Ian C. Pilarczyk

Hello, gentle readers!  My next blog post will be up in a week or two, but I wanted to mention my latest work. It is a bit surreal to me to mention it, really, since I completed this as a part of my doctoral thesis at McGill in 2003. Several years later I took it up [...]

Last week in class, I wandered off on a slight tangent related to the Alford plea. Coincidentally, the very next day this fascinating bit of contemporary legal history and criminal procedure made its way into the news, prompted by a fairly unlikely source: a troubled ex-point guard from the University of Washington, Venoy Overton. The many varied [...]

An earlier blog post talked about ‘straw men’ and compurgation; and to continue in that vein I wanted to say a few words about the origins of the modern jury. The timing for me is quite fortuitous, as I just hosted a small group of law students from Korea. Korea is in the early years of [...]

What, might you ask, do caroling and extortion have in common? Unless you’re very cynical, the answer probably should be “nothing.” Personally, I love the holidays and believe caroling is a lovely tradition. I still remember the last time I answered the front door, to be greeted by a spirited group of carolers. It was [...]

A colleague, while discussing corporate takeovers, recently asked me about the origins of the term straw man– hence this week’s blog entry. I’m always happy to make the connection between the contemporary and the historical! A straw man, as the term is commonly used, typically has two meanings: the first of these is commonly used [...]

Imagine you’ve just gotten a ticket for a motor vehicle violation. You have the right to defend yourself against it, but do you have the right to take up arms to do so? In other words, can you demand your right to trial by combat? This question may seem non-sensical. After all, we have an adversarial [...]

My last entry had to do with whether President Obama could unilaterally use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling. This prompted me to think about the handful of esoteric constitutional provisions that have faded into desuetude, been repealed by subsequent amendments or events, or otherwise been largely forgotten.  The Constitution has two such [...]

It’s difficult to think of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that is truly “obscure”–although the 3rd Amendment is certainly an interesting historical relic as it restricts the government’s garrisoning of troops in civilian houses. However, some sections of the Constitution, including amendents,  clearly do deserve this moniker, and this week one such provision has suddenly become part [...]

Today in a seminar someone said in passing that a company’s policies “were draconian”. It triggered a thought in my mind that the origins of the word had to do with Draco and his legal code, and I decided it would be interesting to excavate this legal history  esoterica a little further. The definition of draconian is  ”of, relating [...]

I was recently asked a very interesting question, somewhat related to legal history: namely, what is constitutional autochthony? ‘Autochthony’ is a word that rarely surfaces in everyday English, but it is a synonym for ‘native’ or ‘indigenous’. It is most often used in anthropology, biology and related sciences, but is also used in law. The [...]