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Winthrop Rutherfurd

Across the Confederacy, state judges uniformly claimed jurisdiction to issue habeas writs to confederate conscription officers on behalf of conscripts claiming unlawful detention. State judges based this authority to issue habeas writs to federal officers on the state habeas doctrine, pursuant to which a state court had coequal jurisdiction with federal courts to determine the lawfulness of a habeas petitioner’s detention. Today state habeas doctrine would constitute a gross violation of jurisdictional lines separating federal and state sovereignty; federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction to determine whether a federal prisoner’s detention is lawful. Even during the antebellum period state habeas was constitutionally controversial, resulting in a robust and divided body of antebellum state and federal precedent, and featured in the broader judicial and political disputes over the boundaries of states’ rights.

Cassandra Conover

There was a time the law used the color of our skin for many reasons, to include the notion that our color made us inferior to others. Although white men worded the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 specifically so newly freed slaves would be protected citizens against unjust state actions, the acceptance of African Americans as 5/5 of a person versus the 3/5 of a person still contained in the Constitution was a bitter pill for many to swallow. The Jim Crow laws of segregation passed in several states from 1890 to 1945. Those laws were enacted “to subordinate blacks as a group to whites and to enforce rules favored by dominant whites.” Those laws were so strongly supported throughout the South.

Elizabeth Farrington

Much has been and will be said concerning President Donald Trump‘s immigration policies. The vast majority of commentary has focused on his plans to enforce existing policy by deporting undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States and, of course, to build a wall on the United States border with Mexico. Less has been said, however, about any potential plans to change existing law regarding birthright citizenship—the process by which children of undocumented immigrants born on United States soil are granted full citizenship status.

Allison M. Tinsey

I was appalled to learn how the first-year criminal law curriculum addresses the subject of criminal sexual misconduct. Criminal sexual misconduct was the last topic covered in class and reserved for the last day of class. My section was forewarned of the upcoming conversation with an added bonus of knowing the material covered in class would not be on the exam. The assigned textbook reading on criminal sexual misconduct was condensed and edited. I heard a similar story from my friends in other sections: they were warned, told it would not be tested, and even given the option of not showing up to class that day.

W. Hamilton Bryson

I take as my text and begin with Chapter 29 of the final version of Magna Carta of 1225, which reads as follows:

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised of any freehold or of liberties or free customs . . . except by the lawful judgment . . . of his peers or by the law of the land . . . to no one shall we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

This is said to be one of only three parts of the Great Charter still in force in Great Britain. But this is rightly so, for it is the heart and soul of the statute.

This text ensures that a person’s property, body, and reputation will not be taken away before and without a trial in a court of law in which the judge observes the law and the due process thereof. This requires hearing the evidence and the arguments of all of the parties, after which, the judge applies the law to the facts of a case in order to reach a decision.