scholarly journals The Law of Impeachment in the United States

1908 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-395
Author(s):  
David Y. Thomas

When the Fathers were framing the Constitution of the United States they sought at every turn to safeguard the interests of the people and at the same time secure to officials a reasonable degree of independence. This solicitude was especially manifest in the case of judicial officers, whose terms were made to run during good behavior. Impeachment was the method adopted to determine what constituted misbehavior. Chief Justice Marshall early laid down the principle that terms otherwise undefined in the Constitution were used in the sense which was well known and accepted at the time the Constitution was written. Impeachment was adopted and adapted from the English practice. To understand our own law, then, it is necessary to know what the English law of impeachment, the lex et consuetudo parliamenti, was at the time of its adoption and in what way it was modified or changed in being adopted.

Author(s):  
Scorey David ◽  
Geddes Richard ◽  
Harris Chris

This chapter first discusses the law of misrepresentation and nondisclosure as it has developed in New York, since the law of that state is designated in the majority of Bermuda Form policies as governing the resolution of ‘any dispute, controversy or claim arising out of or related to the Policy’, which would clearly include a dispute about alleged misrepresentation in its procurement. The second part discusses English law. This is relevant for a number of reasons. It is not at all uncommon that the version of the Bermuda Form in play in respect of a given dispute will expressly adopt the law of England and Wales as controlling. This is often the case where the policy is issued to a multinational corporation whose management and headquarters are not located in the United States, or where the policy is not issued by an insurer resident in Bermuda.


Author(s):  
Michael Lobban

This article looks at the different approaches which have been taken in the study of legal history in England and America by both historians in law and history faculties. The pioneer English legal historian was F.W. Maitland, who felt that the skills of the lawyer were needed to understand the legal materials which were the source of much medieval social and economic history. Maitland, who had no wish to use history to explain current doctrine, inspired a generation of medieval historians to look at legal questions. The study of legal history in English law schools was in turn revolutionized by S. F. C Milsom, who felt that the key to legal history was not to apply the skills of the present lawyer to the law of the past, but to attempt to get into the minds of previous generations of lawyers. Following Milson, doctrinal legal history flourished in England. In the United States, a different tradition dominated law schools. Here, the pioneer was J. Willard Hurst, who turned attention away from narrow doctrinal history, to a broader contextual study of law, looking at the operation of law in society. The article discusses the kind of historiography which developed in America after Hurst, before turning to what discuss what role doctrinal legal history can continue to play, both to inform historical and legal debates.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Martin Katz ◽  
Corinna Coupette ◽  
Janis Beckedorf ◽  
Dirk Hartung

Abstract While many informal factors influence how people interact, modern societies rely upon law as a primary mechanism to formally control human behaviour. How legal rules impact societal development depends on the interplay between two types of actors: the people who create the rules and the people to which the rules potentially apply. We hypothesise that an increasingly diverse and interconnected society might create increasingly diverse and interconnected rules, and assert that legal networks provide a useful lens through which to observe the interaction between law and society. To evaluate these propositions, we present a novel and generalizable model of statutory materials as multidimensional, time-evolving document networks. Applying this model to the federal legislation of the United States and Germany, we find impressive expansion in the size and complexity of laws over the past two and a half decades. We investigate the sources of this development using methods from network science and natural language processing. To allow for cross-country comparisons over time, based on the explicit cross-references between legal rules, we algorithmically reorganise the legislative materials of the United States and Germany into cluster families that reflect legal topics. This reorganisation reveals that the main driver behind the growth of the law in both jurisdictions is the expansion of the welfare state, backed by an expansion of the tax state. Hence, our findings highlight the power of document network analysis for understanding the evolution of law and its relationship with society.


2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-104
Author(s):  
Joseph Margulies

Scholars sometimes misunderstand the role that law plays in achieving social change. Law in the United States represents the codification of normative ideologies, or creedal narratives. New ideologies can take hold in society only as the result of deep and wide structural changes that cause the gradual erosion of others. Lawmakers—whether judicial or political—eventually give these new ideologies legitimacy. Contrary to Bruce Ackerman’s contention in We the People, the law follows social change, not vice versa.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-84
Author(s):  
Martin D. Carrigan

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Katherine Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Case No. 11393, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed most of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). In holding the ACA as valid (constitutional), Chief Justice Roberts reasoned that the taxing power in the U.S. Constitution was the reason that the law was enforceable. Although a strong dissent on such reasoning was written by four other Justices, Roberts also wrote that laws are entrusted to our nations elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. [1]Roberts also wrote that the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution did not give Congress authority to pass the ACA. Moreover, Congress could not impose unfunded mandates on the States to expand Medicaid. In so writing, Roberts disposed of the chief arguments of those in favor of the law and provided a bone to those who opposed it. But, by then holding that Congress taxing power was sufficient to uphold the law, Roberts ignored the Federal Anti-Injunction statute and called into question the ability of the Supreme Court to hold a law passed by Congress entirely unconstitutional. By writing that, in effect, the Court should defer to Acts of Congress, Roberts attempted a finesse first exercised by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison in 1803. While it may seem as if he intended to demonstrate the same legal adroitness of Marbury, instead he deferred to the wishes of Congress, going through legal gymnastics to uphold a law that many scholars saw as indefensible, and damaged the power of the Supreme Court given to it in Article III immeasurably.


1951 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 400-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph G. Lapalombara ◽  
Charles B. Hagan

The United States has now had a half-century's experience with the process customarily denominated direct legislation. The phrase usually means, and is so used here, the power of the electorate to participate in the law-making function by voting for or against particular proposals submitted at regular or special elections. The proposals may have originated in the legislative assembly or they may have been submitted through the action of the electorate. There are other procedural details in which the processes in particular states may vary, but here the concern is with the general operation of the system. Perhaps more attention has been devoted to that situation in which the legislature has the option of submitting a proposal or not as it sees fit. It is not thought, however, that this detail would cause any serious difference in the conclusions that are drawn here or the suggestions that are made.Direct legislation has been associated with the Progressive movement which was active at the turn into the present century. The movement was a protest against a number of activities which were prevalent among the states at that time. One of the protests alleged that the legislatures had become wholly “corrupt” and that consequently it was necessary to “clean” them up. This line of analysis also postulated that the people were “incorrupt” and that if given the opportunity they would “purify” the political activity of their states and even the nation. Direct legislation was looked upon as one of the most significant means by which these goals were to be accomplished.


Author(s):  
Takis S. Pappas

Based on an original definition of modern populism as “democratic illiberalism” and many years of meticulous research, Takis Pappas marshals extraordinary empirical evidence from Argentina, Greece, Peru, Italy, Venezuela, Ecuador, Hungary, the United States, Spain, and Brazil to develop a comprehensive theory about populism. He addresses all key issues in the debate about populism and answers significant questions of great relevance for today’s liberal democracy, including: • What is modern populism and how can it be differentiated from comparable phenomena like nativism and autocracy? • Where in Latin America has populism become most successful? Where in Europe did it emerge first? Why did its rise to power in the United States come so late? • Is Trump a populist and, if so, could he be compared best with Venezuela’s Chávez, France’s Le Pens, or Turkey’s Erdoğan? • Why has populism thrived in post-authoritarian Greece but not in Spain? And why in Argentina and not in Brazil? • Can populism ever succeed without a charismatic leader? If not, what does leadership tell us about how to challenge populism? • Who are “the people” who vote for populist parties, how are these “made” into a group, and what is in their minds? • Is there a “populist blueprint” that all populists use when in power? And what are the long-term consequences of populist rule? • What does the expansion, and possibly solidification, of populism mean for the very nature and future of contemporary democracy? Populism and Liberal Democracy will change the ways the reader understands populism and imagines the prospects of liberal democracy.


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