The Dartmouth College Causes and the Supreme Court of the United..

2012. ISBN-13: 9781616192716. ISBN-10: 1616192712. Shirley, John M. The Dartmouth College Causes and the Supreme Court of the United States. Originally published: Chicago: G.I. Jones, 1895. 469 pp. Reprinted 2012 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 9781616192716. ISBN-10: 1616192712. Paperback. New. $22.95 * "It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!" -Daniel Webster, Oral Argument, March 10, 1818, Dartmouth College v. Woodward Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1816-1819) established significant precedents concerning state authority and the nature of private enterprise. Dartmouth College was incorporated under a royal charter in 1769 as a private corporation. In 1816 the New Hampshire Legislature attempted to transform the college into a state institution. Daniel Webster, representing the college trustees, convinced the U.S. Supreme Court that the royal charter was a contract that could not be invalidated by subsequent state legislation. The court concurred. Its decision initiated a significant constitutional limitation on state authority. It also helped to define corporations as relatively unregulated private economic entities that contributed to the public sphere through enlightened self-interest. Shirley offers a vivid account of the case, enriched by extensive quotation of primary archival sources. Reprint of the first edition. "The complete history of the Dartmouth college case is very curious and deserves more than a passing notice. Until within three years it is not too much to say that it was quite unknown, and its condition is but little better now. In 1879 John M. Shirley published a volume entitled the 'Dartmouth College Causes' which is a monument of careful study and thorough research. Most persons would conclude that it was a work of merely legal interest, appealing to a limited class of professional readers. Even those into whose hands it chanced to come have probably been deterred from examining it as it deserves by the first chapter, which is very obscure, and by the confusion of the narrative which follows. Yet this monograph, which has so unfortunately suffered from a defective arrangement of material, is of very great value, not only to our legal and constitutional history, but to the pol.