History of American Law pg314-406

Yikes, its been almost a hundred pages since I collected my thoughts

p 314 (con't)

Something struck me with the quotation of the NY legislature setting aside the "Adirondack Park" about "a future timber supply". I wonder why he does not connect this, and other legislation, about the worries in Europe at the time about timber being a strategic resource.

p 320

Odd he does not spend much time on the legalities of sharecropping. Particularly so as in a later chapter about Jim Crow laws, and other southern laws regarding blacks and labor.

p 322

In a case of history repeating itself, the author discusses of the public pressure to supply cheap mortgage money and other government initiated land buying tools. Which then lead to the bubble bursting, and finally pressure for forgiveness or foreclosure delays. All this in the days leading up to the Civil War (not that they are linked necessarily, just a time reference).

p 330

Odd how he switches to using "she" to refer to people in general. I wonder why?

p 331

He talks of the general trend for federal control (initially in welfare law), and implies that it is inevitable as the economy gets bigger. Why? Is not the power-grid more or less privately ran and state regulated? What about water? The national interstate highway system was a government project, but control (not funding) is under state power. Even the educational system is largely local, despite his claim of government control starting in the 1960s (although successive laws have further weakened this). In short, I think this argument, as presented, on the inevitability of federal control is weak.

p 338

Harkening back to an earlier point, he mentions that Railroad were, at least somewhat, in favor of regulation so as to eliminate competition and supply a steady return. Again, when it comes to business regulation (or "conservation" as he talked much earlier), sometimes it does not favor the "little people", despite the wishes or protestations of proponents.

p 356 and p 369

Something here the author does not link, and I wonder if it was part of the argument in court.

In McDonald v. Mass. Gen. Hospital (120 Mass. 432 (1876)) a man sued because an employed Harvard med student for not setting a broken thighbone correctly. The court refused saying the burden of selecting a proper and competent agent for the medical work was placed on the patient.

Later in the book the author discusses that Mass. set up a State Board of Charities 1863, which Mass. Gen. fell under to my understanding. Couldn't McDonald argue that that the states regulation of such facilities made it impossible for him to select an proper and competent agent as all such were certified and overseen by the state, thereby receiving implicit certification of them being proper and competent?

p 397

In a short discussion of Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Pendleton (122 US 347 (1887)), it discusses that a Indiana statute on the prompt delivery of a telegraph was a violation of the commerce clause of the constitution (interstate commerce). Yet, was this not really a simply tort case? The author mentions the idea of statutory liability existing by this time period, why was that implied? How did a matter for Indiana courts make it to the federal docket?