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

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

Natural Law and Natural Laws

Modern science has developed the notion of natural laws to describe the apparent sequential patterns of the most complex parts of the physical world. But it cannot tell us what we ought to do about arms production, or human sexuality or abortion or race, or death. Non-teleological science can no more tell us that nuclear fusion is immoral than it can tell us what is the natural purpose of the solar system. Natural Law, however, can tell us what ought to be done in light of the nature of law. If indeed the nature of law is that it is directed toward the accomplishment (actualization) of the proper (just) ordering (a rational and effective structure) of relations (social interactions) among men (human persons in their various states of being), then we can make justifiable evaluative judgments. We can logically call laws good or bad, just or unjust, wise or stupid. What natural laws cannot do, natural law is equipped to do

Natural Law and the Limits to Judicial Review

The very premise of judicial review in America is rooted in the structure of natural law. Judges have no authority to make any kind of law. They can only enforce and apply authoritatively passed positive law. But if the positive law has not been enacted, either in form or substance, without proper authority, then if the judge should enforce such a law, he would in fact be making new positive law, and would be acting outside of his authority

Islam and Politics

We can thus see that Islamic tradition has recognized the venerability of the Shari\u27a but that the same tradition has historically given the state means to workaround the limits of the Shari\u27a. How far it should go has always been debated in Islam. The debate and the alternative theories all stem from the fact that the Shari\u27a never developed a constitutional basis for itself due to its history and the notion of law as simply the refinement of divine command. The competing views of the Shari\u27a\u27s proper place have jousted with one another for a thousand years. They will continue to do so

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