Marbury\u27s Travail: Federalist Politics and William Marbury\u27s Appointment as Justice of the Peace

This Article describes how Marbury, the youngest son of an impoverished remnant of a well-known family, elbowed his way to wealth and influence among the Maryland gentry. Further, this Article illuminates Marbury\u27s choice between the two wings of the Federalist party in Maryland - the Hamiltonian elite and the Adams\u27 loyalists - and how Marbury\u27s partisan service brought him to a position earning Thomas Jefferson\u27s disdain and rebuff. In the end, Marbury\u27s appointment and rejection derived from the very different characters of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Righting a Wrong: Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, and the Espionage Act Prosecutions

This is a story of excess and reparation. It is a chronicle of one President from the elite intellectual classes of the East, and another from a county seat in the heartland. Woodrow Wilson was the college president whose contribution to the art of government lay in the principle of expertise and efficiency. When he went to war, he turned the machinery of government into a comprehensive and highly effective instrument for victory. For Wilson, it followed that there could be little tolerance for those who impeded the success of American arms by their anti-war propaganda, draft resistance, or ideological dissent. Nor would there be any compromise with those who later opposed his plan for peace. Warren G. Harding was a middling sort of person, simple in his virtues, mundane in his vices. Inadequately educated-as he always admitted-he nonetheless became a successful newspaper editor by overcoming the shared monopoly of two established dailies. His persistence brought him political success in the rough world of Ohio Republican politics. Where Wilson thought efficiency the hallmark of a successful administration, Harding believed it to be harmony. While Wilson sought to confine those who opposed his war aims, and unseat those who rejected his peace aims, Harding did not think a man should be in jail for what he said. Where Wilson oversaw the segregation of the civil service, Harding confronted Jim Crow in the Deep South. Between the two stood Eugene V. Debs, the Marxist Socialist who could gather nearly a million votes for President but looked forward to a revolution that would unseat the capitalists from their positions of power. There was nothing that Debs stood for that either Wilson or Harding could abide. But while Wilson wanted to keep Debs in prison, Harding wanted to shake his hand

The Foreign Affairs Power: The Dames & (and) Moore Case

In 1981, the Supreme Court decided Dames & Moore v. Regan. According to the modest view of the majority opinion, the Dames & Moore case is not even a brick, with or without straw. As Justice Rehnquist stated for the Court: We attempt to lay down no general \u27guide-lines\u27...and attempt to confine the opinion only to the very questions necessary to the decision of the case. A second look, however, reveals that in Dames & Moore, the Supreme Court did more than resolve some of the sticky legalities that were part of a serious foreign policy crisis. It also moved the country one step forward towards a strengthened constitutional structuring of the foreign affairs power

Getting Rid of the Vegetables

There ought to be a more accurate term that describes not just the medical condition but the underlying humanity of the afflicted person. Perhaps something like Persistent conscious condition would be a more technically descriptive and less morally freighted substitute. It would, in fact, communicate a more complete picture of what is going on

Islamic Law and the Crime of Theft

This article introduces the concept of theft in Islamic law. As such, it does not pretend to be comprehensive either in the data it puts forth or in its analysis. Rather, the Article raises a number of issues for discussion, and offers, most tentatively, suggested answers to the following points: 1) criminality; 2) what possible justifications exist for such an extreme penalty; 3) what were the requirements for conviction; and 4) some concluding observations as to why the classical jurists encumbered a prosecution for theft with so many restrictions

John Marshall and the Moral Basis for Judicial Review

During the last two decades, many observers have been disappointed in some of the appointments to the federal bench and in the judicial philosophies some judges have brought with them. But if we turn to the source of our constitutional order, we would find in the example of John Marshall the moral basis for the judicial craft

Professional Ethics Opinion 89-3, Attorney Responsibility to Disabled or Dysfunctional Client

When an attorney files suit on behalf of a client and later has reason to believe the client is incompetent, what should the attorney do? Can the case be settled? Can the attorney move for the appointment of a guardian ad litem? The article is an excerpt from an ethics opinion which answers these questions

Western Law and Communist Dictatorship

To erect an order that can withstand such an attack, all appropriate and legitimate legal resources should be employed. First, individual acts of terror, by whomsoever committed, should be punished, first of all, by municipal criminal legislation. This municipal law should be strengthened by conventions and treaties requiring prosecution or extradition. Second, in addition to individual culpability fastened on soldiers who commit acts of terror, all legitimate responses in international law should be employed by and against the responsible state, including protest, diplomacy, and disciplinary mechanisms. Where the responsible state actually sponsors such actions, retorsion and reprisal should be considered, particularly when a sponsoring state, such as Libya, has egregiously violated the laws of war. Third, the United States should never accept, expressly or impliedly, any of the legal and political mechanisms of the United Nations, or other bodies, that legitimize terroristic groups. Finally, in treating those groups in and of themselves and apart from the legal responsibility of their state sponsors, the United States should concretize the emerging norm of hostis humanis generis, that is, the universal criminality of those groups whose acts of terror are primary, habitual, and essential to their political program. These groups have become overt enemies of the political, moral and legal integrity of our world order. They should be recognized as such

Islamic Law and the Crime of Theft

This article introduces the concept of theft in Islamic law. As such, it does not pretend to be comprehensive either in the data it puts forth or in its analysis. Rather, the Article raises a number of issues for discussion, and offers, most tentatively, suggested answers to the following points: 1) criminality; 2) what possible justifications exist for such an extreme penalty; 3) what were the requirements for conviction; and 4) some concluding observations as to why the classical jurists encumbered a prosecution for theft with so many restrictions