History Of Havard Law School - The world's premier Law School

Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States.
The Law School traces its origins to Isaac Royall, who in 1781 left land from his estate in nearby Medford to Harvard University, with the proceeds intended to "endow of a Professor of Laws at said college, or a Professor of Physics and Anatomy." Harvard took the opportunity to fund its first chair in law, and the Royall chair continues to support an HLS professor today, more than 200 years later.

In 1806, Royall’s heirs sold the rest of his estate and used the funds to establish a school of law at Harvard University. The Royall family coat-of-arms -- three stacked wheat sheaves beneath the university motto, Veritas -- was adopted as the school’s shield.
In 1827, the struggling young law school was down to only one faculty member and one student. In this year, an enterprising alumnus stepped in to save the school by establishing the Dane Professorship of Law, and insisting that the chair be given to Joseph Story, the nation's youngest Supreme Court justice. Story believed in the concept of an elite American law school, based on merit and dedicated to public service: a tradition that continues today.

A second critical figure in the development of the Law School arrived on the campus in the 1870s. Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell believed that the study of law should be an interactive and disciplined form of education, in which students were challenged directly by teachers, and through which they learned to analyze cases for themselves. This Socratic method of instruction demanded new teaching spaces, and Austin Hall was built on the north side of Harvard Yard to accommodate the School's new vision.

Following Langdell's remarkable 25-year tenure, an elite group of men -- and one woman -- have served as the School's Dean:

1870 – 1895, Christopher Columbus Langdell

1895 – 1910, James Barr Ames

1909 – 1910, Samuel Williston*

1910 – 1915, Ezra Ripley Thayer

1915 – 1916, Austin Wakeman Scott*

1916 – 1936, Roscoe Pound

1921 – 1922, Edward Henry Warren*

1925 – 1926, Joseph Warren*

1929 – 1929, Joseph Warren*

1929 – 1930, Joseph Henry Beale*

1936 – 1937, Edmund Morris Morgan*

1937 – 1946, James McCauley Landis

1942 – 1945, Edmund Morris Morgan*

1946 – 1967, Erwin Nathaniel Griswold

1948 – 1948, Robert Amory, Jr.*

1959 – 1959, Livingston Hall*

1967 – 1968, Andrew James Casner*

1968 – 1971, Derek Curtis Bok

1971 – 1981, Albert Martin Sacks

1981 – 1989, James Vorenberg

1989 – 2003, Robert C. Clark

2003 – present Elena Kagan

* indicates "acting" appointment.

Special Thanks to http://www.law.harvard.edu/

Using Internet business to Protect Rights

The more you understand about any subject, the more interesting it becomes. As you read this article you'll find that the subject of Rights is certainly no exception.

Now that we've covered those aspects of Rights, let's turn to some of the other factors that need to be considered.

Do you operate an Internet business? If you buy or sell websites, it is essential that you use the correct legal documents to facilitate your transactions. No matter how small or large your Internet business is or what volume of work you do, Internet business forms are necessary to protect your rights.

One of the most basic Internet business forms you will need is a Domain Name Sales Agreement. This is a document used when ownership of a domain name is transferred. It verifies the date of the sale and the parties involved in the transaction, and also records the domain name being sold.

You may wish to protect yourself further at the time of a domain name purchase or sale with a Domain Name Assignment form. This document guarantees all rights associated with a domain name are transferred at the time of sale. Both buyers and sellers should insist an up-to-date, legally compliant Domain Name Sales Agreement facilitates their domain name transfer.

Do you offer or participate in website affiliate programs as part of your Internet business? If so, you should insist on a Website Affiliate Agreement for every affiliate relationship you establish. This document records the terms involved in affiliate relationships, including the provision of promotional services as well as details regarding commission payments.

In the past, Internet businesses often relied on attorneys to create the legal documents necessary for facilitating business transactions and arrangements. Today, you can save on the high cost of attorney fees by purchasing your Internet business forms online. You can obtain and use forms prepared by attorneys online and feel confident you are complying with today’s laws.


The day will come when you can use something you read about here to have a beneficial impact. Then you'll be glad you took the time to learn more about Rights.

What Makes a Case a Criminal Case?

There are two fundamentally different types of court cases -- criminal and civil. Here's how to tell the difference.

There are two fundamentally different types of court cases -- criminal and civil. A criminal case arises when the government seeks to punish an individual for an act that has been classified as a crime by Congress or a state legislature. A civil case, on the other hand, usually has to do with a dispute over the rights and duties that individuals and organizations legally owe to each other. Among the important differences between criminal and civil cases are these:

In a criminal case a prosecutor, not the crime victim, initiates and controls the case. The prosecutor may file criminal charges even if the victim doesn't approve, or refuse to file criminal charges despite the victim's desire that criminal charges be filed. This method of beginning the case contrasts with civil cases where the injured party is the one who starts the ball rolling -- although if you view the prosecutor as a stand-in for the community injured by a crime, then there's not much difference.

A person convicted of a crime may pay a fine or be incarcerated or both. People who are held responsible in civil cases may have to pay money damages or give up property, but do not go to jail or prison. (We don't have "debtors' prisons" for those who can't pay a civil judgment.)

In criminal cases, government-paid lawyers represent defendants who want but can't afford an attorney. Parties in civil cases, on the other hand, usually have to represent themselves or pay for their own lawyers. (Juvenile court cases and cases involving civil contempt of court where jail is a possibility, are exceptions to this general rule.)

In criminal cases, the prosecutor has to prove a defendant's guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." In a civil case, the plaintiff has to show only by a "preponderance of the evidence" (more than 50%) that the defendant is liable for damages.

Defendants in criminal cases are almost always entitled to a jury trial. A party to a civil action is entitled to a jury trial in some types of cases, but not in others.

Defendants in civil cases may be jailed for contempt, as happened to Susan McDougal in the Whitewater case.

Sometimes the same conduct may violate both criminal and civil laws. A defendant whose actions violate both criminal and civil rules may be criminally prosecuted by the state and civilly sued by a victim for monetary damages. For instance, in 1995 O. J. Simpson was prosecuted for murder and found not guilty. In an entirely separate case, Simpson was also sued civilly for "wrongful death" by the victims' families. At the close of the civil case, in 1997, Simpson was found "liable" for (the civil equivalent to guilty meaning "responsible" for) the victims' deaths and ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages.

MODERN HISTORIES OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

BOOK REVIEW

These brief sketches do not do justice to the intricacy and depth of scholarship that characterize the chapters. MODERN HISTORIES has been a bracing intellectual excursion, and although I found each of the articles to range from interesting to fascinating, the audience for non-specialists is likely to be limited. The book, or some of its chapters, will appeal to specialists in the history of criminal law doctrine or historians of colonialism. This is not a book for any except the most advanced students in PhD seminars. I am not a specialist in these fields, but my checkered history as a criminal law teacher who has read a fair dose of criminal law theory and history, taught a seminar on political trials, and began teaching criminal law in a post-colonial English-style law faculty in Anglophonic Africa in the afterglow of Empire, has weirdly provided me with the right grounding to at least appreciate this volume. I believe that non-specialists who are likely to find this book valuable are teachers of criminal law at law schools and universities. The book would go a long way toward expanding the intellectual horizons of that cohort. The book should also appeal to eighteenth century and nineteenth century social historians.

Unfortunately, I do not see this book appealing to most political scientists or even to most courts and law scholars who do not have a grounding in the doctrinal study of criminal law. The same goes for scholars in my discipline of criminal justice. This is not to say that criminal law has nothing to say about important issues of state power and civil rights. Quite the contrary. But the level of specialized learning needed to make these essays intelligible is so high as to reduce its usefulness to scholars concerned with state power. I should also add that many of the essays in the [*38] first two sections are indeed sufficiently focused on relatively technical (but important) issues of criminal law doctrine and administration to be of limited value for scholars more directly interested in confrontations between the individual and the state.

MODERN HISTORIES OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, by Markus D. Dubber and Lindsay Farmer (eds). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. 352pp. Cloth. $70.00. ISBN: 9780804754118. Paper. $27.95. ISBN: 9780804754125.

"Miranda" Rights and the Fifth Amendment

In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the historic case of Miranda v. Arizona, declaring that whenever a person is taken into police custody, before being questioned he or she must be told of the Fifth Amendment right not to make any self-incriminating statements. As a result of Miranda, anyone in police custody must be told four things before being questioned:

1.You have the right to remain silent.
2.Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
3.You have the right to an attorney.
4.If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.

Read the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision: Miranda v. Arizona.

What if the Police Fail to Advise Me of My Miranda Rights?
When police officers question a suspect in custody without first giving the Miranda warning, any statement or confession made is presumed to be involuntary, and cannot be used against the suspect in any criminal case. Any evidence discovered as a result of that statement or confession will likely also be thrown out of the case.

For example, suppose Dan is arrested and, without being read his Miranda rights, is questioned by police officers about a bank robbery. Unaware that he has the right to remain silent, Dan confesses to committing the robbery and tells the police that the money is buried in his backyard. Acting on this information, the police dig up the money. When Dan's attorney challenges the confession in court, the judge will likely find it unlawful. This means that, not only will the confession be thrown out of the case against Dan, but so will the money itself, because it was discovered solely as a result of the unlawful confession.

Juvenile Justice: Background

In the eyes of the law, a juvenile or a minor, is any person under the legal adult age. This age varies from state to state, but in most states, the District of Columbia, and in all Federal Districts, any person age 18 or younger is considered a juvenile. In several states, such as New York, Connecticut, and North Carolina, a juvenile is age 16 or less, and in Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin, a juvenile is age 17 or less. Wyoming is the only state that has established the age of juveniles to be 19 or younger (Juvenile Justice: An Introduction - Third Edition, John T. Whitehead and Steven P. Lab, Anderson Publishing, 1999).

As well as having upper age limits, juvenile jurisdictions also have lower age limits. Most states specify that prior to age six or seven, juveniles lack mens rea, or criminal intent. At this young age, juveniles also are thought to lack the ability to tell right from wrong, or dolci incapax. Usually, the age of the offender refers to the age of the offender at the time the offense was committed, but in some states, age refers to the offender's age at the time of apprehension. This arrangement allows for the sometimes lengthy periods it takes to clear a case.

One's status as a juvenile or as an adult is pertinent for the court's determination of the jurisdiction under which an offender falls: the adult or the juvenile court system. If it is decided that a juvenile will be tried in a juvenile court, most states allow the juvenile to remain under that jurisdiction until the defendant's 21st birthday.

Relying on age as a sole determinant for adulthood has been criticized by many criminologists and policy makers since individuals develop at different rates. Some youth are far more mature at 18 years of age than some adults are. Because of this discrepancy, juvenile court judges have been given broad discretion to waive juveniles to adult court for trial and sentencing (see later section). In rare situations, the courts also have the power to emancipate a juvenile in a civil proceeding so that he or she becomes an adult under the law and is granted certain adult privileges. For example, if a 17-year-old loses both parents and has no other living relatives, he or she could be emancipated in order to pursue custody of his or her younger siblings.

What Is Bankruptcy?

Basic information on Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy is a federal court process designed to help consumers and businesses eliminate their debts or repay them under the protection of the bankruptcy court. Bankruptcies can generally be described as "liquidations" or "reorganizations."

Chapter 7 bankruptcy is the liquidation variety -- property is sold (liquidated) to pay off as much of your debt as possible, while leaving you with enough property to make a fresh start.

Chapter 13 is the most common type of "reorganization" bankruptcy for consumers -- you repay your debts over three to five years.
Both kinds of bankruptcy have numerous rules -- and exceptions to those rules -- about what kinds of debts are covered, who can file, and what property you can and cannot keep.