American Liberty and Justice – serie

Michael Ariens proves that no state possesses a richer or more surprising legal history than Texas. In narrative as engaging as it is accessible, he has produced an overarching consideration of Lone Star law and legal culture—something notably missing in other Texas histories. After taking readers chronologically from early settlement through 1920, Ariens focuses on particular areas of Texas law, including property, family, business, criminal, and civil harms (tort), and on the history of Texas's legal profession itself. Through illuminating and utterly Texan particulars, Ariens helps us understand a place at once southern and western, Spanish and Mexican, republic and state.

Few works reveal anything about the role of federal judges in the early twentieth-century American West. Arnon Gutfeld fills that void by analyzing the major issues and dilemmas those judges faced as the West moved rapidly from frontier justice to twentieth-century legal realities. George M. Bourquin served as Federal District judge in Montana from 1912 to 1934. He dared to issue rulings that captured national attention and aroused the ire of the Department of Justice. During the mass fear and hysteria of World War I and the Red Scare, he was one of very few judges to defend individual liberty. His decision in the Ves Hall Case elicited a knee-jerk reaction from Washington--the notorious Anti-Sedition Act of 1918. A Jeffersonian conservative-libertarian in the tradition of Edmund Burke Bourquin believed the Constitution to be the sole barrier between civilization and barbarism. Especially important were his decisions in labor, Native American, and immigration issues.Coinciding with the federal government's largest role over the destiny of the American West, Bourquin's judicial career provides a unique opportunity to examine the great impact that the legal system and a very unusual judge had in the post-territorial frontier period.

Few works reveal anything about the role of federal judges in the early twentieth-century American West. Arnon Gutfeld fills that void by analyzing the major issues and dilemmas those judges faced as the West moved rapidly from frontier justice to twentieth-century legal realities. George M. Bourquin served as Federal District judge in Montana from 1912 to 1934. He dared to issue rulings that captured national attention and aroused the ire of the Department of Justice. During the mass fear and hysteria of World War I and the Red Scare, he was one of very few judges to defend individual liberty. His decision in the Ves Hall Case elicited a knee-jerk reaction from Washington--the notorious Anti-Sedition Act of 1918.A Jeffersonian conservative-libertarian, in the tradition of Edmund Burke, Bourquin believed the Constitution to be the sole barrier between civilization and barbarism. Especially important were his decisions in labor, Native American, and immigration issues. Coinciding with the federal government's largest role over the destiny of the American West, Bourquin's judicial career provides a unique opportunity to examine the great impact that the legal system and a very unusual judge had in the post-territorial frontier period.

Homer Maxey was a war hero, multimillionaire and pillar of the Lubbock, Texas, community. During the post-World War II boom, he filled the West Texas horizon with new apartment complexes, government buildings, hotels, banks, shopping centres and subdivisions.On the afternoon of February 16, 1966, executives of Citizens National Bank of Lubbock met to launch foreclosure proceedings against Maxey. In a secret sale, more than 35,000 acres of ranch land and other holdings were divided up and sold for pennies on the dollar. By closing time, Maxey was penniless.Maxey sued the bank and every member of the board of directors, including long-time friends and business partners. Almost fifteen years, two jury trials and nine separate appeals later, the case was settled on September 22, 1980.Broke, Not Broken, the story of this record-breaking, precedent-setting legal case, illuminates a community and a self-styled go-getter who refused to back down, even when his opponents were old friends, well-heeled leaders of the community, a bank backed by powerful Odessa oil men and the most formidable attorneys in West Texas.

Mary Bennett Love had a physicality exceeded only by her personality. Six feet tall and over 300 pounds, Love was anything but shackled by the mores of her day. In the 1840s, she moved west from Arkansas via the Oregon Trail. A few years later, she separated from her husband and took her six minor children to Santa Clara, where she acquired a Mexican land grant by forging an adult son’s signature.Though illiterate, she knew the law thoroughly and used it to her advantage. No sooner had the American military invaded California than Mary squatted on public lands and engaged in dozens of lawsuits to advance her interests. Her love life was no less tumultuous. Harry Love, her second husband and slayer of Mexican bandit Joaquin Murrieta, died at her bodyguard’s hands.Quite Contrary is the first book to focus on Mary Bennett Love. Aside from making for an entertaining story, she is representative of the relationship people had with the law in pre-Gold Rush California. Furthermore, her economic success demonstrates the often self-imposed notions of true womanhood - which Mary ignored, paving the way for future female entrepreneurs.

Although the United States is a nation founded by immigrants, Alberto Gonzales and David Strange believe that national immigration policy and enforcement over the past thirty years has been inadequate. This failure by federal leaders has resulted in a widespread introduction of state immigration laws across the country. Gonzales and Strange assert that the solution to current immigration challenges is reform of federal immigration laws, including common sense border control, tougher workplace enforcement, minor (but significant) changes to the Immigration and Nationality Act, and a revised visa process that discourages overstaying the duration of a visa.Gonzales and Strange embrace many provisions of current pending legislation, but are sharply critical of others. Their proposals call for an expansion of the grounds of inadmissibility to foster greater respect of law and to address the problem of visa overstays, while also calling for a restriction on grounds of inadmissibility in other areas to address the large undocumented population and increasing humanitarian crisis. They explore nationality versus citizenship and introduce a pathway to nationality as an alternative to a pathway to citizenship.This immigration policy blueprint examines the political landscape in Washington and makes the argument that progress will require compromise and the discipline to act with compassion and respect. Most significantly, it illuminates how following this blueprint can enhance national security and improve the economy in the United States in ways that is consistent with the rule of law.

In 1894, George Isaacs, the penniless black sheep of his family, was running with the worst of the outlaws in the Oklahoma Territory. There, a get-rich-quick scheme that seemed fool proof was hatched up. The plan was for George to present money packets falsely purporting to contain $25,000 in cash to the Wells Fargo office in Kansas City. Wells Fargo was to ship the packets via the Santa Fe railroad to George at Canadian, Texas, where George’s cronies would then rob the depot office and steal the phony money packets, thus allowing George Isaacs to sue Wells Fargo for his lost fortune. The plan backfired when the sheriff was on hand when the train arrived. The bandits killed the sheriff but then panicked and raced back to the Territory without grabbing the bogus packets.Wells Fargo sent an undercover agent to investigate, but the outlaws discovered him, and the agent was assassinated. The two murders led to eight trials, but only one man, George Isaacs, was ever convicted—and even he managed to beat a life sentence. One question lingered: was George truly behind the scam?The identities of the masterminds behind the foiled plot have remained a mystery for more than a hundred years. With his usual rough-and-tumble tenacity, Bill Neal undertakes the investigation of these two cold-case murders.

In a career forged in the saddle on scout duty along the Rio Grande, Arthur Hill witnessed dramatic changes from 1947 to 1974. Whether inspecting brands, deterring smugglers of everything from cattle to candelilla wax, or giving chase on horseback across merciless terrain—often into Mexico—Hill found himself immersed in a world that straddled centuries as well as cultures. Promotion to sergeant of Ranger Company B in 1957 took Hill to Dallas, where he brought his brush-country methods to bear on urban crimes. Yet after only a year, and despite the opportunity for advancement to captain, Hill knew his place and heart were back in the Big Bend, where rampant drug trade was altering his beloved border irrevocably from an existence that had remained the same for hundreds of years. From the Lone Star Steel strike, the KKK, and the “Dixie Mafia” to problems of drug-running and illegal immigration, Arthur Hill’s life as a Texas ranger illuminates both the present and the past.

In 1873, opportunistic Anglo-Celtic cattlemen and homesteaders, protected by little other than personal firearms and their own bravado, began settling the stream-laced rangelands east of the plateau. An insidious criminal element soon followed: a familybased tribal confederation of frontier outlaws took root in the canyonlands around the forks of the Llano River, in unorganized and lawless Kimble County. Sometimes disguised as Indians, they preyed on neighbors, northbound trail herds, and stockmen in adjacent counties. They robbed stagecoaches repeatedly. They traded in border markets alongside Mexican Indian raiders, and may have participated in the brutal Dowdy massacre of 1878. Outnumbering and intimidating law-abiding settlers, this criminal confederation took over the nascent Kimble County government in 1876. Only dogged persistence by Texas Rangers, with increasing support from citizens and local law officers, would stem the tide.