The Spirit of the Law

In the spirit of the Halloween season, Harris County Law Library is exhibiting several spooky selections from our print collection. The sources we uncovered will be on display through the end of the month. Don't miss your chance to see them before they vanish! The following featured items are included in the exhibit. 

Burchill v. Hermsmeyer, 212 SW 767 (1919), is the case of the ghost who inspired a contract dispute and a fraud claim. Mr. Hermsmeyer sued to recover the $10,000 he invested in Mrs. Burchill's corporation. She claimed that ghosts, with whom she consulted via a medium, told her there was oil under her land. When no oil was discovered, Mr. Hermsmeyer argued that Ms. Burchill's claim was a fraudulent misrepresentation of facts. The court rejected his argument saying that the existence of ghosts is a matter of belief, not of fact. His claim was, therefore, "insufficient to form a basis for relief for the plaintiff."

Purtell v. Mason, 527 F.3d 615 (2008), involves Halloween yard decorations which caused a neighborhood dispute and raised questions about the right to insult every person on your block. Jeffrey and Vicki Purtell displayed six wooden tombstones in front of their Chicago home, each bearing unflattering references to their neighbors and the details of each person's fictitious demise. One of the neighbors identified on the tombstones argued with Mr. Purtell over the offensive decorations resulting in a call to the police. Officer Bruce Mason arrived at the scene. He arrested Mr. Purtell and ordered the removal of the tombstones. The Purtells asserted their free speech rights, but the Seventh Circuit found no loss of First Amendment Protection under the "fighting words" doctrine. 

The Law of Cadavers and of Burial and Burial Places by Percival E. Jackson is the "standard work on the subject of the law pertaining to the care and disposal of bodies of deceased human beings, and the establishment and maintenance of burial places." Included in this volume is a thorough treatment of the law regarding sepulture along with "approximately a hundred pages of forms pertaining to the regulation of cemeteries, the transfer of plots, graves, and monuments therein and the care, transportation, and burial of human corpses as well as some forms of legal proceedings in both tort and contract, germane to the general subject." (Book Review by Charles G. Coster, 2014) This title, 2nd edition, is available in the Harris County Law Library's print collection and also via HeinOnline's Legal Classics Library, which you can access at the Law Library.

In the early 1900s, three creative thinkers designed new and improved lanterns in the category of "decorative and grotesque illuminating devices commonly called jackolanterns." (Andrew B. Heard, Patent No. 715,379) Their patent drawings are featured in the exhibit and shown in in the graphics throughout this post.

To see the rest of the Halloween-themed legal materials on display, visit the Law Library before November 1st. Happy haunting!

Latest & Greatest – Trial Manual 6 for the Defense of Criminal Cases

HeinOnline has recently introduced a new addition to its American Law Institute Library: Trial Manual 6 for the Defense of Criminal Cases. Written by Anthony G. Amsterdam and Randy Hertz, the Trial Manual, as it is called, is designed to be a handbook for managing and handling criminal cases. Arranged chronologically, the Trial Manual takes the reader step-by-step through the criminal defense process, from the initial stages following an arrest through postconviction proceedings and appeals. Chapters covering the initial case to the arraignment address such topics as bail, case planning, preliminary hearings, grand jury, and guilty pleas. Proceedings included in the period between arraignment and trial include pretrial motions, pretrial discovery and conference(s), and suppression motions and hearings. Matters relating to the jury and the conduct of the trial itself are addressed in the trial chapters. Lastly, post-trial motions, sentencing, appeals, and probation and parole revocation are discussed in the final chapters dealing with post-trial matters.

As with resources found in other HeinOnline libraries, this full-text treatise features hyperlinks, which take the reader to the highlighted cases and law review articles cited in the Trial Manual. There are also handy flow charts detailing the procedure for cases involving felonies, cases dealing with misdemeanors, and cases before a magistrate. Moreover, there are checklists throughout the Trial Manual to ensure that the attorney has performed all of the necessary steps at a particular stage. Additionally, the authors, knowing that an important part of any trial, civil or criminal, is an understanding of the attorney-client privilege and the ethical rules concerning the practice of law, provide an excellent summary of the duties owed to the client and refer to the American Bar Association Standards of Criminal Justice, the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct (also available at the Law Library), and the ABA Code of Professional Responsibility. (Another good source on ethics that is available here at the Harris County Law Library, but not specifically referenced, is Professional Responsibility in Criminal Defense Practice.)

Incidentally, the authors stress that, while the Trial Manual is a helpful resource for the novice attorney and can provide him or her with the necessary information to competently represent a criminal defendant, criminal law remains a specialty. Thus, they recommend that those lawyers who are not well-versed in the handling of criminal matters consult with a more experienced criminal attorney for assistance. Nevertheless, the Trial Manual has been and continues to be an invaluable resource for those who are called upon to defend an individual in a criminal case. Look for it on HeinOnline at the Harris County Law Library.

Latest & Greatest – Rough Road to Justice: The Journey of Women Lawyers in Texas

By Betty Trapp Chapman

Published by Texas Bar Books (2008)

KF 299 .W6 .C457 2008

Rough Road to Justice: The Journey of Women Lawyers in Texas chronicles the struggles that female lawyers had to face in a profession that was dominated by men for so long. Recounting experiences from the women who lived this journey, author and historian Betty Trapp Chapman details the history of women lawyers from the first woman believed to have acted as an attorney in the United States to the first woman to be appointed to the country’s highest court. In between those two milestones are dozens of stories to be told. Chapman relates those stories, highlighting the various and varied achievements that women lawyers have earned along the way.

Chapman begins her book by discussing the initial obstacles that women lawyers encountered in their endeavor to find a place in the legal profession and the women pioneers that sought to break through the barriers that relegated them to occupations within the home and limited them to roles related to the family. She includes such groundbreakers as Edith Locke, who in 1902 presumably became the first female lawyer in Texas, and Hortense Ward, who was the first woman in Texas to be admitted to the United States Supreme Court Bar in 1915. Although Locke never appeared to have practiced in Texas, Ward became associated with her attorney husband and partnered with him for almost thirty years. Chapman also discusses the educational opportunities that were available to these women who were pursuing the law. She points out that the most common means of becoming versed in the law was through studying the law under the supervision of a licensed attorney. Other avenues were correspondence courses, proprietary schools, and eventually law schools.

Even though more women were receiving the needed education, Chapman is quick to remind her readers that employment opportunities were still relatively lacking. Jobs in courts and as legal professors in law schools were foreclosed to women. In addition, law firms were not eager to hire female lawyers for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to, pregnancy, disabilities of coverture, and general gender bias. Thus, many women who sought to work in law firms were essentially forced to become solo practitioners. Still, there were some places where women could work, including title companies, legal departments of oil companies, legal aid offices, and of course, law libraries. One of the most noted librarians was Marian Boner, who was appointed as the first Director of the Texas State Law Library in 1972 and was the author of A Reference Guide to Texas Law and Legal History, which Chapman describes as “a definitive reference source."

Perhaps the greatest hurdles that needed to be jumped were those encountered by African-American women who aspired to enter the legal profession. Not only did they face difficulties in the pursuit of their goals but also once they gained the right and privilege to practice law, they faced discrimination from their male peers, jury members, and the public at large. In this regard, Chapman relates the story of Charlye O. Farris, the first African-American woman licensed to practice law in Texas, having been admitted to the bar in 1953. Other notable African-American women who broke the gender and color barrier include Barbara Jordan, who became Texas’ first African-American senator since 1883 and was one of six women from Texas to have served in the United States House of Representatives, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, who became the first African-American to be a judge in the Southern District of Texas, and Sheila Jackson Lee, who was elected to the United States House of Representatives from the Eighteenth Congressional District in 1994 and who is still serving today.

Other notable women lawyers that Chapman focuses upon include:

  • Kay Bailey Hutchison – the first Republican woman elected to the Texas House of Representatives and the first woman to represent the Lone Star State in the United States Senate;
  • Michol O’Connor – a lawyer who led a varied career as a briefing attorney for the First Court of Appeals, assistant district attorney in Harris County, assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District, and founder of Jones McClure Publishing, now O’Connor’s, the publisher of a well-known and popular series of legal practice aids commonly requested here at the Harris County Law Library;
  • Marsha Floyd – an Assistant County Attorney at the Harris County Attorney’s Office who was the lead attorney on a case preventing the Harris County Commissioners from acting as the Board of the newly created Harris County Toll Road Authority and usurping the power of the county attorney’s office;
  • Judge Sarah T. Hughes – the first woman in the country to become a federal judge and the judge who swore in Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson as president after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination; and
  • Adelfa B. Callejo – one of the first Hispanic female attorneys and an advocate for the disadvantaged.

Absent from Chapman's accounts of pioneering female lawyers is Camille Elizabeth Stanford Openshaw, the second woman to graduate from South Texas School of Law and the first woman to be elected to the Lawyers Library Association Board of Directors. She gained notoriety when she accepted the case of Raymond Hamilton, a former lieutenant of Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde fame. For more information, please see the Harris County Law Library’s digital exhibit dedicated to this woman of distinction.

If you are interested in learning more about these inspirational women attorneys, take the journey and read Rough Road to Justice: The Journey of Women Lawyers in Texas. Today’s female legal professionals are fortunate to have these brave and pioneering women as mentors and role models, something that the women before them never had.