Browsing by Author "Hyman, Harold M."
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Item "Allowing fears to overwhelm us": A re-examination of the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938--1944(2002) Lopez, Nancy Lynn; Hyman, Harold M.In 1938, the House of Representatives authorized a special committee to investigate subversive or "un-American" propaganda. Popularly known as the Dies Committee after its chairman Martin Dies, this special committee was the progenitor of the most notorious legislative investigating committee in the history of Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was widely criticized in its own time, and by the majority of historians since, for its lax procedures, including a reliance on hearsay, unsupported information, and biased witnesses. The Committee also attempted to smear liberals and organized labor by associating them with radical organizations. During its first year, Dies' goal was seemingly to undermine the New Deal by claiming that the Roosevelt Administration and various New Deal agencies were riddled with Communists. Examination of the Committee's records suggests strongly that the foregoing criticisms were warranted. But to assess better the work of the Dies Committee, it is necessary to grapple with the fact that regardless of its motives and procedural inadequacies, in many instances its claims of Communist infiltration of New Deal agencies and the CIO were true. This dissertation examines the procedural and evidentiary standards under which the Dies Committee operated in an effort to address the question whether the lack of consistent application of these standards mattered when the investigation's conclusions were generally correct. The Committee's partisanship and willingness to used dubious evidence raised doubts about its claims of subversion in government and labor among the group whom it needed to convince-those in the Washington power structure. This issue is of heightened relevance given recent scholarship showing that the Soviet Union had funded and supervised an extensive espionage network in the United States during the 1930s. But as long as the Committee accepted rumor and conjecture it would fail to prove its case. Ultimately, the Committee's procedural lapses served only to undermine its own credibility.Item Bless the Pure & Humble: Texas Lawyers & Oil Regulation, 1919-1936(1994) Malavis, Nicholas G.; Hyman, Harold M.; Boles, John B.; Davidson, ChandlerItem "born a black bastard ..." The education and organization of Houston's black lawyers, 1947-1976(1976) Jones, Vonciel; Hyman, Harold M.Black lawyers, to a large extent, have been ignored by the legal profession and historians. White lawyers began developing schools, offices, and bar associations while most blacks were slaves. After Emancipation, the freedmen concentrated on basic education. Few whites considered law practice suitable for blacks, therefore, legal education was neither encouraged nor readily available. The first predominantly black law school opened at Howard University in Washington, D. C. in 1867, with six students, under the leadership of John Mercer Langston, a black lawyer. For eighty years, until 1947, Howard was the only law school graduating a significant number of black students. In 1947, Texas Southern University opened in Houston as one episode in the landmark case of Sweatt v. Painter, 339 United States Reports 629 (195), between Heman Marion Sweatt and the University of Texas School of Law in which the United States Supreme Court ordered that a black man be admitted to a white law school. Texas Southern and its law school encountered hostility from blacks and whites, at different times, but the institution survived and presently graduates over seventy percent (7%) of Houston's black bar and the second highest number of the nation's black lawyers. Scholarship on Houston's black lawyers is scarce. This essay is an inquiry into the education and organization of those lawyers. Houston's black bar is considered within the context of the total American bar by Including chapters on the early development of the legal profession, organizations of black lawyers, an overview of legal education, and a comparison with Howard University’s School of Law. A composite of Houston’s black lawyers is presented from the results of a 1975 survey conducted by the writer. The bulk of the paper is on the origin and development of Texas Southern University's School of Law since most, of the lawyers graduated from that institution. The law school's archival records and the survey questionnaire served as primary data. Other sources included newspapers, personal interviews with black lawyers, court cases, and secondary literature.Item Broken trusts: The Texas Attorney General versus the oil industry, 1889-1909(1999) Singer, Jonathan Whitney; Hyman, Harold M.The legal history of state antitrust enforcement and the oil industry in Texas illustrates how and why antitrust law contemplated complementary enforcement at the state and federal government level. Historians, economists, and lawyers have concentrated on federal antitrust law and enforcement, ignoring state efforts. Yet for most of the first twenty-five years following the enactment of the Sherman Antitrust Act, federal enforcement efforts were extremely limited, leaving the field to the states. Texas was one of several states that had strong antitrust laws, and whose attorneys general prosecuted antitrust violations with vigor. Political ambition was a factor in the decisions to investigate and prosecute cases against a highly visible target, the petroleum industry, but there was also a genuine belief in the goals of antitrust policy, and in the efficacy of enforcement of the laws. Enforcement efforts were also complicated by the fact that large oil companies provided vital commodities, articles of "prime necessity," to the citizens of Texas and following the discovery of large oil fields, played an increasingly important role in the economies of many Texas communities. The Texas Attorney General's antitrust enforcement efforts against the oil industry in this time of transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society provide insights into the litigation process, and reveal how well the rhetoric of trust-busting fit with the reality of antitrust enforcement. The antitrust crusade against the petroleum industry also highlights the changing roles of state government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly the Attorney General's Department. The experience of Texas undermines the view that federal action has always dominated antitrust enforcement efforts and that antitrust litigation against Standard Oil was ineffective and ineffectual. Rather, the Texas Attorney General's litigations and their results suggest that some states took their role in the dual enforcement scheme seriously and that the measure of success of antitrust enforcement goes beyond the amount of monetary penalties collected, and companies permanently ousted from a state.Item Civil rights litigation: An uncertain tradition. (Volumes I and II)(1991) Kelley, Lloyd Earl; Hyman, Harold M.Volume I of this study examines civil rights doctrine as it developed in the United States Supreme Court. I conclude that most historians and law scholars have been incorrect in their assessment of the civil rights record of the Supreme Court; especially the Warren Court. My research indicates that great advances were made in civil rights doctrine long before the advent of the Warren Court. Volume II of this study examines all civil rights cases filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division. This volume is intended to convey an impression of what a civil rights law suit actually looked like and how a trial court processed these cases from 1950-1974. I found that most of the federal judges were hostile towards the civil rights claims.Item Confederate military justice: a statutory and procedural approach.(1976) Peppers, Jeffrey Dwight; Hyman, Harold M.The Confederate States of America developed a highly sophisticated and effective system of military justice and only reverses on the battlefield prevented them from improving their system to an even greater extent. Adopting a set of Articles of War and Army Regulations which the United States Army had used since its inception, the Confederacy soon discovered that their adopted system was not effective when used with the lack of communications and discipline that faced the Confederate army. To combat the inefficiencies of their transplanted military justice system, the Confederate Congress, acting on recommendations from General Robert E. Lee, organized a military court system with professional personnel and specific duties and posts for a great efficiency. Because of the circumstances facing the Confederate States few records were kept and there were no books or documents produced explaining, discussing or otherwise illuminating the subject of Confederate military law. Therefore, most of this thesis had to be statutory, organizational or procedural in nature, using official Confederate documents. Army regulations and the semi-official Vade Mecum. Piecing these rules, regulations and procedures together, I have tried not to produce any new theories, but rather I have tried to put all of the material in one place in an organized form.Item Congressional control of federal court jurisdiction and the effect on protection of civil rights(1988) Meakin, Christopher Harry; Hyman, Harold M.The years immediately following the end of the American Civil War proved to be the high water mark in the nationalist spirit that provided for the direct federal protection of civil rights. This period was short, and as Southern patience outlasted Northern zeal, the federal government abandoned its efforts to actively enforce the spirit of the Reconstruction amendments. Even though during Reconstruction Congress greatly expanded the jurisdiction of the federal court system, the grants of jurisdiction did not help protect civil rights. Most of the statutes were civil in nature, requiring a litigant to hire a lawyer. Prospective plaintiffs in civil rights cases were unable to shoulder the expense of civil rights lawsuits so early use of the statutes was by corporations seeking to escape state regulation. Local lawyers willing to try civil rights cases faced an immense hurdle since the statutes were codified and broken up, legal journals de-emphasized these cases, and local pressure injured the attorneys' practices.Item Crime and violence in frontier Houston: a study of the criminal district court of Harris County, 1872-1876(1974) Brooks, Victoria Lynne; Hyman, Harold M.Harris County in the 187’s had a sophisticated system of criminal jurisprudence, but its people were unwilling to utilize its full capacities as an instrument of social control. The disparity between potentials offered by statutory provisions and the actual operation of judicial machineries was great, and remained so as long as the frontier exerted an influence on criminal and law-abiding elements of the population. This thesis relies on traditional historical methods of quantitative techniques. Statistical information gleaned from a four-year study of years 1872-1876 of the Harris County Criminal District Court facilitates analyses of the history and administrative structure of Harris County judicial departments, state penal codes and criminal procedures, and the personnel and machineries of the Criminal District Court itself. The picture which emerges is one of a burgeoning urban community's attempts to cope with crime through its primary legal institution, the Criminal District Court. Statistical information placed in historiographical and bibliographical context, yields insight into the character and effectiveness of the entire range of criminal court procedures. Moreover, statistical information compiled from documents generated by and materials referring to the Criminal District Court provide foundation for more general conclusions about nineteenth-century urban frontier society. As example, only about 3% of the recorded population of Harris County received indictments during the period from 1872 to 1876. Only 2% of those indicted appeared in census roles, city directories, or newspapers. Only 8.7% of indictments were eventually dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence. Defendants before the Criminal District Court pleaded not guilty in two-thirds of the cases, but slightly more than two-thirds of pleaded cases were adjudged guilty. From the beginning of the judicial process only one-half of prosecuted cases received conviction.Item Fractured confidence: Origins of American medical malpractice, 1790-1900(1989) De Ville, Kenneth Allen; Hyman, Harold M.By the 1840s medical men felt they were in the midst of an unprecedented malpractice epidemic. For the first time, American patients began to sue their physicians on a wide scale. Focusing on mid-century this dissertation describes, explains, and analyzes the origins of American medical malpractice. Patients sued their physicians in the 1840s because of immediate social, medical, and technological developments. The anti-status, anti-professional sentiment of the Jacksonian period antagonized the lay public. Americans had a long tradition of home remedies and had little patience with doctors who demanded respect and privilege but offered few cures. Intra-professional competition also generated conflict and many medical men incited suits against fellow practitioners. Dramatic advances in several areas of medicine crated unrealistic expectations in both physicians and patients and blurred standards of care. However, these immediate causes would not have engendered widespread suits without fundamental cultural changes. Many Americans changed their views on divine providence in the first half of the nineteenth century. This transformation allowed individuals to seek earthly causes for their misfortunes, assign blame, and demand compensation. At the same time a variety of forces combined to make Americans dramatically more concerned about their physical well-being. Finally, the erosion of traditional community customs inhibiting litigation and a transformation in individualism allowed patients to attack their physicians in court. These cultural developments did not cause malpractice suits, but without them widespread litigation would not have been possible. Malpractice law in the early part of the nineteenth century was in flux. American judges and lawyers relied on British precedents but altered them. Many scholars have claimed that legal relationships evolve from status-based responsibilities to contract-based responsibilities. I argue that this process occurred in malpractice law but was ultimately incomplete. The patterns set in the first half of the century continued through 1900. Many of the inciting causes of the 1840s disappeared. However new technological, social, professional, and legal factors arose to take their place. Most importantly, the underlying cultural trends that made the suits possible continued to develop and provided an increasingly hospitable social environment for malpractice suits.Item Justice lies in the district: A history of the United States District Court, Southern District of Texas, 1902-1960(1991) Zelden, Charles Louis; Hyman, Harold M.Created in 1902, the United States District Court, Southern District of Texas quickly grew into one of the nation's largest and busiest federal trial courts. Serving the rapidly maturing region of southeast Texas, the Court soon had a large and unmanageable docket of public and private cases. Despite the addition of a new judge in 1942 and two new judges in 1949, the Southern District's extensive caseload constantly exceeded the ability of the Court's judges to effectively adjudicate all the business before them. Faced with caseload gridlock, the judges were forced to set priorities between the Court's various public and private functions, giving some categories of action precedence over others. The resulting choices shaped both the actions of the Southern District Court and its wider social, economic and political effects. During the Court's first sixty years, one choice predominated. Pressed by various political, economic, social, personal and legal forces all stressing the need to promote the rapid economic development of southeast Texas, the Court's judges emphasized service to the private economic needs of regional and national businesses. They did this despite the presence of a strong public agenda demanding strict enforcement of government economic and social regulations. The end product of this private emphasis was that the Southern District Court served as a tool for businessmen in their drive to dominate southeast Texas's social, political and economic development. Though only one of many tools utilized by proponents of private economic development, the Southern District Court was especially effective in promoting the stable patterns of growth necessary for private control of southeast Texas's future. As a relatively independent institution able set its own agenda, the Court quickly adapted its services to meet the changing needs of businesses for stability or expansion. In tough economic times, the Court protected vulnerable and failed business from collapse; in times of expansion, it promoted strict standards of ethical business behavior needed for stability. The end result was that the Court played an important, perhaps key, role in promoting business's domination of southeast Texas in the twentieth century, and hence, in shaping southeast Texas's development.Item "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude": Free labor and American law, ca. 1815-1880(1992) Schmidt, James D.; Hyman, Harold M.Most nineteenth-century northerners did not see legal control of the employment relation or the labor market as contradictory with the free labor ethic. Antebellum work discipline rested on statutory and common law rules, the most important of which regulated labor contracts and proscribed vagrancy. With regard to work discipline, labor contracts crystallized the relationship of workers to individual employers, while vagrancy statutes defined the meaning of work in the community at large. Equally important, these legal principles helped construct gender, class structure, and social theory. Before the Civil War, northern courts adapted labor contract rules to specific modes of production, and by 1860 jurists and law writers formulated two opposing conceptions of law's place in work discipline. Vagrancy laws in the antebellum North served many functions. While labor discipline was the ultimate effect, these statutes expressed ideas about class, gender, and republicanism. Antebellum southerners developed a separate legal tradition, especially in the area of contract law. During the transition from slavery to free labor, antebellum contract and vagrancy laws influenced both emerging systems of labor, such as the Union army's program in Louisiana, and the constitutional meaning of freedom in the Thirteenth Amendment. Similarly, prewar labor law configured actions of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. As the case of Alabama shows, labor law was manipulated at times to secure rights for African-American workers, but it faltered because of resistance by southern whites and because of its basis in class. The Freedmen's Bureau's labor program also failed because of the ways in which local agents interpreted and administered antebellum legal principles, as occurred in South Carolina. In places such as Texas, bureau officials used labor law to oppress African-American workers, but both black and white Southerners manipulated legal restraints to their own advantage. By 1880 free labor law left its antebellum roots. Courts removed remaining restraints on individual labor contracts, while state legislatures passed tramp acts that enhanced the law's power over the meaning of work, gender, and class.Item No passion for prudery: morals enforcement in nineteenth century Houston(1977) Gay, Geoffrey; Hyman, Harold M.This thesis might properly he viewed as a case study in the relationship between morality and the criminal law. The criminal law defined unacceptable behavior and was designed to penalize immoral conduct, but individual communities decided upon the proper level of enforcement. Drinking, gambling, and prostitution were either prohibited or regulated by the criminal law, yet those vices were abundant and obvious in downtown Houston during the nineteenth century. Morals offenders received thirty per cent of the indictments from grand juries during the 188's, but convictions were rare and harsh penalties were virtually non-existent. Houston tolerated more immorality than was contemplated as permissible under criminal, law. The primary source material for this work was the grand jury indictments in Harris County, Texas during the 187’s and 188's. Those indictments suggest that the major forms of immoral conduct in Houston were gambling, prostitution, and the illegal sale of liquor. Indictments for sex crimes were rarely brought, but when they were, the law was selectively enforced against blacks. This thesis consists of six sections - an introduction, a conclusion, a chapter on the perception of immorality by grand juries and the police, a chapter on prostitution, a chapter on sex crimes, and a chapter on drinking and gambling. This thesis, also, contains a chart of the distribution of morals indictments during the 188's according to grand jury foremen and a map locating the saloons of 1885 and the houses of prostitution of the 188’s.Item Pioneer professional: General John M. Schofield and the development of a professional officer corps, 1888-1895(1982) Mixon, Robert Wilbur (b. 1952); Gruber, Ira D.; Haskell, Thomas L.; Hyman, Harold M.Historians have not given General John M. Schofield much credit for contributing to the development of professionalism in the Army officer corps, particularly during Schofield's tenure as Commanding General (1888-1895). Such assessments do not adequately describe his efforts. Schofield had a clear view of both the nature and the importance of professionalism by 1888. He had concluded that the officer corps should be composed of selfless, dedicated men who were experts in the theory and practice of war. As Commanding General he tried to create a corps of such men. Schofield instituted major reforms in officer education, ethics, and politics and legislation designed to make officership a rewarding profession for accomplished men. He worked also to establish an effective command system in the Army, where near chaos had existed before. The success of his program indicates that previous assessments of his contributions have been incomplete.Item Proceed to judgment: Aspects of judicial management of growth, change, and conflict in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, 1960--2000(2000) Wilson, Steven Harmon; Hyman, Harold M.This dissertation is an historical study of efforts, primarily by federal district judges, to manage growth, change, and conflict in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas during the second half of the twentieth century. Examples of judicial management as I use the phrase encompass a wide variety of activities the federal district judges in the Southern District have undertaken since the 1950s. The judges were required to cope with institutional growth, they felt obliged to foster social change, and they were called on to resolve political conflict. This dissertation examines ways in which various modes of judicial management were manifested in federal trials concerned broadly with civil rights, economic issues, and criminal justice. These three legal, topics exist within specific statutory and doctrinal frameworks that have evolved over the past half century. I will discuss relevant developments in the law pertaining. to the major topics as necessary. However, this dissertation is neither a study of the statutory changes within these three legal categories, nor primarily a study of changes in the theory and practice of judicial management of dockets, cases, or institutions. Rather, I employ these fundamental elements in combination in an attempt to portray a sense of the legal, social, and organizational changes which have transpired over several critical decades in the history of the Southern District of Texas.Item "Right and Ready": The law practice of Nathaniel Hart Davis, 1850--1883 (Texas)(1991) Dirck, Brian Richard; Hyman, Harold M.Historians are unfamiliar with the frontier attorney. We know little of who he represented, what types of cases he litigated and his day-to-day labors. Nathaniel Hart Davis practiced law in Montgomery, Texas from 1850 to 1883; by examining his career we may shed light on these issues. Davis specialized in civil law. Debt collection dominated his practice, but he also litigated land disputes, probate, slave law and divorce cases. He represented the propertied citizens of Montgomery, nearly always acting on behalf of the plaintiff. His energies were devoted primarily to out-of-court tasks: gathering information, tracking down debtors, buying and selling real estate for speculators, and disposing of probate property and debts. Davis was not the stereotypical incompetent, ignorant, parasitical frontier attorney. A cautious, learned man, Davis fulfilled a vital role in his community. He tried to ensure relatively smooth business transactions in an unstable Texas economy.Item The criminal law of slavery and freedom, 1800-1868(1973) Flanigan, Daniel J. (b. 1947); Hyman, Harold M.Item The federal response to the problem of crime in America: 1968 to 1972(1982) Walmsley, Andrew Stephen; Matusow, Allen J.; Wiener, Martin; Hyman, Harold M.In the mid-196s, a crime wave of epic proportions was perceived to be sweeping across the United States. The increase in crime, if such an increase took place, was probably due to the greater proportion of young (18 to 24 year olds) people in American society. The statistical evidence, upon which the perception of rising crime rested however, was extremely unreliable. Despite calling the problem primarily a local concern, the federal government undertook to address directly the issue of rising crime. Advised by liberal, sociologically oriented criminologists, the Johnson administration began a program of federal spending aimed at creating more legitimate opportunities through which would-be delinquents could express themselves in a less anti-social manner. During the passage of the legislation, conservative Congressmen, influenced by the public violence and hysteria of 1967 and 1968, attached non-liberal, more overtly punitive, provisions to the measure. In operation, the act proved to be an expensive and wasteful failure. Crime increased steadily from 1968 to 1972 despite the program. Money was either hoarded by local bodies, or spent hastily on projects the efficacy-of which as far as reducing the incidence of crime was concerned was never proven.Item The origins of the Texas Railroad Commission(1982) Fowler, Pamela McDougald; Hyman, Harold M.; Hyland, Richard P.; Higginbotham, S. W.The political and economic structures of nineteenth-century Texas did not mirror fidelity to laissez faire ideology. Like their neighbors to the north and east, Anglo Texans sought to develop their state's economy by whatever means seemed practicable. Railroads provided the technological solution to Texas' formidable transportation problems. But the state did not have the resources to build a rail network. To attract private investment, Texas subsidized railroad corporations with land grants on the state level and tax-supported bond subscriptions as well as cash gifts on the county and municipal levels of government. From the beginning of subsidization, the state government regulated corporate activities. American courts developed three legal doctrines to legitimize subsidization and regulation. They were the common law doctrine of "public interest," the eminent domain power, and the state police power. As the economic clout of corporate business increased, majoritarian state governments undertook more stringent regulation. They delegated certain powers of sovereignty to agencies which could formulate regulations having the force of law. The agencies were empowered to enforce their regulations. The Texas Railroad Commission was a prime example of such an agency. Its creation represented a culmination of legal and political development over the course of the century.