Constitutional Law in 1909-1910: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1909

It is indeed a substantial grist that the Supreme Court of the United States at the last term of court has ground for students of political science. The first opinion was delivered on November 1, 1909, and the last on May 31, 1910, and the court decided no less than sixty-five constitutional cases. Notice that with caution it is merely said that the court decided no less than that number; for it is often somewhat a matter of opinion whether a case should be classed as constitutional, and it may well be that there are readers who will find that the court exceeded sixty-five. And how were those sixty-five divided? Many turned on more constitutional points than one, and thus an enumeration of the cases bearing on the several clauses of the Constitution will reveal a total exceeding sixty-five. The enumeration, subject to amendment in accordance with each student's views, gives the following results: The Fourteenth Amendment, twenty-four cases; the Commerce Clause, twenty-one; the Obligation of Contracts Clause, eight; whether cases arise “under the laws of the United States,” eight; Full Faith and Credit Clause, five; and sixteen other clauses, from one to four cases each, aggregating twenty-seven.Through these dull figures some important facts shine distinctly. The Fourteenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause clearly took a vast part of the court's energy, and each of these provisions has to do with the curtailment of functions which prima facie belong to the several states. In other words, the chief feature of this term, as of every recent term, has been a more or less successful attempt of litigants to overthrow state statutes as denials of due process and equal protection or as interferences with interstate commerce.

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How Trains Became People: Southern Pacific Railroad Co.’s Networked Rhetorical Culture and the Dawn of Corporate Personhood

Journal of Communication Inquiry ◽

10.1177/0196859918810383 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 43 (2) ◽

pp. 194-213

Author(s):

Nicholas S. Paliewicz

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Supreme Court ◽

Human Subject ◽

The United States ◽

Fourteenth Amendment ◽

Corporate Personhood ◽

Legal Discourses ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

Pacific Railroad ◽

Southern Pacific Railroad

This essay analyzes how a rhetorical culture emerged in which the Supreme Court of the United States assumed corporations were constitutional persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. Approaching rhetorical culture from a networked standpoint, I argue that corporate personhood emerged from Southern Pacific Railroad Co.’s networks and alliances with environmental preservationists, politicians, publics, lawyers, judges, and immigrants in the late 19th century. Contributing to literatures on rhetorical culture and agency, this study shows how Southern Pacific Railroad Co., through networks of influence and force, was a rhetorical subject that shaped a networked rhetorical culture that expanded the boundaries of the Fourteenth Amendment even though the Supreme Court of the United States had not worked out the philosophical underpinnings of corporate personhood. Corporate personhood remains theoretically restrained by legal discourses that reduce subjectivity to a singular, speaking, human subject.

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New Methods in Due-Process Cases

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1943601 ◽

1918 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 241-250

Author(s):

Albert M. Kales

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Supreme Court ◽

Due Process ◽

United States Supreme Court ◽

The United States ◽

State Governments ◽

House Of Lords ◽

The Social ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

Fundamental Requirement

In addressing the court in due-process cases one should not commence with the usual salutation “May it please the Court.” Instead, one should say “My Lords.” Backed by and charged with the enforcement of the due-process clause of the fifth and fourteenth amendments, the Supreme Court of the United States is the American substitute for the British house of lords. It constitutes the real and only conservative second chamber of the federal government. It is a second conservative chamber for each of the state governments.The time has come when the political scientists of the country should recognize, in the decisions of the United States Supreme Court under the due-process clause, the functioning of a second chamber, organized to defeat the popular will as expressed in legislation when that will appears to endanger what the court may regard as a fundamental requirement of the social structure itself.Like all conservative second chambers, the Supreme Court and the due-process clause are in a hopeless dilemma. If the popular will were frustrated as often as the dissenting opinions of Mr. Justice McReynolds indicate that it should be, the second chamber function of the court would be assailed by the recall of judicial decisions. If the court bowed to the popular will as often as the dissenting opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes indicate that it should, the second chamber function of the court would cease to be exercised.

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Constitutional Law in 1918–1919. II: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1918

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1945725 ◽

1920 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 53-73

Author(s):

Thomas Reed Powell

Keyword(s):

Due Process ◽

The United States ◽

Fourteenth Amendment ◽

The State ◽

Personal Property ◽

Commerce Clause ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

Constitutional Decisions ◽

Extra State ◽

Foreign Corporation

Several of the cases already considered under the commerce clause involved further questions under the Fourteenth Amendment. Georgia's misuse of the mileage ratio in applying the unit rule to the taxation of wandering cars was found so arbitrary as to violate the requirement of due process. The minority insisted that “the case presents no question of taxing a foreign corporation with respect to personal property that never has come within the borders of the state.” This was not specifically denied by the majority who seem to base their decision on excessive valuation of property within the jurisdiction rather than on taxation of property outside the jurisdiction. Yet in substance the case is one of taxing extra-state values though not extra-state tangible objects.Missouri's excessive fee for certificates authorizing the issue of bonds secured by railroad property within the state, which was held an unconstitutional regulation of interstate commerce, was alleged by complainant to be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment as well. The opinion of the court did not pass on the due-process question, but the cases cited under the commerce clause relied also on the Fourteenth Amendment.

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Constitutional Law in 1924–1925: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1924

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1945101 ◽

1926 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 80-106

Author(s):

Robert E. Cushman

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Supreme Court ◽

Motor Vehicle ◽

The United States ◽

Motor Vehicle Theft ◽

National Authority ◽

Commerce Clause ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

Constitutional Decisions ◽

Foreign Commerce

The decisions arising under the commerce clause of the Constitution during the 1924 term of the Supreme Court did not involve any striking extension of national authority in that field. There was no case approaching in significance the Recapture Clause Case decided in the previous term. However, the reinforcement of a familiar principle through a striking application of it, or the lucid and pungent expression of an old doctrine, lends some significance to several cases which otherwise have no far-reaching importance.In the case of Brooks v. United States the court sustained the constitutionality of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act of 1919. The act subjected to heavy penalties any one who transported or caused to be transported in interstate or foreign commerce any motor vehicle, knowing it to have been stolen, and any one who, with the same guilty knowledge, “shall receive, conceal, store, barter, sell, or dispose of any motor vehicle, moving as, or which is a part of, or which constitutes interstate or foreign commerce.” It is certainly no surprise to learn from the opinion of Chief Justice Taft that the power to regulate commerce which is broad enough to enable Congress to bar from interstate transportation lottery tickets, diseased cattle, adulterated food, prize-fight films, and the like, and to penalize the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes, is a power which can likewise be used to punish those who abuse the privileges of interstate and foreign commerce by using them in the furtherance of larceny or the disposal of stolen goods.

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Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States on Constitutional Questions: 1914–1917. II

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1946094 ◽

1918 ◽

Vol 12 (3) ◽

pp. 427-457

Author(s):

Thomas Reed Powell

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Supreme Court ◽

Minimum Wage ◽

State Legislatures ◽

Balance Of Power ◽

The United States ◽

Employment Agency ◽

Commerce Clause ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

Compensation Law

The decisions of the Supreme Court during the October terms of 1914, 1915, and 1916, indicate on the whole a more tolerant attitude towards the judgment of state legislatures on questions of the police power than one would be apt to infer from the criticisms called forth by the few cases in which laws were declared invalid. The cases on these questions gave rise to more diversity of opinion among the judges than did those arising under the commerce clause. In most of the important cases there was dissent, and several were decided by a vote of five to four. Chief Justice White, and Justices Van Devanter and McReynolds were opposed to the Oregon ten-hour law, the Washington compensation law and the Washington employment agency law; while Justices Holmes, Brandeis and Clarke were in favor of all three. On certain crucial questions these six justices seem quite likely to counteract each other, and leave the balance of power with Justices McKenna, Day and Pitney. Justices Pitney and Day were in favor of the ten-hour law and the compensation law and opposed to the employment agency law. Mr. Justice McKenna was in favor of the ten-hour law and the employment agency law and opposed to the compensation law. In the Oregon Minimum Wage Case, the court was divided four to four, Mr. Justice Brandeis not sitting.

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The Emperor’s New Clothes

10.37419/lr.v2.i3.2 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2 (3) ◽

pp. 385-432 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Robert Schehr

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Supreme Court ◽

Due Process ◽

United States Supreme Court ◽

Plea Bargaining ◽

The United States ◽

Bill Of Rights ◽

Criminal Cases ◽

Homo Economicus ◽

The Supreme Court

United States Supreme Court and jurisprudential rationalizations for the constitutionality, centrality, and finality of plea-bargaining signify intellectual dishonesty, ignorance of human behavior and decision-making, and a statesanctioned threat to personhood and liberty in the United States of America. It is the Author’s purpose to expose the imperious practice of plea-bargaining for what it is—a cynical and intellectually dishonest institutional remedy for an unwieldy judicial system that has knowingly rationalized the practice to facilitate expedient resolution of ever-increasing caseloads. In order to establish plea practice as constitutional, the Supreme Court was forced to employ a jurisprudential discourse that shifted from the due-process language found in criminal law, especially the protections afforded by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, towards contract law where defendants personifying homo economicus are “free” to negotiate away their rights. Beginning in 1930, and again in 1970, the Supreme Court applied an entirely novel standard to the adjudication of criminal cases, and it rationalized its decision on the need for efficiency. What is at stake is nothing less than the integrity of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and whatever still remains of an American sense of personhood under the law. The erosion of our rights that are so intimately associated with freedom due to plea-bargaining is an unprecedented injustice that cannot continue.

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