Kategoria BISAC: Law >> Legal History

Colonel Reuben Wells Leonard (1860-1930) was a teacher, civil engineer, militia officer, inventor, businessman, senior civil servant, and philanthropist. In December 1923, he signed the third and final version of the Leonard Foundation trust deed, donating over $500,000 to create a fund for scholarships tenable across Canada. The deed begins with a statement of Leonard's belief that the "White Race is, as a whole, best qualified by nature to be entrusted with the development of civilization and the general progress of the world along the best lines." It goes on to recite that the progress...

This study of the Manitoba judiciary is not only the first biographical history to examine an entire provincial bench, it is also one of the first studies to offer an internal view of the political nature of the judicial appointment process. Dale Brawn has penned the biographies of the first thirty-three men appointed to Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench. The relative youth of Manitoba as a province and the small size of its legal profession makes possible an exceptionally detailed investigation of the background of those appointed to the province's highest trial court.

The...

This volume in the Osgoode Society's distinguished series on the history of Canadian law is a collection of the principal essays of Professor Emeritus R.C.B. Risk, one of the pioneers of Canadian legal history and for many years regarded as its foremost authority on the history of Canadian legal thought.

Frank Scott, Bora Laskin, W.P.M. Kennedy, John Willis and Edward Blake are among the better known figures whose thinking and writing about law are featured in this collection. But this compilation of the most important essays by a pioneer in Canadian legal history brings to light...

The term "conjugal rights" has long characterized ways of speaking about marriage both in the canonistic tradition and in the secular legal systems of the West. This book explores the origins and dimensions of this concept and the range of meanings that have attached to it from the twelfth century to the present. Employing far-ranging sources, Charles Reid Jr. examines the language of marriage in classical Roman law, the Germanic legal codes of early medieval Europe, and the writings of canon lawyers and theologians from the medieval and early modern periods. The heart of the book,...

The contributors draw upon new discoveries and insights from the biologically-based behavioural sciences that are critical to a more informed understanding of legal phenomena, particularly those dealing with complex social and political relationships.

This compact history is the first to explore two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases of the early 1830s: "Cherokee Nation v. Georgia" and "Worcester v. Georgia." Legal historian Jill Norgren details the extraordinary story behind these cases, describing how John Ross and other leaders of the Cherokee Nation, having internalized the principles of American law, tested their sovereignty rights before Chief Justice John Marshall in the highest court of the land. The Cherokees goal was to solidify these rights and to challenge the aggressive actions that the government and people of Georgia...

At the close of the Civil War, the Federal government undertook a sweeping reform of land tenure in the South with the passage of the Southern Homestead Act of 1866. Designed primarily to allow freedmen to settle public land and take part in the great agrarian program of establishing a nation of independent yeoman farmers, the act soon became the victim of political abuses, bureaucratic ineptitude, and burgeoning racism. In Agrarianism and Reconstruction Politics, Michael L. Lanza studies the conception, evolution, and demise of this critical aspect of Reconstruction history.

Lanza deals...

Louisiana's legal heritage has long been a source of fascination, curiosity, and sadly, misinformation. Outsiders have viewed the legal system as an anomaly and have shunned its study because of its perceived quirkiness. Moreover, past writings about the state's legal structure have focused on the minutiae of Louisiana's civil law origins, adding to an image of peculiarity. Consequently, Louisiana has been generally ignored in treatments of American or southern legal history. Recently, however, a new vision has emerged the New Louisiana Legal History. A product of an energetic cadre of...

The legal crusade of Myra Clark Gaines (1804?--1885) has all the trappings of classic melodrama -- a lost heir, a missing will, an illicit relationship, a questionable marriage, a bigamous husband, and a murder. For a half century the daughter of New Orleans millionaire Daniel Clark struggled to justify her claim to his enormous fortune in a case that captivated the nineteenth-century public. Elizabeth Urban Alexander taps voluminous court records and letters to unravel the twists and turns of Gaines's litigation and reveal the truth behind the mysterious saga of this notorious...