Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / There are no leaves 76-78; manuscript misnumbered between 75 and 79. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Accompany CD-ROM contains complete dissertation in Microsoft Word documents. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

The purpose of this project was to obtain a preliminary description, through study of the legal files, of that group of persons who appear before the Court of Domestic Relations for a reconsideration of the custody decision made initially, at the time of divorce. A sample of 92 cases heard in Mu1tnomah County in 1965 was obtained. A survey of the literature revealed that much of what has been written on the subject of divorce and custody is primarily from a statistical or legalistic standpoint and very little bears directly on the granting or obtaining of custody or the problems encountered by the custodial or non-custodial parents and the children. A reading schedule was developed for the purpose of recording the information in the legal files maintained by the court. The characteristics of the sample group were tallied in an effort to obtain a statistical profile of that group requiring additional court appearances to settle the matter of custody. A number of hypotheses were developed and tested by means of Chi Square. Though this study was limited by the fact that no control group was used and no personal interviews were obtained, it clearly indicates the need for additional research in the area of divorce and custody and suggestions are made for future projects.

This dissertation studies the politics of 'Public Interest Litigation' (PIL) in contemporary India. PIL is a unique jurisdiction initiated by the Indian Supreme Court in the aftermath of the Emergency of 1975-1977. Why did the Court's response to the crisis of the Emergency period have to take the form of PIL? I locate the history of PIL in India's postcolonial predicament, arguing that a Constitutional framework that mandated a statist agenda of social transformation provided the conditions of possibility for PIL to emerge. The post-Emergency era was the heyday of a new form of everyday politics that Partha Chatterjee has called 'political society'. I argue that PIL in its initial phase emerged as its judicial counterpart, and was even characterized as 'judicial populism'. However, PIL in its 21st century avatar has emerged as a bulwark against the operations of political society, often used as a powerful weapon against the same subaltern classes whose interests were so loudly championed by the initial cases of PIL. In the last decade, for instance, PIL has enabled the Indian appellate courts to function as a slum demolition machine, and a most effective one at that - even more successful than the Emergency regime. A recurring sentiment in these recent PIL cases is a deep impatience with the populism that is believed to characterize political life in India, and with the illegalities fostered by it. However, I argue that the enormous powers of PIL stem from its own populist character, which allows the appellate courts great flexibility in being able to maneouvre themselves into positions of overweening authority. With little or no procedure to regulate it, it is increasingly difficult to locate PIL within the conventional rubric of adjudicatory practice. With radical departures from legal norms that further empower the Courts, I argue, PIL has emerged as the vanishing point of jurisprudence. As a weapon of civil society, PIL appears to be a mere legal tool and therefore a classic example of associational activity. But it is really a mirror image of the populist contemporary politics it assails, just without any of the protections that populist political mobilisation regularly requires in a liberal democracy like India. Just as the practices of illegality rampant among India's white-collared denizens make its civil society uncontainable within any conventional notions of civic behaviour, its favourite weapon, PIL, too, has only a thin veneer of legality. The judicial populism of PIL allows for a radical instability that continually pushes the limits of what a court can do. This dissertation, after examining the why and the how of the rise of PIL, will focus on the most intensive laboratory of PIL in recent times - the city of Delhi. I foreground PIL's role in the radical reconfiguration of the city in the 2000s, and go on to critique the limitations of the existing critical discourses on PIL: their obliviousness to its materiality and their insistence on purely ideological and consequentialist understanding of recent trends in PIL. Lastly, I address the conundrum of the enduring appeal of 'debased informalism' in contemporary India, particularly the self-conscious and opportunistic adoption and celebration of it by the most formal of judicial institutions. If the Weberian account of the emergence of modern law was anything to go by, legalism's stock in India should have risen to its highest with the growth of capitalism in the post-liberalisation era. Instead 'legalism' has decisively acquired a negative connotation in India precisely in this same period. PIL is the most striking illustration of this peculiar historical trajectory.

O objeto deste estudo é a justiça eclesiástica, analisada sob dois aspectos: as relações estabelecidas pelos juízes eclesiásticos com os fiéis e com os juízes seculares; e os mecanismos de coerção que pôs em prática. A metodologia comparativa baseou-se nas seguintes fontes: processos judiciais eclesiásticos; recursos de averiguação de delitos - as querelas, queixas e denúncias; norma jurídica - expressa nas constituições sinodais, Ordenações e tratados; correspondência de bispos e governadores do século XVIII. Tais fontes evidenciam as várias facetas da justiça colonial: a virtude primeira do Príncipe; e a prerrogativa episcopal. Ponto central na evangelização tridentina, a justiça eclesiástica preconizava maior presença no cotidiano dos fiéis, e uma busca dos pecadores públicos, mediante devassas, denúncias, queixas e querelas. Como corolário deste exercício, verificam-se entre as autoridades seculares e eclesiásticas relações de colaboração, concorrência e conflito. Isto desencadeou múltiplas reações entre as pessoas leigas e eclesiásticas, alvos daquela ação. / The object of this study is the ecclesiastical justice in the diocese of the Minas Gerais, analyzed in two ways: the competitive relations of the cooperation, elimination and conflict that established their judges delegates with the people and the authorities of the colony; the mechanisms of coercion that put into practice. A comparative methodology was based on the following sources: ecclesiastical court proceedings, resources investigation of crimes, such as suits, complaints and wanton; the rule of law, and correspondence of the bishops and governors of the eighteenth century. These sources show the various facets assumed by the justice to colonial times: the main prerrogative of the Prince; and also episcopal prerogative, according to the decreesTridentine. The bishop chased the public sinners; received suits and denunciations and established wanton. The ecclesiastical justice was essential element of evangelization Tridentine; however, between secular and ecclesiastical authorities, were relations of the competition, collaboration and conflict. This triggered multiple reactions among people, the target of his action.

People v. Zamora was a case that was decided on January 12, 1943, which led to the conviction and sentencing of five defendants guilty of assault, nine guilty of second degree murder, and three of first degree murder. This equals a total of seventeen convictions for the murder of one man, out of twenty two who were arrested. Along with those convictions, five women were arrested and, due mainly to their refusal to cooperate were sent to a woman’s reformatory (Barajas, 36). Yet there emerged many different problems that were relevant in this trial, which were brought about by both legal and social injustices. Even prior to the start of the trial there began to be a growing suspicious sentiment surfacing amongst the American people, due in large part to the yellow journalism that was going on at the moment. There were also many legal injustices that came about due to personal and social prejudice that governed the trial from beginning to end. Through the analysis of this trial, and the ensuing events, I will analyze the trial and focus on how pivotal the Zamora trial was legally. I will also examine the results of the trial and if they had any effect on the severe police brutality and the injustices being faced by the Mexican American people in the following years, specifically focusing on the Zoot Suit Riots. I will in conjunction with that analyze the social and political effects that both of these occurrences had on Chicanos, and their growing awareness of their rights. This case and the effects of it had long lasting consequences, changing the lives of many people, “this case involves the civil rights of the Mexican people, and, as an attack upon the democratic fabric, it involves all the people” (Cullen, 5).

<p>Slavery and freedom are central issues in the historiography of nineteenth-century America. In the antebellum era (1820-1860), personal status was a fluid concept and was never as simple as black and white. The courts provide a revealing window for examining these ambiguities because court cases often served as the venue for negotiations over who was enslaved and who was free. In St. Louis, enslaved men and women contributed to debates and discussions about the meaning of personal status by suing for their freedom. By questioning their enslavement in freedom suits, slaves played an important role in blurring the law's understanding of slavery; in the process, they incurred the enormous personal risks of abuse and the possibility of sale. </p><p>Using the records of over 300 slaves who sued for freedom, as well as a variety of manuscript sources, newspapers, and additional court records, this project traces these freedom suits over time, and examines how slave law and the law of freedom suits shifted, mainly in response to local and national debates over slavery and also to the growing threat of anti-slavery encroachment into St. Louis. When the laws tightened in response to these threats, the outcomes of freedom suits also adjusted, but in ways that did not fit the pattern of increasing restrictions on personal liberty. Instead, the unique situation in St. Louis in the 1840s and 1850s, with its increasingly anti-slavery immigrant population, allowed slaves suing for freedom to succeed at greater rates than in previous decades.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [217]-221). Also available on the Internet.

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This thesis analyses the extraterritorial dimension of patent systems in light of recent judicial trends, ending with the United States Supreme Court's landmark 2007 ruling in AT&T v. Microsoft. The discussion examines (i) the economic interest of nations in issuing and maintaining patent rights; (ii) the legal arguments against a unilateral extraterritorial extension of domestic patents, leading to the legal presumption against extraterritorial extension; (iii) the evolution of this doctrine in United States legislation and jurisprudence and forays against it, especially in recent decades; and (iv) the impact of globalization and of the nature of patentable information in the digital age on the issue of the extraterritorial extension of patent rights. The general conclusions are that, in the modern age, patent rights need to be extended beyond the domestic jurisdiction, and that the appropriate manner for nations to achieve this extension is not unilaterally but through bilateral and multilateral treaties.