The Conflict between the Chief Justice and the Chief Executive: Ex parte Merryman

Rarely does the clash of ideas on the scope of governmental authority get reduced to a direct conflict between leaders of the branches of government. However, early in the Civil War period, the Chief Executive and the Chief Justice confronted each other in a direct fashion. The stakes were high, because the issues related to the conflict between national security and personal liberty.     

Duty and Justice at "Every Man's Door": The Grand Jury Charges of Chief Justice John Jay, 1790–1794

"It is the Fortune of few to chuse their Situation—it is the Duty & Interest of all to accommodate themselves to the one which Providence chuses for them." ¹ So said John Jay, Chief Justice of the United States. Duty was paramount in the lives of Jay and many of his contemporaries of the founding generation.     

石鼓制作年代综考

本文在石鼓文“秦文公年代说”的基础上,从石鼓颂诗产生的历史时期、对秦人“若石——神(鬼)”崇拜及文公时社会氛圈和习俗的分析、石鼓最初所在地与文公作“陈宝祠”地址的一致性、文字形体及其书写风格的考察四个方面,对石鼓制作年代作进一步考证,认为：石鼓是秦文公十九年(或略晚些时侯)秦人崇拜“若石”(即陨石)、祭奠先祖而作并刻诗。石鼓文属春秋早期秦文字。     

In Sight,Out of View: A Tale of Three Monuments

Three monuments in Vancouver, British Columbia, located closely in time and geography and all concerning violence, were created not by one, but rather by three separate groups of advocates. Given that in each case the advocates were drawn from the socially marginalized, it would seem logical that the groups would have had to work together to accomplish something as complex as gaining access to public space with the permanence of monuments. But instead, a close examination of the development and uses of these three monuments reveals the profundity of several mechanisms of social distance. Those noted here include (a) the intransigence of structures of social exclusion, (b) the dispossession caused by the legacy of colonialism, and (c) the nature of trauma. In this essay, I argue that these mechanisms each created specific dynamics that amplified, rather than reduced, barriers between the three groups of advocates. Following an introduction to the Vancouver neighbourhood and each monument, I detail how each mechanism worked to show that what is in sight may nevertheless be out of view.