. The liberal interpretation received from the courts has transformed this crime into one of the widest and sometimes most unpredictable offences. The author first discusses Canada's territorial jurisdiction over international fraud in the light of the recent Libman case. He then proceeds to examine the impact of the Supreme Court decision in Vezina v. R. on the « deprivation » requirement in the definition of fraud. This text also concentrates on the objective-subjective mens rea dilemna and on a comparison of the constitutive elements of fraud, theft and false pretences. The author finally concludes that sections 320 and 338 Cr.C call out for immediate reform.


Land Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 406-424
Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield

This chapter explores some of the wider issues raised by the rules applying to private rights to use land, along with the nature of the challenges faced by judges and Parliament when deciding how best to develop those rules. It begins by discussing the importance of concepts and contexts in land law, as well as the tension between concepts and contexts and the effect of different judicial approaches to land law. It then considers the relative merits of judicial and legislative reform of land law and goes on to examine the impact of statutory reform, particularly of registration statutes, in land law. It also assesses the impact of human rights and regulation on land law, citing the Supreme Court ruling in Scott v Southern Pacific Mortgages Ltd (2015), before concluding with an analysis of the role of non-doctrinal approaches in evaluating land law.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-68
Author(s):  
Hartanto Hartanto ◽  
Gilang Yudha Wirawan

Business competition is an economic activity that runs in line with technological and industrial advances. With the existence of business competition, the Business Competition Supervisory Commission in Indonesia was formed which aims to supervise and protect business competition. This research will discuss the impact and legal consequences of the KPPU decision to the Supreme Court decision which still considers and uses circumstantial evidence and testimony based on hearing from other people.  Based on the description above, the writer chooses the research title "Judicial Review of the Prohibition of Monopolistic Practices and Unfair Business Competition in the Motorcycle Industry (Review of Supreme Court Decision No. 217 K / Pdt.Sus-KPPU / 2019) with the formulation of the problem of legal impact from the Assembly's decision. The Cassation Judge proven not to consider and examine the objections / demands of the Cassation Appellant as well as whether the legal consequences of the verdict of the Cassation Panel of Judges use testimony from other people (testimonium de auditu) and indirect evidence (circumstantial evidence / indirect evidence) as a means trial evidence. So the authors want to examine this and use normative research methods that use interviews as supporting data. Keywords: Monopoly, Business Competition, Indirect Evidence


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