For decades, military spending has been the largest item in the United States federal budget. With the continued demand for weapons systems and myriad military logistical needs, a thriving domestic economy has, to some significant degree, become reliant on the defense budget remaining high. In addition, few Americans question the need for a well-funded, well-equipped,…
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Ryan Reft: United States v. Nixon
In August of 1973, Justice Harry A. Blackmun addressed the American Bar Association at its annual prayer breakfast. Blackmun referenced the biblical story of Nehemiah, who upon return from Babylonian exile discovered Jerusalem in ruins. “The pall of Watergate,” Blackmun told the audience was similar. “There is a sadness all about us … The very…
Gautham Rao–Big Changes at Law and History Review
As we approach the midway point of 2024, I wanted to take a moment to fill you in on some big changes at Law and History Review (LHR), and to glimpse at some big developments to come. First, I want to thank our readers for continuing to make The Docket such a success! We continue…
Barbara Lauriat: A ‘first’ Case at Common Law
Robinson & Roberts v. Wheble (1771): A New “First” Trademark Case at Common Law The origins of trademark law have long been disputed; some legal scholars recognize JG v. Samford or Sanford’s Case (1584),[1] later described in Southern v. How, 79 Eng. Rep. 1243 (1618) as a case in which a clothier had misappropriated his…
Lawrence Goldstone–Unreliable Narrator: The Federalist Essays.
In his majority opinion in Printz v. United States, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not compel state and local officials to perform background checks on people seeking to buy guns, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Because there is no constitutional text speaking to this precise question, the answer to the…challenge must be…
Bruce W. Dearstyne: A Judge and Presidential Candidate Searches for the Meaning of Due Process
How should the courts interpret “due process?” The Fifth Amendment indicates to the federal government that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, uses the same words, often called the Due Process Clause, to describe an obligation of the states. That amendment was…
Sohum Pal reviews Aziz Rana, The Constitutional Bind
Aziz Rana, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024). $45.00 (Cloth). 824 pages. Unlike France, whose common constitutional memory recognizes five separate republics, the United States venerates its first, rallying around the “Founding” in 1787 and heralding the US Constitution’s continuity as proof…
Cameron Sauers reviews Giuliana Perrone, Nothing More Than Freedom
Giuliana Perrone, Nothing More Than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023). $55.00 (hardcover). 316 pp. Giuliana Perrone’s Nothing More Than Freedom transforms scholarly understandings of the legal afterlife of slavery in American law. Slavery had been deeply embedded in American law. Abolition would have required legal change…
Ryan Reft–Library of Congress Sources on PGA Tour v. Martin
“I’m sorry Casey Martin has trouble walking, but he should not be given an advantage because of his disability,” David Cathey of Fayetteville, GA, wrote to Justice John Paul Stevens in May of 2001. “If he wants to play pro golf on his terms, then he should start a professional association that permits the use…
Professor Rabiat Akande discusses Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria
In May, 2020, Law and History Review published Professor Rabiat Akande’s article, “Secularizing Islam: The Colonial Encounter and the Making of a British Islamic Criminal Law in Northern Nigeria, 1903–58,” Law and History Review 38, no. 2 (May, 2020), 459-93. When we learned that Professor Akande’s book, Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria hit the shelves in 2023, we…