The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial
The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial

Author: John H. Langbein

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0199258880

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The lawyer-dominated adversary system of criminal trial, which now typifies practice in Anglo-American legal systems, was developed in England in the 18th century. This text shows how and why lawyers were able to capture the trial.

Native America, Discovered and Conquered
Native America, Discovered and Conquered

Author: Robert J. Miller

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2006-09-30

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0313071845

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Manifest Destiny, as a term for westward expansion, was not used until the 1840s. Its predecessor was the Doctrine of Discovery, a legal tradition by which Europeans and Americans laid legal claim to the land of the indigenous people that they discovered. In the United States, the British colonists who had recently become Americans were competing with the English, French, and Spanish for control of lands west of the Mississippi. Who would be the discoverers of the Indians and their lands, the United States or the European countries? We know the answer, of course, but in this book, Miller explains for the first time exactly how the United States achieved victory, not only on the ground, but also in the developing legal thought of the day. The American effort began with Thomas Jefferson's authorization of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, which set out in 1803 to lay claim to the West. Lewis and Clark had several charges, among them the discovery of a Northwest Passage—a land route across the continent—in order to establish an American fur trade with China. In addition, the Corps of Northwestern Discovery, as the expedition was called, cataloged new plant and animal life, and performed detailed ethnographic research on the Indians they encountered. This fascinating book lays out how that ethnographic research became the legal basis for Indian removal practices implemented decades later, explaining how the Doctrine of Discovery became part of American law, as it still is today.

Bureaucracy in America
Bureaucracy in America

Author: Joseph Postell

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2017-07-30

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0826273785

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The rise of the administrative state is the most significant political development in American politics over the past century. While our Constitution separates powers into three branches, and requires that the laws are made by elected representatives in the Congress, today most policies are made by unelected officials in agencies where legislative, executive, and judicial powers are combined. This threatens constitutionalism and the rule of law. This book examines the history of administrative power in America and argues that modern administrative law has failed to protect the principles of American constitutionalism as effectively as earlier approaches to regulation and administration.

Lone Wolf V. Hitchcock
Lone Wolf V. Hitchcock

Author: Blue Clark

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1999-01-01

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780803264014

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Landmark court cases in the history of formal U.S. relations with Indian tribes are Corn Tassel, Standing Bear, Crow Dog, and Lone Wolf. Each exemplifies a problem or a process as the United States defined and codified its politics toward Indians. The importance of the Lone Wolf case of 1903 resides in its enunciation of the "plenary power" doctrine?that the United States could unilaterally act in violation of its own treaties and that Congress could dispose of land recognized by treaty as belonging to individual tribes. In 1892 the Kiowas and related Comanche and Plains Apache groups were pressured into agreeing to divide their land into allotments under the terms of the Dawes Act of 1887. Lone Wolf, a Kiowa band leader, sued to halt the land division, citing the treaties signed with the United States immediately after the Civil War. In 1902 the case reached the Supreme Court, which found that Congress could overturn the treaties through the doctrine of plenary power. As he recounts the Lone Wolf case, Clark reaches beyond the legal decision to describe the Kiowa tribe itself and its struggles to cope with Euro-American pressure on its society, attitudes, culture, economic system, and land base. The story of the case therefore also becomes the history of the tribe in the late nineteenth century. The Lone Wolf case also necessarily becomes a study of the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 in operation; under the terms of the Dawes Act and successor legislation, almost two-thirds of Indian lands passed out of their hands within a generation. Understanding how this happened in the case of the Kiowa permits a nuanced view of the well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous allotment effort.

Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education

Author: James T. Patterson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001-03-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0199880840

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2004 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to end segregation in public schools. Many people were elated when Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in May 1954, the ruling that struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in America's public schools. Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney for the black families that launched the litigation, exclaimed later, "I was so happy, I was numb." The novelist Ralph Ellison wrote, "another battle of the Civil War has been won. The rest is up to us and I'm very glad. What a wonderful world of possibilities are unfolded for the children!" Here, in a concise, moving narrative, Bancroft Prize-winning historian James T. Patterson takes readers through the dramatic case and its fifty-year aftermath. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits (at great personal cost); to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision. Others include segregationist politicians like Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas; Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon; and controversial Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas. Most Americans still see Brown as a triumph--but was it? Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. Could the Court--or President Eisenhower--have done more to ensure compliance with Brown? Did the decision touch off the modern civil rights movement? How useful are court-ordered busing and affirmative action against racial segregation? To what extent has racial mixing affected the academic achievement of black children? Where indeed do we go from here to realize the expectations of Marshall, Ellison, and others in 1954?