The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions, Volumes I–V.. Moore’s only recorded Supreme Court opinion is a five-paragraph statement on the undeclared
Trang 1and made thousands of copies to distribute through local churches the following Sunday
They asked for a show of support for Rosa Parks
in a one-day boycott of the city’s buses On December 5, 1955, 90 percent of Montgomery’s black citizens avoided use of the public buses
Wanting to capitalize on the momentum, church ministers in the area quickly mobilized and organized the Montgomery Improvement Association as the flagship entity to lead a formal boycott The ministers elected 27-year-old new-comer,MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., as the spokesper-son for the new organization Formal demands were made to the city and the bus company
African Americans wanted more courteous service, black bus drivers hired for the black routes, and a first-come, first-served (but still segregated) rider policy
To punctuate the seriousness of the protests, Montgomery citizens (black and white) formed what was locally referred to as a“taxicab army.”
They refused to ride the public buses and instead walked to their destinations or hailed taxicabs driven by African Americans As part of the boycott, the taxi drivers had agreed to charge a reduced rate of ten cents per person, equal to the public bus fare When riders began sharing taxicab fares and riding together in the same direction, city officials declared it illegal
In response, people began donating their own vehicles to transport riders Others began volunteering their services as drivers for those who needed to travel farther than they could walk By the end of the first week, more than
20,000 black citizens of Montgomery were getting rides to work through the Montgomery Improvement Association
In February 1956, city officials obtained an
INJUNCTION against the boycott and used a 1921 law prohibiting the hindrance of a bus as grounds to arrest 156 protesters Martin Luther King Jr was also arrested, convicted, and ordered to pay fines Ultimately, Fred Gray, a young black Montgomery attorney, filed an action on behalf of a group of black citizens
He sought a DECLARATORY JUDGMENT finding Alabama’s state statutes and Montgomery city ordinances unenforceable and unconstitutional under the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT to the U.S Constitution The laws and ordinances required separate accommodations on any commercial vehicle operated by any motor transportation company within the state of Alabama and the city of Montgomery The bus company, in res-ponse, had alleged that segregation on privately owned buses was valid under the laws
A three-member federal panel struck down the laws, finding the 1954 Supreme Court ruling
in BROWN V BOARD OF EDUCATION(repudiating a
“separate but equal” principle) applicable to city buses The U.S Supreme Court upheld the deci-sion, and the successful boycott ended in major victory
FURTHER READINGS Bermanzohn, Sally Avery 2000 “Violence, Nonviolence, and the Civil Rights Movement ” New Political Science.
22, no 1.
“Montgomery Bus Boycott.” Excerpted from Dr Martin Luther King Jr Papers Project: Encyclopedia Undated Available online at http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index php/kingpapers/article/montgomery_bus_boycott_1955_ 1956/; website home page: http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu (accessed August 17, 2009.)
Boycott ” Footsteps 2.
CROSS REFERENCES Civil Rights Acts; Discrimination.
MONUMENT
Anything by which the memory of a person, thing, idea, art, science or event is preserved or perpetuated A tomb where a dead body has been deposited
In REAL-PROPERTY law and surveying, visible marks or indications left on natural or other objects indicating the lines and boundaries of a survey Any physical object on the ground that helps to establish the location of a boundary line called for;
Rosa Parks’s refusal
to give up her bus seat
to a white man on
December 1, 1955,
sparked the 11-month
long Montgomery Bus
Boycott.
AP IMAGES
118 MONUMENT
Trang 2it may be either natural (e.g., trees, rivers, and
other land features) or artificial (e.g., fences, stones,
stakes, or the like placed by human hands)
vMOODY, WILLIAM HENRY
William Henry Moody, Supreme Court
appoin-tee of THEODORE ROOSEVELT, served the Court
from 1906 to 1910 The Massachusetts
Repub-lican, representative, and two-time cabinet
member supported the progressive policies of
his era He was especially respected by his
colleagues for his skill in the area ofANTITRUST
LAW Moody’s service on the Court was ended
prematurely due to health problems
Moody was born on December 23, 1853, in
Newbury, Massachusetts from a long line of
New England, Puritan ancestry He was
educa-ted at Phillips Academy and found his first real
success in life as an athlete on the Harvard
baseball team He graduated from Harvard in
1876 with honors in history, ranking third in
his class After Harvard, he worked in the law
office ofRICHARD DANA He was admitted to the
bar in 1878
Moody established a private practice in
Haverhill, Massachusetts, and served as the city
solicitor for two years (1888–1890) In 1890 he
was appointed district attorney for the eastern
district of Massachusetts He was one of the
state’s two prosecutors in the trial of LIZZIE
BORDEN, who was charged with murdering her
father and stepmother with an ax in 1892
Although Borden was acquitted, Moody won
respect for his performance in the trial
Shortly after the Borden case, the
Repub-licans nominated Moody to a seat in Congress
He was elected to the House of Representatives
in November 1895 and became one of its most
influential members On April 30, 1902, he resigned from the House to become Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of the Navy
Two years later he was appointed attorney general He successfully argued the landmark antitrust case of Swift and Company v United States, 196 U.S 375, 25 S Ct 276, 49 L Ed 518 (1905), before the Supreme Court The govern-ment had obtained an INJUNCTION against the trust by arguing that a combination of corpora-tions and individuals, after purchasing livestock and converting it to fresh meat, sold products
in interstate commerce in such a manner as to suppress competition both in livestock and fresh meats The trust appealed the injunction
Moody won a perpetual injunction, but the
William H Moody LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
❖
1853 Born,
Newbury, Mass.
1914–18 World War I 1861–65
U.S Civil War
1904–06 Served as U.S attorney general
1917 Died, Haverhill, Mass.
1876 Graduated from Harvard
◆
◆
1908 Wrote
opinion in Twining
v New Jersey
1906–10 Served as associate justice of the Supreme Court
1892 Led prosecution team in Lizzie Borden trial
1890 Appointed district attorney for the eastern district of Mass.
◆
◆
1878 Admitted to Mass bar
1888–90 Served
as city solicitor in Haverhill, Mass.
1895 Elected to the U.S.
House
◆
1902 Appointed secretary of the Navy under Theodore Roosevelt
◆
Trang 3trust ignored it Moody was infuriated and instigated aGRAND JURYinvestigation in Chicago, which led to indictment of all the major packers Through Moody’s success in prosecut-ing Swift and Company, the Supreme Court first formulated the “stream of commerce”
doctrine, which held corporations responsible for all of their interstate commercial activities
After the resignation of Associate Justice
HENRY B.BROWN, Roosevelt appointed Moody to the Supreme Court in 1906 Moody’s most important opinion with the Court was probably that in Twining v New Jersey, 211 U.S 78, 29
S Ct 14, 53 L Ed 97 (1908), which held that the Fourteenth Amendment’sDUE PROCESS CLAUSEdid not incorporate theFIFTH AMENDMENTright against
SELF-INCRIMINATION and apply it to the states
Twining was overruled in 1964 by Malloy v
Hogan, 378 U.S 1, 84 S Ct 1489, 12 L Ed 2d 653
Moody continued to serve the Court until
1910, at which time acute rheumatism forced his retirement He died July 2, 1917, in Haver-hill, Massachusetts
FURTHER READINGS Congressional Quarterly 2004 Guide to the U.S Supreme Court 4th ed Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quar-terly.
Friedman, Leon, and Fred L Israel, eds 1995 The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions, Volumes I–V New York: Chelsea House.
Watts, James F Jr 1969 “William Moody,” in The Justices of the United States Supreme Court 1789–1969, eds Leon Friedman and Fred L Israel New York: Chelsea House.
vMOORE, ALFRED
As an associate justice, Alfred Moore served on the U.S Supreme Court for five years The ardent federalist, whose life and political career
involved danger, controversy, and principled stands, left little mark on the Court’s business during his service from 1799 to 1804 Although
he fought in the Revolutionary War and later held high office in North Carolina, Moore’s fire had mostly left him by the time President JOHN ADAMS appointed him to the Supreme Court Even at a time when the Court decided major cases, he either acquiesced to the majority or did not participate in certain decisions because
of poor health He wrote just one opinion, Bas v Tingy, 4 U.S (4 Dall.) 37, 1 L Ed 731 (1800), important only in its historical relevance
to the United States’ undeclared naval war with France in the last years of the eighteenth century
Moore was a youth during the country’s difficult transition from British colony to independent nation Born on May 21, 1755, in New Hanover County, North Carolina, he was the son of Maurice Moore, a colonial judge Moore studied in Boston before being educated
in law by his father, and he was admitted to the North Carolina bar at the age of 20 in 1775 Soon after, he fought against the British, first as
a soldier and then as a saboteur During the war Moore’s brother, father, and uncle were killed, the family plantation was ransacked, and their home was destroyed
Moore was a member of the North Carolina legislature in 1782 and 1792 From 1782 to
1791 he served as the state’s attorney general, arguing one particularly important case, Bayard v Singleton, 1 N.C (Mart.) 5 (1787), which marked one of the first complete discussions of the doctrine of JUDICIAL REVIEW
(the authority of courts to determine the validity of legislation under the Constitution)
❖
1755 Born, New
Hanover County, N.C.
❖
1775–83 American Revolution
1812–14 War of 1812
◆
1775 Admitted
to North Carolina bar
1810 Died, Bladen County, N.C.
1782–91 Served as attorney general of N.C.
1803 Did not participate
in Marbury
v Madison
decision
1788 Spearheaded N Carolina's ratification of the U.S Constitution
1799–1804 Served as associate justice on the U.S Supreme Court
1800 Wrote opinion in
Bas v Tingy declaring
that France and the United States
"should be called enemies"
120 MOORE, ALFRED
Trang 4A federalist who firmly believed in central
government, he spearheaded North Carolina’s
ratification of the U.S Constitution in 1788 In
1791 Moore took the strongest personal stand
of his career when he resigned from the office of
attorney general; he stepped down over the state
legislature’s creation of the office of SOLICITOR
GENERALwith powers equivalent to his, an action
he saw as unconstitutional He won reelection
to the legislature but failed in a 1795 bid for the
U.S Senate by one vote
In 1799 President John Adams nominated
Moore to fill a vacancy on the U.S Supreme
Court created by the death of Associate Justice
JAMES IREDELL The next five years were pivotal
ones for the Supreme Court, which expanded its
powers of judicial review under the highly
influential Chief Justice JOHN MARSHALL
How-ever, failing health minimized Moore’s role He
did not participate in the most important
decision of his day,MARBURY V MADISON, 5 U.S
(1 Cranch) 137, 2 L Ed 60 (1803)
Moore’s only recorded Supreme Court
opinion is a five-paragraph statement on the
undeclared naval war between France and the
United States This war reached its height in 1798
and 1799 and was fought chiefly over French
claims to seize all cargo of British origin from
both British and U.S ships Although Congress
passed many acts in relation to the conflict,
problems arose over the ownership of goods
that were recaptured, and in one instance the
issue was resolved by determining whether
France and the United States were enemy
nations When Bas v Tingy reached the Supreme
Court in 1800, each of the four justices hearing
the case agreed that the two nations were indeed
foes Moore’s opinion declared, “It is for the
honor and dignity of both nations that they
should be called enemies.”
In 1804 Moore resigned from the Court He
died on October 15, 1810, in Bladen County,
North Carolina, leaving as part of his legacy the
establishment of the University of North
Carolina
FURTHER READINGS
Congressional Quarterly 2004 Guide to the U.S Supreme
Court 4th ed Washington, D.C.: Congressional
Quarterly.
Friedman, Leon, and Fred L Israel, eds 1995 The Justices
of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and
Major Opinions, Volumes I–V New York: Chelsea
House.
Justices, ” in A Book of Legal Lists New York: Oxford Univ Press.
MOOT
An issue presenting no real controversy
Moot refers to a subject for academic argument It is an abstract question that does not arise from existing facts or rights
MOOT COURT
Moot court is a method of teaching law and legal skills that requires students to analyze and argue both sides of a hypothetical legal issue using procedures modeled on those employed in state and federal appellate courts
In the mid-1700s moot courts in the United States had a tradition of debate and oratory revered in undergraduate institutions such as Yale College Moot court exercises have chan-ged in the United States since that time Law instructors present hypothetical cases and students argue them before professors and other lawyers (and sometimes fellow students), who serve as judges Hypothetical cases often address matters of current political and consti-tutional import
Moot court requirements vary from law school to law school, with most schools man-dating that students participate at least once in a
Alfred Moore ETCHING BY ALBERT ROSENTHAL.
COLLECTION OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.
I F WORDS ARE BUT THE REPRESENTATIVE
OF IDEAS , BY WHAT OTHER WORD
[ CAN ] THE IDEA OF THE RELATIVE SITUATION OF
A MERICA AND
F RANCE BE COMMUNICATED ,
THAN BY THAT OF HOSTILITY OR WAR ?
—A LFRED M OORE
MOOT COURT 121
Trang 5moot court argument before receiving their law degree Many law schools offer a series
of moot court opportunities for students of differing skill levels and legal interests The activity is competitive by nature, and students vie for honors within their school and in regional and national moot court competitions featuring teams of students from several law schools
Moot court helps students learn to analyze legal issues; its larger purpose is to teach students the practical side of practicing law
Typically, law students are given a detailed hypothetical fact scenario that raises one or more legal issues Often these fact patterns are based on real cases on appeal to a state’s highest court or the U.S SUPREME COURT Students choose or are assigned the position on the issue
to be argued They then conduct legal research, finding statutes, regulations, and CASE LAW that both support their position and detract from it
An important part of the moot court process is
to teach students to overcome legal authority (statutes, regulations, and cases) that cuts against their position
Students then draft APPELLATE briefs, which are formal legal papers combining a recital of the facts of the case with analysis and argument
of the legal issues raised As with real appellate courts, moot courts generally dictate many specific requirements for a brief, including the size of the paper, the width of the margins, and the maximum number of pages Citations to legal authority must also be listed in a uniform style
Once the briefs are written, students prepare for the second phase of moot court advocacy:
oral argument Oral argument demands prepa-ration, organization, and the ability to think quickly and respond convincingly when ques-tioned The student appears before a panel of judges and presents her or his position on the legal issue Each student has a time limit, normally five to ten minutes, to convince the panel As with real appellate courts, judges on the panel are free to interrupt frequently and
at any time to ask questions about the facts
of the case, legal authority for or against the argument, or the student’s thoughts and opinions about the case’s outcome Students learn to anticipate difficult questions about their legal position and respond intelligently and
persuasively Following oral argument, the moot court panel often will review the student’s performance
Moot court is modeled after the appellate procedure employed in state and federal courts Moot court is sometimes confused with mock trials, a similar learning method by which students conduct a jury trial based on a hypo-thetical fact pattern Where moot court empha-sizes legal research, analysis, writing, and oral advocacy, mock trials emphasize jury persua-sion techniques and a thorough familiarity with theRULES OF EVIDENCE
Top moot court advocates from law schools throughout the country compete each year at a variety of national moot court competitions, many having a focus on a specific area of the law The National Moot Court Competition is held annually in New York City and focuses on issues of CONSTITUTIONAL LAW The Philip C Jessup INTERNATIONAL LAW Moot Court Compe-tition, held each spring in Washington, D.C., is sponsored by the American Society of Interna-tional Law and the InternaInterna-tional Law Students Association The Chief Judge Conrad B Duber-stein National Bankruptcy Moot Court is an annual competition focusing on BANKRUPTCY
issues
FURTHER READINGS Bucholtz, Barbara K., Martin A Frey, and Melissa L Tatum.
2002 The Little Black Book: A Do-It-Yourself Guide for Law Student Competitions Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press.
Davis, Tracy Hamrick 1995 “The Holderness Moot Court Bench ” North Carolina Law Review 73 (January) Mellhorn, Donald F., Jr 1995 “A Moot Court Exercise: Debating Judicial Review prior to Marbury v Madison.” Constitutional Comment 12 (winter).
Teply, Larry L 2003 Law School Competitions in a Nutshell.
St Paul, Minn.: Thomson/West.
CROSS REFERENCES Appellate; Legal Education.
MORAL LAW
The rules of behavior an individual or a group may follow out of personal conscience and that are not necessarily part of legislated law in the United States
Moral law is a system of guidelines for behavior These guidelines may or may not be part of a religion, codified in written form, or legally enforceable For some people moral law
is synonymous with the commands of a divine
122 MORAL LAW
Trang 6being For others, moral law is a set of universal
rules that should apply to everyone
Ethical principles held primarily by the
followers of Christianity have influenced the
development of U.S secular law As a result,
Christian moral law and secular law overlap in
many situations For example, murder, theft,
prostitution, and other behaviors labeled
im-moral are also illegal Moral turpitude is a legal
term used to describe a crime that demonstrates
depravity in one’s public and private life,
contrary to what is accepted and customary
People convicted of this crime can be
disqua-lified from government office, lose their license
to practice law, or be deported (in the case of
immigrants)
Passing laws is relatively easy when public
policy makers can unanimously identify
behav-ior that is socially unacceptable Policy makers
can then attempt to enforce socially correct
behavior through legal channels However, in
many other situations, it is far more difficult
to determine what behavior the government
should promote, if any When a government
seeks to implement a code of conduct that may
conflict with the U.S Constitution, the courts
are generally called upon to determine the law’s
validity
ABORTION is an area where legal and moral
principles converge and often conflict In 1973
the U.S Supreme Court ruled in ROE V.WADE,
410 U.S 113, 93 S Ct 705, 35 L Ed 2d 147,
that a woman’s decision to have an abortion is a
private choice that is protected by the
Constitu-tion, at least until the end of the first trimester
of pregnancy After a fetus is viable (able to
survive outside the womb), the state may
regulate the woman’s pregnancy and prohibit
abortion except if the woman’s life is in danger
Some advocates of legalized abortion as well
as some critics believe that the current legal
situation is inadequate To protect either the
rights of the pregnant woman or the rights of
the fetus is a moral question that individuals
decide for themselves Yet the extent to which
people should be allowed to act on their beliefs
and exercise their rights is debated in the arena
of legislative and judiciary decision making
Medical science is a field where evolving
technology can create moral crises that have
legal consequences TheAMERICAN MEDICAL
ASSO-CIATIONsponsors a Council on Ethical and
Judi-cial Affairs, which debates such problems as
assisted suicide, harvesting organs over the objections of family, and whether to include HIV status on autopsy reports
Many public policy issues form a crossroad
of legal and moral law, including EUTHANASIA, assisted suicide, same-sex marriages, andCAPITAL PUNISHMENT
FURTHER READINGS Kant, Immanuel 2005 The Moral Law New York: Routledge.
McWilliams, Peter 1996 Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do.
Los Angeles: Prelude.
Tivnan, Edward 1995 The Moral Imagination: Confronting the Ethical Issues of Our Day New York: Simon &
Schuster.
CROSS REFERENCES Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome; Animal Rights;
Death and Dying; Ethics, Legal; Fetal Rights; Fetal Tissue Research; Gay and Lesbian Rights; Genetic Engineering;
Genetic Screening; Health Care Law; Health Insurance; Juris-prudence; Natural Law; Organ Donation Law; Organ Trans-plantation; Patients ’ Rights; Slavery; Surrogate Motherhood.
MORAL RELATIVISM
The philosophized notion that right and wrong are not absolute values, but are personalized according
to the individual and his or her circumstances or cultural orientation It can be used positively to effect change in the law (e.g., promoting tolerance for other customs or lifestyles) or negatively as a means to attempt justification for wrongdoing or lawbreaking The opposite of moral relativism is moral absolutism, which espouses a fundamental,
NATURAL LAW of constant values and rules, and which judges all persons equally, irrespective of individual circumstances or cultural differences
Within the U.S justice system, constant values or rules (represented by constitutional, statutory, or case law) are intended to be structurally tempered to accommodate moral relativity For example, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, who served on the U.S Supreme Court from
1902 to 1932, is credited with being the first Supreme Court justice to state that the U.S
Constitution was an organic document—a living constitution subject to changing interpretation
Many times since, Supreme Court justices, in their opinions, have referred to the notion of
“evolving” law when modifying, refining, or, in rare circumstances, overruling earlier precedent
Likewise, statutory laws are enacted or repealed
by Congress or state legislators in an effort to
MORAL RELATIVISM 123
Trang 7best reflect the principles and mores of their constituency
Notwithstanding this flexible approach to law, moral relativism often plays a significant role in the shaping of law and the punishment
of criminals In 2002 U.S News & World Report cited a Zogby International poll of 401 randomly selected college seniors, which was commissioned by the National Association of Scholars According to the results, 73 percent of the students interviewed indicated that they were taught by professors that uniform stan-dards of right and wrong do not exist, but were instead dependent upon individual values and cultural diversity Such attitudes and percep-tions affect not only the thinking of subsequent generations of politicians and lawmakers, but also the courtroom adjudication of existing laws
In many jury trials, defense attorneys attempt to persuade jurors that the law should
be applied differently to a particular defendant
Examples of persuasive arguments may include such operative language as requesting that jurors
be “more fair” or “more just” to a particular defendant, or that in order for “justice to be served,” jurors must excuse the defendant’s conduct as justifiable under the circumstances
FURTHER READINGS Cauthen, Kenneth 2001 The Ethics of Belief: A Bio-Historical Approach Lima, OH: CSS.
Harman, Gilbert, and Jarvis Thomson 1996 Moral Relativ-ism and Moral Objectivity New York: Blackwell.
Lukes, Steven 2008 Moral Relativism New York: Picador.
CROSS REFERENCES Jury Nullification; Moral Law.
MORAL TURPITUDE
A phrase used in criminal law to describe conduct that is considered contrary to community stan-dards of justice, honesty, or good morals
Crimes involving moral turpitude, known simply as “turpitude” in some jurisdictions, include conduct that is contrary to justice, honesty, or morality Moral turpitude has been defined as an act of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties that one person owes to another, or to society in general, contrary to the accepted and customary rule of right and duty between people Examples
of crimes involving moral turpitude include
TREASON, ESPIONAGE, MURDER, RAPE, BURGLARY,
LARCENY, ROBBERY, ARSON, KIDNAPPING, BRIBERY,
PERJURY, and solicitation of prostitutes
In the area of legal ethics, offenses involving moral turpitude–such as FRAUD or breach of trust–traditionally make a person unfit to practice law Thus, a CONSPIRACY to bribe state court judge with a $40,000 payment to obtain a favorable ruling was deemed a“crime of moral turpitude” within the meaning of statute requiring mandatory disbarment for attorneys engaged in the conspiracy; bribery inherently involves moral turpitude, the court concluded, and conspiracy to commit a crime of moral turpitude is itself crime of moral turpitude D.C Official Code, 2001 Ed § 11-2503(a) In re Balducci —A.2d ——, 2009 WL 2252296 (D.C
COURT OF APPEAL 2009)
In defamation law, it is deemed slander per se
to wrongfully accuse another person of a behavior involving moral turpitude, which this area of TORT LAW describes as a shameful wickedness that is so extreme a departure from ordinary standards of honest, good morals, justice, or ethics as to be shocking to the moral sense of the community Examples include accusing a married man of having a mistress, accusing a married woman of unchaste beha-vior, or accusing a business man of fraud or embezzlement
ResidentALIENSwho have been convicted for crimes of moral turpitude may be excluded from the United States, while non-resident aliens who commit such crimes may be lawfully denied entry into the country The remedies of
DEPORTATION and exclusion also apply to aliens who admit having committed a crime of moral turpitude, or to committing acts that constitute the essential elements of such a crime, even if they have not been convicted of the crime Under § 203 of theIMMIGRATIONand Nationality Technical Corrections Act of 1994, an alien who merely attempts to commit a crime of moral turpitude is deportable Pub L No 103-416 Many courts have found implied in every contract of employment a requirement that the employee will conduct himself with such decency and propriety as not to injure the employer in his business In some lines of work, any public immoral conduct, although having no direct relation to the employment and though not impairing the physical or intellectual capa-city of the employee, will destroy the employee’s usefulness to his or her employer
124 MORAL TURPITUDE
Trang 8One group of employees who may be
terminated for immoral conduct or acts of moral
turpitude is school teachers Some state statutes
provide that a teacher who commits an act that
constitutes a crime of moral turpitude may be
dismissed The teacher’s act must constitute a
crime involving moral turpitude, although a
criminal conviction is not necessary, nor need
there be a separate showing of a nexus between
the act or acts of moral turpitude and the
teacher’s fitness or capacity to perform his or
her duties, the reason being that if a teacher
cannot abide by these standards his or her fitness
as a teacher is necessarily called into question
CROSS REFERENCES
Arson; Bribery; Burglary; Defamation; Espionage;
Kidnap-ping; Larceny; Murder; Perjury; Rape; Robbery; Treason.
MORATORIUM
A suspension of activity or an authorized period of
delay or waiting A moratorium is sometimes
agreed upon by the interested parties, or it may be
authorized or imposed by operation of law The
term also is used to denote a period of time during
which the law authorizes a delay in payment of
debts or performance of some other legal
obliga-tion This type of moratorium is most often
invoked during times of distress, such as war or
natural disaster
Government bodies may declare moratoria
for a broad range of reasons For example, a local
government may attempt to regulate property
development by imposing a moratorium on the
issuance of building permits The legality of such
a moratorium is generally determined by
mea-suring its impact on the affected parties In
1987 the U.S Supreme Court held that certain
moratoria on property development may be
unconstitutional takings, thus making it more
difficult for local governments to slow
develop-ment in their communities (First English
Evan-gelical Lutheran Church v Los Angeles County, 482
U.S 304, 107 S Ct 2378, 96 L Ed 2d 250) On
the other hand, in 1995 the Court upheld a
30-day moratorium on lawyer advertising that was
challenged as an infringement ofFIRST AMENDMENT
rights (Florida Bar v Went For It, Inc., 515 U.S
618, 115 S Ct 2371, 132 L Ed 2d 541)
Many state legislatures have passed
morato-rium legislation in response to popular demand
for debt relief during emergencies The
consti-tutionality of these statutes is determined using
a two-pronged analysis First, the courts con-sider the effect of the moratorium on the rights
of the parties to the impaired contract If the moratorium changes only the remedy for breach and not the terms of the contract, it is generally upheld (see Sturges v Crowninshield,
17 U.S [4 Wheat.] 122, 4 L Ed 529 [1819])
Second, if the moratorium is a response to a bona fide emergency, it is upheld (see Johnson v
Duncan, 3 Mart 530 [La 1815], upholding a moratorium passed when the British invaded Louisiana in 1814)
As a function of itsPOLICE POWER, a state may suspend contractual rights when public welfare, health, or safety are threatened However, this police power is limited by standards of reasonableness During theWORLD WAR Ihousing shortage, some New York landlords raised rents
to exorbitant levels and evicted tenants who failed to pay In response to what it perceived as
a public health and safety emergency, the state legislature passed a law that limited rentals to reasonable amounts, gave courts authority to determine reasonableness, and prohibited land-lords from evicting tenants willing to pay reasonable rents The law was sustained by the U.S Supreme Court in Marcus Brown Holding
Co v Feldman, 256 U.S 170, 41 S Ct 465, 65
L Ed 877 (1921)
An example of a contemporary debt morato-rium is the Minnesota Mortgage Moratomorato-rium Act (1933 Minn Laws 514), passed by the Minnesota legislature in response to a sharp rise
in foreclosures on mortgaged farm property The constitutionality of the act was challenged in Home Building & Loan Association v Blaisdell,
290 U.S 398, 54 S Ct 231, 78 L Ed 413 (1934),
in which the Supreme Court upheld the legisla-tion based on five criteria: a bona fide emergency existed; the statute addressed a legitimate societal interest; debt relief was granted only under limited conditions; contractual rights were rea-sonably protected; and the legislation was of limited duration This act was extended until
1942 Fifty years later the Minnesota legislature responded again to public pressure to relieve farm debts by passing another Mortgage Mora-torium Act (Minn Stat § 583.03[Supp 1983])
FURTHER READINGS Amundson, Roland C., and Lewis J Rotman 1984.
“Depression Jurisprudence Revisited: Minnesota’s Mor-atorium on Mortgage Foreclosure.” William Mitchell Law Review 10.
MORATORIUM 125
Trang 9Chemerinsky, Erwin 2006 Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies Frederick, MD: Aspen.
Hoffman, P 1970 Moratorium: an American Protest New York: Tower.
MORMON CHURCH
The Mormon Church is a religious body founded in 1830 in Fayette, New York, by Joseph Smith It is also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the LDS Church There are more than 13 million Mormons worldwide Approximately 46 per-cent reside in the United States, with the highest concentration in the western states, especially Utah The church, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, encountered legal difficul-ties during its early years because of its practice
of POLYGAMY and its opposition to the use of
COMMON LAW as legal precedent The church’s differences with the U.S government led to armed conflict in the late 1800s
Joseph Smith based his teachings on his translation of hieroglyphic messages revealed to him on several golden plates Smith’s transla-tion of these divine messages is known as the Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon and the Bible form the basis of Mormon belief
During the early 1800s, Smith and his followers settled in Kirtland, Ohio, and Jackson County, Missouri, where they were persecuted because of their beliefs They moved to Illinois and helped establish the town of Nauvoo, where the church prospered However, local residents became inflamed over rumors that Smith and his followers were practicing polygamy, or plural marriage Smith and his brother Hyrum were arrested and taken to Carthage, the county seat On June 27, 1844, they were both shot and killed by a group of townspeople
Smith was succeeded by Brigham Young, the head of the church’s Council of the Twelve Apostles In 1846 Young organized and directed church members to follow him from Nauvoo to the Great Salt Basin in the Utah Territory They settled there and established the headquarters of the church in Salt Lake City
In Utah the Mormon Church prospered and grew In addition to leading the church, Young became provisional governor of the Utah Territory in 1849 In that capacity, he and the other members of the government, most of whom were Mormons, defied the U.S govern-ment by rejecting common law as valid legal
precedent in Utah Common law, as distinct from statutory law, is English precedent adop-ted by U.S courts Over time common law became part of U.S.JURISPRUDENCEexcept where
it was expressly abrogated Although Young patterned the structure of Utah’s territorial government after the other state governments, with executive, legislative, and judicial branches,
he believed that the United States should abandon all vestiges of English tradition According to Young, the application of com-mon law allowed judges too much latitude to impose standards that did not comport with public will
Young’s opposition to the application of common law reached its nadir over the issue of polygamy By the mid-1800s the Mormon Church had acknowledged polygamy as one of its tenets Mormon teaching of the time held that men were obligated to have multiple wives Common law provides that marriage to more than one living husband or wife is a felony and that any marriages other than the first are void When President MILLARD FILLMORE assigned three federal judges to the Utah Territory in the 1850s, Young became concerned that the new judges would impose common law precedent
He attempted to blunt their impact by urging the legislature to prohibit judges from using common law precedent in Utah On January 14,
1854, the legislature passed a bill that prohibited any law from being read, cited, or adopted in Utah unless it had been enacted by the legislature or the governor This bill directly contravened the Organic Act of Utah of 1850 (9 Stat 453), by which the U.S Congress created the Utah Territory The act gave the U.S Supreme Court and the federal district courts
of the territory both common law and equity jurisdiction and established that the laws of the United States applied in the territory In 1856, the Territorial Supreme Court held that the Organic Act extended common law over the Territory of Utah and that the legislature violated the Organic Act when it forbade the use
of common law in Utah (People v Moroni Green, 1 Utah 11 [1856])
Tensions continued to mount between Mormons and the federal government In May
1857 PresidentJAMES BUCHANANdispatched 2,500 U.S Army troops to Utah to remove Young from office and enforce federal authority Anticipating the federal troops’ arrival, a group
126 MORMON CHURCH
Trang 10of angry Mormons joined forces with a group of
Paiute Indians who attacked and killed 120
settlers traveling through the territory in
September 1857 Mormon leaders feared that
the attack, known as the Mountain Meadows
Massacre, would lead to further reprisals by the
federal government They sent sympathetic
church members to destroy the Army’s supplies,
thereby delaying the troops’ arrival The
Mor-mons’ resistance came to be known as the Utah
War By the time the troops arrived in the
summer of 1858, tensions had eased
consider-ably, and under a negotiated settlement, troops
were stationed outside Salt Lake City without
incident
The Mormon Church’s resistance to the
application of common law continued through
the late 1800s A number of cases reached the
Territorial Supreme Court, which repeatedly
affirmed that common law was valid in the
territory (See Murphy v Carter, 1 Utah 17
[1868], and Godebe v Salt Lake City, 1 Utah 68
[1870].) In First National Bank of Utah v
Kinner, 1 Utah 100 (1873), the court held that
the people of the Utah territory had tacitly
agreed to the application of common law In
1878 the U.S Supreme Court settled the
question of whether the common law
prohibi-tion of polygamy applied in the territory In
Reynolds v United States, 98 U.S (8 Otto) 145,
25 L Ed 244, the plaintiff argued that the
common law prohibition of polygamy was
unconstitutional because it violated the FIRST
AMENDMENT guarantee of freedom of religion
The court disagreed and held that religious
freedom does not encompass the practice of
polygamy and that laws prohibiting the practice
are constitutional The court stated that to allow
Mormons to practice plural marriage“would be
to make the professed doctrines of religious
belief superior to the LAW OF THE LAND and, in
effect, permit every citizen to become a law unto
himself Government could exist only in name
under such circumstances.”
By the 1890s the Mormon Church had
officially abandoned the practice of plural
marriage In 1896 Utah became a state, and
in 1898 the legislature passed a measure that
declared that the common law“shall be the rule
of decision in all courts of this state” (The
REVISED STATUTES of the State of Utah, § 2488)
The common law continues to carry the force of
precedent in Utah, except for the common law
of crimes, which the legislature abolished in
1973 (Utah Code Ann § 76-1-105; repealed, Utah Code Ann § 68-2-3; replaced by Utah Code Ann § 68-3-1)
A derivative of the Mormon Church, known
as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church), has been the subject of considerable controversy since the mid-2000s The FLDS Church was created by former members of the LDS Church who left the LDS after it denounced the practice of plural marriage The leader of the FLDS Church, Warren Jeffs, garnered international attention
in 2006 when he was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list Jeffs was sought for alleged sexual contact with a minor and being an
ACCOMPLICE to RAPE The charges related to an
ALLEGATIONthat Jeffs had forced a teenage girl to marry and have sex with an adult man Once captured, Jeffs faced trial for additional charges and was ultimately convicted of two counts of being an accomplice to rape He was sentenced
to a term of 10 years to life in prison On the date he was sentenced, Jeff resigned from his position as head of the FLDS Church
Another controversy involving the FLDS Church took place in 2008 at a ranch owned by the Church in Texas Based on an apparent tip from a teenager living at the ranch, police raided the property and took custody of more than 450 children living there The children
Brigham Young was the second president of the Mormon Church and colonizer of Utah The church’s resistance to the application of common law resulted
in conflict with the federal government during the 1800s LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MORMON CHURCH 127