Gale Encyclopedia Of American Law 3Rd Edition Volume 7 P6 docx

While attorney general, Meese received
Government Executive magazine’s annual award
for excellence in management. When President
Reagan was asked during a press conference
about Meese’s service as attorney general, he
replied, “If Ed Meese is not a good man, there
are no good men.” In 1992, Meese published
his memoirs, With Reagan: The Inside Story.
In May 2006 Meese was named a member
of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which was
commissioned to assess and report on the status
of the
IRAQ WAR. Meese co-authored the group’s
final report in December 2006.
As of 2009 Meese serves on the boards of
several institutions—including the American
Civil Rights Union, Capital Research Center,
the Junior Statesmen Foundation, and the
Landmark Legal Foundation—and is Regent
Emeritus of the National College of District
Attorneys. He is a distinguished visiting fellow
with the Hoover Institution at Stanford Univer-
sity and an adjunct senior fellow at the Discovery
Institute. Meese also serves as the Ronald Reagan
Distinguished Fellow at the
HERITAGE FOUNDATION
and is chair of the foundation’s Center for Legal
and Judicial Studies. He received the founda-
tion’s Clare Boothe Luce Award in 2005.
Meese and his wife, Ursula, have two grown
children and reside in McLean, Virginia.

FURTHER READINGS
Baker, James A., and Lee H. Hamilton. 2006. The Iraq Study
Group Report: The Way Forward—A New Approach.
New York: Vintage Books.
Meese, Edwin, and P.J. Ortmeier. 2009. Leadership, Ethics,
and Policing: Challenges for the 21st Century. 2d ed.
New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Powell, H. Jefferson. 1999. The Constitution and the
Attorneys General. Durham, N.C: Carolina Academy
Press.
Barrett, John Q. 1998. All or Nothing, or Maybe Cooperation:
Attorney General Power, Conduct, and Judgment in
Relation to the Work of an Independent Counsel. 49
Mercer Law Review. (Winter).
MEETING OF CREDITORS
One of the first steps in federal BANKRUPTCY
proceedings whereby the creditors of a debtor meet
in court to present their claims against him or her
and a trustee is named to handle the application
of the debtor’s assets to pay his or her debts.
MEETING OF MINDS
The mutual agreement and assent of the parties
to a contract to its substance and terms.
The “meeting of the minds” that is required
to make a contract is not predicate d on the
subjective purpose or intention of one of the
parties that is not brought t o the attention of
the other party, but it is based on the purpose
and intention that has been made known or
that, from all t he circumstances, should be

known.
MEGAN’S LAW
Megan’s Laws are named for Megan Kanka, a
seven-year-old girl from New Jersey who was
sexually assaulted and murdered in 1994 by a
neighbor who, unknown to the victim’sfamily,
had been previously convicted for
SEX OFFENSES
against children. Megan’s Laws are state and
federal statutes that require convicted sex offen-
ders to register with local police. Sex offenders
are required to register with local police and to
notify law enforcement authorities whenever they
move to a new location. The statutes establish a
notification process to provide information about
sex offenders to law enforcement agencies and,
when appropriate, to the public. The type of
notification is based on an evaluation of the risk
to the community from a particular offender.
The brutality of the crimes in the Megan
Kanka case provided the impetus for laws that
mandate registration of sex offenders and cor-
responding community notification. In 1994
Congress passed the Jacob Wetterling Crimes
Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender
Registration Act, Title 17, 108 Stat.2 038, as
amended, 42 U.S.C. § 14071. This precursor to
a federal Megan’s Law conditioned certain
federal law enforcement funds on state adoption
of sex-offender registration laws and set mini-

mum standards for state programs. By 1996,
every state, the District of Columbia, and the
federal government had enacted some variation
of Megan’s Law.
Under the federal Megan’s Law statute,
states have discretion to establish criteria for
disclosure, but they must make private and
personal information on registered sex offen-
ders available to the public. The premise of
Megan’s Law is that communities will be better
able to protect their children if they are
informed of the descriptions and whereabouts
of high-risk sex offenders. Notification of sex-
offender information to the community assists
law enforcement in investigations, provides
legal grounds to detain known sex offenders,
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
38 MEETING OF CREDITORS
may deter sex offenders from committing new
offenses, and offers citizens information that
they can use to protect their children.
Megan’s Laws were not created without
controversy. Opponents argue that the statutes
encourage acts of vigilantism and do not give
offenders who have paid their dues the chance
to merge back into society. But actions taken
against the convicted sex offender, including
VANDALISM of property, verbal or written threats,
or actual ph ysical violence against the offender,
their family, or employer, could lead to arrest

and prosecution for criminal acts. Despite these
concerns, however, federal and state legislatures
have continued to reinforce and broaden the
scope of these statutes.
On May 17, 1996, federal efforts to
strengthen the Jacob Wetterling Act got a boost
when Presid ent
BILL CLINTON signed an amend-
ment to the
VIOLENT CRIME CONTROL AND LAW
ENFORCEMENT ACT OF
1994 (42 U.S.C. 14071); the
amendment is known as Megan’s Law. This
legislation directs all state legislatures to adopt
laws requiring convicted sex offenders to
register with their local law enforcement agency
after release. Additionally, the federal Megan’s
Law mandates states to grant access to sex-
offender registries to the public. Although
sex-offender registration for law enforcement
purposes had be en required previously, the idea
of community notification was relatively new.
The legislation has undergone many adapta-
tions in the states. While the details of state
Megan’s Laws differ from jurisdiction to juris-
diction, conviction of any one or more of the
following offenses will require convicts to
register pursuant to Megan’s Laws:
n
aggravated sexual ASSAULT,

n
sexual assault,
n
aggravated criminal sexual contact,
n
endangering the welfare of a child by
engaging in sexual conduct that would
impair or debauch the m orals of the child,
n
luring or enticing,
n
KIDNAPPING
(if the victim is a minor and the
offender not a parent),
n
criminal restraint, and
n
FALSE IMPRISONMENT
.
Megan’s Laws have guidelines that list
factors that law enforcement agencies are to
consider when weighing the risk of re-offense.
These include some or all of the following:
n
post-incarceration supervision,
n
the status of therapy or counseling,
n
criminal background,
n

degree of remorse for criminal acts,
n
substance abuse,
n
employment or schooling status,
n
psychological or psychiatric profile, and
n
any history of threats or of STALKING
locations where children congregate.
State sex offender registries include sex
offenders’ names, descriptions and photographs,
addresses, places of employment or school (if
applicable), descriptions of the offenders’ vehicles
and license plate numbers, and brief descriptions
of the offenses for which the sex offender was
convicted. Prosecutors and courts are responsible
for determining who should receive direct notice
of the presence of a particular individual in a
community.
By 2009 the vast majority of states provi ded
access to sex-offender information in searchable
databases on the Internet. Various law enforce-
ment agencies and some private citizens or civic
groups also publish listings that are specifi c to
counties or communities. Most, if not all, of
these sites are freely available regardless of the
residence of the individual who is searching for
information.
As with the state laws themselves, state sex-

offender databases have little or no uniformity.
Some, such as those for Alaska, Connecticut,
and Florida, include photographs, physical de-
scriptions, dates of birth, and details concerning
A California Justice
Department exhibit at
the L.A. County Fair
allows users to search
a database of
registered sex
offenders. Under the
federal Megan’s Law
statute, states can
establish criteria for
disclosure but must
make information on
registered sex
offenders available to
the public.
AP IMAGES
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3
RD E DITION
MEGAN’ SLAW 39
the offenses for which offenders were convicted.
The Virginia sex-offender list stores home and
work addresses, while Indiana’s contains only the
city where the sex offender resides.
Most of the databases permit searching by
zip code or name. Kansas allows searching by
partial zip codes, while Alaska and Delaware

allow searching by street name or by partial
address, and Indiana permits searching by
SOCIAL SECURITY number.
Whereas Megan’s Laws do provide some
measure of increased security for some parents
and individuals who are concerned about the
likelihood of convicted sex offenders in their
midst, they cannot guarantee the public’s
protection from offenders who are determined
to re-offend. The statutes cannot even guarantee
absolute accuracy of the information contained
on their registries. Whereas offenders must
register with the local police upon release from
prison, many give incomplete or even false
details. Others have given their details, but have
traveled to areas where no one has been warned
about them potentially committing additional
sex offenses. Critics of the measures point out
that, of the 603,000 registered sex offenders in
the U.S., at least 100,000 are noncompliant or
missing. They also note that most cases of
CHILD
ABUSE
occur within the family, and suggest that
victims might stay silent if they know that a
family member will be prosecuted. But in spite of
these arguments, Megan’s Laws receive wide-
spread support in communities and legislatures.
In addition to compliance and enforcement
problems with Megan’s Laws, privacy advocates

have challenged existing public-records laws
that allow the availability of personal data via
Web sites. In 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court
handed down major decisions upholding the
constitutionality of Megan’s Laws. The Court
upheld Connecticut’s Megan’s Law by a vote of
9 to 0 and upheld Alaska’s legislation in a 6-to-3
decision.
In Connecticut Dept. of Public Safety v. Doe,
538 U.S. 1, 123 S. Ct. 1160, 155 L. Ed. 2d 98
(2003), Connecticut’s Megan’s Law was chal-
lenged by a convicted sex offender, John Doe.
Doe protested that the Internet listing violated
his due process rights because he was never
given a hearing to disprove the suggestion that
he might represent a continuing danger to the
community. A federal judge and a three-judge
federal appeals court panel agreed with Doe,
striking down the law. But the Supreme Court
overturned those decisions, stating that the key
factor causing sex offenders to be listed in
Connecticut’s Interne t registry is a prior
conviction for a sex offense, not whether an
individual might present a continued danger to
the community.
The Court said that statutes such as
Connecticut’s Megan’s Law provide an impor-
tant service that helps to protect society from
those who would prey on its weakest members.
Even though Megan’s Laws create certain

burdens for sex offenders, the Court wrote that
such laws do not amount to a form of ex post
facto punishment, nor do they violate the
Constitution’s due process requirements.
In the Alaska case, Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84,
123 S. Ct. 1140, 155 L. Ed. 2d 164 (2003),
Alaska’s Megan’s Law was challenged by two
convicted sex offenders who already had served
their prison sentences prior to passage of that
state’s version of the law. The two men, John
Doe I and John Doe II, argued that the law was
another form of punishment imposed after they
already had completed their punishment. They
claimed that the law failed to recognize the
possibility that they might be rehabilitated and
that they might no longer pose a danger to
others. In previous
LITIGATION, a federal judge
found no ex post facto violation, but an appeals
court panel reversed, striking down the law.
The High Court wrote that Alaska’s Megan’s
Law is a civil, non-punitive regulatory effort to
account for the whereabouts of convicted sex
offenders. Writing for the majority, Justice
Kennedy stated that there was nothing in the
statute to suggest that the legislature intended
to create anything other than a civil scheme
designed to protect the public from harm. And
even though the law applied to sex offenders
who already had been released from prison, it

was not an extra form of punishment.
In these two cases, the U.S. Supreme Court
effectively disposed of the principal legal argu-
ments against Megan’s Laws. In short, the Court
found that state laws that are designed to use the
Internet to notify parents of the presence of
convicted rapists and child molesters in their
own neighborhoods do not violate the consti-
tutional rights of the listed sex offenders.
The Adam Walsh Child Protection and
Safety Act, Pub. L. 109-248, supp lemented
Megan’s Law in 2006. The Act calls for the
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
40 MEGAN’ SLAW
registration of sex offenders, classifying them in
a three-tiered system, which allocates diff erent
reporting requirements based on the danger
posed by the sex offender. For instance, Ti er 3
offenders, who are considered to be the most
dangerous, are required to report their where-
abouts every three months. Tier 2 offenders
must update their w hereabouts every six
months, and Tier 1 offenders must update their
whereabouts annually. Another important as-
pect of the Act required the U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF
JUSTICE
(DOJ) to create a publicly accessible
Internet database, which permits users to search
across state lines. In response to this require-

ment, the DOJ created the Dru Sjodin National
Sex Offender Public Website. The Act also
required states to make changes in the sex
offender laws in order achieve greater unifor-
mity by July 2009.
FURTHER READINGS
Ahearn, Laura A. 2001. Megan’s Law Nationwide and The
Apple of My Eye: Childhood Sexual Abuse Prevention
Program. N.Y.: Prevention Press USA.
Cohen, Fred, and Elizabeth Rahmberg-Walsh. 2001. Sex
Offender Registration and Community Notification: A
'Megan’s Law’ SourceBook. Kingston, N.J.: Civic
Research Institute.
Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website. Available
online at www.nsopw.gov (accessed May 24, 2009).
Hodgson, James F., and Debra S. Kelley, eds. 2002. Sexual
Violence: Policies, Practices, and Challenges in the United
States and Canada. Westport, Conn: Praeger.
Salvemini, Karen A. 2008. “Sex-Offender Parents: Megan’s
law and Schools’ Legal Options in Protecting Students
Within Their Walls.” Widener Law Journal. 17.
Wright, Richard Dr., 2009. Sex Offender Laws: Failed
Policies, Ne w Dire ctions.New York: Springer Publishing
Company.
MEMBERSHIP CORPORATION
A company or organization that is formed for
purposes other than generating a profit.
Common examples of membership corpora-
tions are religious societies and trade unions.
CROSS REFERENCE

Beneficial Association.
MEMORANDUM
An informal record, in the form of a brief written
note or outline, of a particular legal transaction
or document for the purpose of aiding the parties
in remembering particular points or for future
reference.
A memorandum may be used in court to
prove that a particular contract was made. For
instance, in a real estate transaction, a memo-
randum can be used to show that the parties
to a sale have entered into an agreement to sell
a particular parcel at an indicated price, in
addition to other details of the agreement. This
type of memorandum is also referred to as a
binder.
An attorney might use a memorandum to
explain and summarize a specific point of law
for a judge or for another attorney.
A memorandum decision is a written
decision, issued by a court, which reports the
ruling, and the decisions and orders of the
court. It does not, however, contain an opinion,
which is an explanation of the rationale upon
which the decision was based.
MEMORANDUM DECISION
A court’s decision that gives the ruling (what it
decides and orders done), but no opinion (reasons
for the decision).
A memorandum decision is not subject to

appeal by the dissatisfied party.
MENS REA
As an element of criminal responsibility, a guilty
mind; a guilty or wrongful purpose; a criminal
intent. Guilty knowledge and wilfulness.
A fundamental principle of
CRIMINAL LAW is
that a crime consists of both a mental and a
physical element. Mens rea, a person’s aware-
ness of the fact that his or her conduct is
criminal, is the mental element, and actus reus,
the act itself, is the physical element.
The concept of mens rea developed in
England during the latter part of the com-
mon-law era (about the year 1600) when judges
began to hold that an act alone could not create
criminal liability unless it was accompanied by a
guilty state of mind. The degree of mens rea
required for a particular common-law crime
varied. Murder, for example, required a mali-
cious state of mind, whereas
LARCENY required a
felonious state of mind.
In the early 2000s most crimes, including
common-law crimes, are defined by statu t es
that usually contain a word or phrase indicating
the mens rea requirement. A typical statute, for
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
MENS REA 41
example, may require that a person act

knowingly, purposely, or recklessly.
Sometimes a statute creates criminal liability
for the commission or omission of a particular
act without designating a mens rea. These are
called
STRICT LIABILITY statutes. If such a statute is
construed to purposely omit criminal intent, a
person who commits the crim e may be guilty
even though he or she had no knowledge that his
or her act was criminal and had no thought of
committing a crime. All that is required under
such statutes is that the act itself is voluntary,
since involuntary acts are not criminal.
Occasionally mens rea is used synonymous-
ly with the words general intent, although
general intent is more commonly used to
describe criminal liability when a defendant
does not intend to bring about a particular
result.
SPECIFIC INTENT, another term related to
mens rea, describes a particular state of mind
above and beyond what is generally required.
MENSA ET THORO
[Latin, From bed and board.] A type of DIVORCE
that is a partial termination of the duties of a
marital relationship.
A divorce mensa et thoro is one that does not
provide a
HUSBAND AND WIFE with the right to
remarry but that permits them to live separate-

ly. Such a divorce does not dissolve the marriage
but amounts to a legal separation.
MENTAL ANGUISH
When connected with a physical injury, includes
both the resultant mental sensation of pain and
also the accompanying feelings of distress, fright,
and anxiety. As an element of damages implies a
relatively high de gree of mental pain and distress;
it is more than mere disappointment, anger,
worry, resentment, or embarrassment, although it
may include all of these, and it includes mental
sensation of pain resulting from such painful
emotions as grief, severe disappointment, indigna-
tion, wounded pride, shame, despair , and/or
public humiliation. In other connections, and as
a ground for
DIVORCE or for compensable damages
or an element of damages, it includes the mental
suffering resulting from the excitation of the more
poignant and painful emotions, such as grief,
severe disappointment, indignation, wounded
pride, shame, public humiliation, despair, etc.
MENTAL CRUELTY
A course of conduct on the part of one spouse
toward the other spouse that can endanger the
mental and physical health and efficiency of the
other spouse to such an extent as to render
CONTINUANCE of the marital relation intolerable.
As a ground for DIVORCE, it is conduct that causes
embarrassment, humiliation, and anguish so as to

render life miserable and unendurable or to cause
a spouse’s life, person, or health to become
endangered.
v
MENTSCHIKOFF, SOIA
Soia Mentschikoff was a distinguished legal
scholar and educator whose career encom-
passed several “firsts” for women in the legal
profession.
Mentschikoff was born April 2, 1915, in
Russia where her father, a resident of New York
City, was working. In 1918 her family returned
Soia Mentschikoff 1915–1984
❖
1915 Born,
Moscow, Russia
◆◆◆
1934 Earned
B.A. from
Hunter
College, N.Y.
◆◆
1944 Became
first woman
partner at a
major Wall
Street firm
1984 Died, Coral
Gables, Florida
1964 Served as U.S. representative to conference on uniform

law on the international sale of goods, held in The Hague
◆
◆◆
1974–82 Served as
dean of the
University of Miami
School of Law
1914–18
World War I
1961–73
Vietnam War
1939–45
World War II
1950–53
Korean War
▼▼
▼▼
19001900
19501950
19751975
20002000
19251925
❖
1961 International
Unification of
Private Law
published
1918 Family
returned to
New York City

1937 Earned LL.B. from Columbia Law School
1947 Became first woman to join Harvard Law School faculty
1951 Joined University of Chicago Law School faculty
◆
1949–54 Served
as associate chief
reporter of the
Uniform
Commercial Code
1970 Commercial Transactions published
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
42 MENSA ET THORO
to New York where Mentschikoff graduated
from Hunter College in 1934 and from
Columbia Law School in 1937.
At Columbia Mentschikoff met
KARL LLEWEL-
LYN
, a professor of law and the chief reporter, or
drafter, of the
UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE (UCC)
for the American Law Institute (the Uniform
Commercial Code is a model for laws dealing
with business and commercial transactions that
has been adopted, at least in part, by all the
states, except Louisiana, and the District of
Columbia). Initially, Mentschikoff worked with
Llewellyn on the UCC as his research assistant;
from 1949 through 1954 she was the associate
chief reporter of the code. Subsequently, she

became a consultant to the Permanent Editorial
Board for the UCC.
After the UCC was completed, Mentschikoff
became increasingly interested in the interna-
tional aspects of
COMMERCIAL LAW. In 1964 she
was one of the U.S. representatives at a
diplomatic conference held at The Hague to
consider a uniform law on the international sale
of goods. She later became an adviser to the
STATE DEPARTMENT on matters involving interna-
tional sales and international
ARBITRATION.
In 1947 Mentschikoff joined the faculty at the
Harvard Law School, the first time a woman had
taught at that school. Three years earlier in 1944,
she had achieved another first by becoming the
first woman partner at a major Wall Street firm.
In 1951 Mentschikoff and Llewellyn, whom she
had married in 1947, joined the faculty at the
University of Chicago Law School. To satisfy the
school’s anti-nepotism rule, Llewellyn was named
a “professor” whereas Mentschikoff was a “pro-
fessorial lecturer” until his death in 1962 when
she became a professor. In 1974 Mentschikoff
became the dean of the University of Miami
School of Law, a position that she held until 1982.
Mentschikoff died June 18, 1984, in Coral
Gables, Florida.
MERCANTILE

Relating to trade or commerce; commercial;
having to do with the business of buying and
selling; relating to merchants.
A mercantile agency is an individual or
company in the business of collecting data
about the financial status, ability, and credit of
individuals who are engaged in business. Once
this information is compiled, it is sold by the
agency to its customers, who are known as
subscribers. Mercantile agencies are known as
credit bureaus in current usage.
MERCHANTABLE
Salable; of quality and type ordinarily acceptable
among vendors and buyers.
An item is deemed merchantable if it is
reasonably fit for the ordinary purposes for
which such products are man ufactured and
sold. For example, soap is merchantable if it
cleans. In general, a seller or manufacturer is
required by law to make products of merchant-
able quality. In the event that the items do not
meet with the proper standards, a suit can be
brought against the seller or manufacturer by
anyone who is injured as a result.
CROSS REFERENCES
Product Liability; Sales Law.
MERCIAN LAW
A major body of Anglo-Saxon customs that, along
with the Dane law and the West Saxon law,
continued to constitute the law in England in the

days immediately following the Norman Conquest.
MERCY KILLING
See EUTHANASIA.
v
MEREDITH, JAMES HOWARD
CIVIL RIGHTS pioneer and activist James Howard
Meredith put his life at risk by being the first
African American to attend the University of
Mississippi in 1962. After the state repeatedly
blocked his attempts to register at the university,
a legal battle waged by Meredith and the
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (
NAACP) achieved a landmark
victory for
INTEGRATION. When violence erupted
on the day that Meredith enrolled, President
JOHN F. KENNEDY sent several thousand U.S. Army
troops to the campus to quell bloody rioting.
Armed federal marshals protected Meredith in
every classroom until he graduated in 1963. In
1966, the James Meredith March against Fear
united traditiona l and radical civil rights leaders
in a voter-registration march across Mississippi.
Meredith was shot, but he recovered and joine d
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., and others in a month-
long demonstration that marked a turning
point in the civil rights stru ggle. In later years,
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
MEREDITH, JAMES HOWARD 43

Meredith, who had always maintained indepen-
dence from the inheritors of the
CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
, became one of their sharpest critics.
Meredith was born June 25, 1933, in
Kosciusko, Mississipp i. He was one of ten
children of Roxy Patterson Meredith and Moses
Cap, a poor farmer in Kosciusko. As a young
child, Meredith became aware of racism. He
would refuse the nickels and dimes that a local
white man regularly gave to black children,
calling the gifts degrading. More painful was the
realization he made as a young man on a trip to
visit relatives in Detroit, where he saw blacks
and whites sharing the same public facilities.
He rode the train home from this brush with
integration, and when he arrived in Memphis,
the conductor told him to leave the whites-
only car. “I cried all the way home,” Meredith
later recalled, “and vowed to devote myself to
changing the degrading conditions of black
people.” He also had other ambitions and goals.
Ever since a childhood visit to a white doctor’s
office, he had harbored a dream of attending
the University of Mississippi, the physician’s
alma mater.
After high school, in 1951, Meredith joined
the U.S. Air Force. He rose to the rank of staff
sergeant, earned credits toward a college degree,

and served in the
KOREAN WAR. Following his
discharge in 1960, he attended the all-black
Jackson State College, but the courses he wanted
to take were offered only at t he state university.
As a 28-year-old, he followed with hopefulness
the speeches of President John F. Kennedy,
which promised greater enjoyment of opportu-
nity for all U.S. citizens. Change was in the air,
and many African Americans were heartened by
the portents in Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural
address. On the same day that Kennedy became
president, Meredith applied for admission to
the University of Mississippi.
The school turned down his application.
Mississippi still practiced
SEGREGATION, and that
meant that no African Americans could attend
the all-white university. Even seven years after
BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION 347 U.S. 483, 74
S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954), southern states
resisted complying with the U.S. Supre me
Court’s decision that compulsory segregation
was unconstitutional. Knowing that he had a
constitutional right that the state refused to
recognize, Meredith turned to the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund. This arm of the
civil rights organization, accustomed to fighting
segregation cases, extende d help to him. Mer-
edith and his attorneys fought some 30 court

actions against the state.
At last, a federal court ruled that a qualified
student could not be denied admission on the
ground of race. Meredith had won, but the
James Howard Meredith 1933–
▼▼
▼▼
1925
2000
1975
1950
◆
❖
◆
1939–45
World War II
1950–53
Korean War
1961–73
Vietnam War
◆
◆
◆
◆
◆
◆
◆
1933 Born,
Kosciusko, Miss.
1951–60

Served in
U.S. Air Force
1968 Graduated from
Columbia University
Law School
1966 Enrolled at Columbia Law School;
ambushed and shot during March against
Fear; Three Years in Mississippi published
1
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o
f M
is
s
.
1963 Graduated from University of Miss.
1989 Joined Senator
Jesse Helm’s office staff
1997 Donated his
papers to the
University of
Mississippi; ran
for mayor of

Jackson, Miss.
2002 Honored in University of Miss.
ceremony commemorating 40th
anniversary of his enrollment
1954 Brown v. Board
of Education decided
by Supreme Court
2008 Barack Obama elected
first African American president
James Meredith.
AP IMAGES
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
44 MEREDITH, JAMES HOWARD
court order infuriated segregationists. Playing
to popular sentiment, Mississippi Governor Ross
Barnett promised to stop Meredith. Barnett
pressured the state legislature to give him
authority over university admissions, a power
that usually was exercised by the state college
board.
As Meredith’s enrollment date, September
20, 1962, approached, Meredith received death
threats; Barnett continued to promise to prevent
his enrollment; and segregationists spread the
word to be at “Ole Miss” to save it from
integration. On th e day th at Meredith arrived to
register, white students massed around a Con-
federate flag chanting anti-integration slogans.
Barnett stood blocking the door to the admis-
sions office. A university official read a procla-

mation naming Barnett as acting registrar, by
order of the university’s board of trustees, and a
satisfied Barnett told Meredith that his applica-
tion was denied.
The governor’s action was purportedly good
politics in his home state. Across the South,
leaders such as Alabama Governor
GEORGE
WALLACE
were prospering politically by staging
similar acts of defiance. However, Barnett’s
refusal to let Meredith in was a serious problem
for Washington, D.C. It represented a challenge
to the authority of the federal courts, and in a
short time, the
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT entered the
dispute. Attorney General
ROBERT F. KENNEDY
confronted Barnett, demanding assurances that
Meredith’s next attempt to register would be
successful and that the student would be pro-
tected. Barnett gave none. He replied that the
situation was beyond his control. Where civil
rights were concerned, the young attorney
general was quickly learning that only federal
intervention could bring the southern states
under the mandate of the courts. He sent 500
federal marshals to the University of Mississippi
campus with strict orders: They were to protect
Meredith, but not to shoot anyone. Only tear gas

and clubs were to be used for their own defense.
On September 30, Meredith arrived at Ole
Miss to try to enroll for a second time.
Protected by the marshals, he finally registered,
and then took refuge in his dormitory. Students
and outsiders gathered in front of the school’s
administration building, known as the Lyceum.
The angry mob began throwing rocks at the
outnumbered marshals, who were soon be-
sieged by thousands of new protesters streaming
onto the campus. A vicious riot erupted, with
the armed agitators firing shots and hurling
rocks, bricks, bottles, flaming gas, and acid. By
late evening on the day Meredith registered, a
French journalist and an onlooker were dead.
More than 160 marshals were wounded; the rest
were exhausted, and their tear gas supply was
running out. Reluctantly, Kennedy dispatched
5,000 Army troops to Ole Miss; their numbers
were finally enough to disperse the mob and to
regain control of the battered campus.
Meredith attended classes under armed
guard, but persevered, graduating in August
1963. By the summer of 1966, Meredith was
enrolled at Columbia University School of Law,
but he interrupted his studies to launch a bold
personal demonstration for civil rights. Mer-
edith announced plans to march across the state
of Mississippi, covering the 220 miles from
Memphis to Jackson in 16 days. The James

Meredith March against Fear would show
African Americans that they could safely assert
their right to vote, despite years of legal
obstruction, harassment, and
MURDER.Ashe
had done at Ole Miss, Meredith ignored several
death threats, proclaiming that he would survive
his long march along the state’s back roads.
On June 5, 1966, Meredith set out from
Memphis with an ebony walking stick that an
African chieftain had given him. When he crossed
into Mississippi the following morning, he was
ambushed and shot; remarkably, he survived. His
assailant, an unemployed member of the
KU KLUX
KLAN
, pleaded guilty and received a five-year
prison sentence (of which three years were
suspended). While Meredith recovered in his
hospital bed, he was visited by the leaders of
major civil rights organizations. A group includ-
ing
STOKELY CARMICHAEL,oftheSTUDENT NON-
VIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE (SNCC), and Dr.
King wanted to stage a protest. Meredith wanted
to go on. He continued the march joined by other
civil rights workers.
The marchers completed their journey by late
June against often-violent opposition. It was a great
symbolic victory for civil rights, but the movement

itself had begun to factionalize. King and his
supporters, who advocated peaceful resistance,
were at odds with Carmichael’s
BLACK POWER
MOVEMENT
, which advocated violence if necessary
to secure equal rights for African Americans.
Meredith returned to Columbia, completing
his law degree in 1968. In the years that followed,
THERE IS NO WAY
FOR ONE
NEGRO TO
CHANGE HIS BASIC
STATUS WITHOUT
FIRST CHANGING
THAT OF ALL
NEGROES.
—JAMES MEREDITH
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
MEREDITH, JAMES HOWARD 45
Meredith embarked on a series of pursuits. He
studied economics at a Nigerian university,
established the African Development and Reuni-
fication Association, and worked as a consultant,
financial planner, tree farmer, and educator.
In the 1980s Meredith returned to the
public eye, this time as a critic of integration,
WELFARE, and AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, programs that
he believed did more to hurt black people than
to help them. He joined the staff of conservative

senator
JESSE HELMS and later supported former
Ku Klux Klan member David Duke, whose
welfare views he praised, in Duke’s campaign
for governor of Louisiana. He also took a series
of walks that were reminiscent of his 1966 march,
to promote his conservative vision. Meredith is
the au thor o f Three Years in Mississippi (1966).
Meredith published a historical work
entitled Mississippi: A Volume of Eleven Books
in 1995. In March 1997, the University of
Mississippi’s J.D. Williams Library accepted
Meredith’s donation of his personal papers,
which are now housed in the library’s Special
Collections branch. In September 2002
Meredith was a participant in a forum spon-
sored by the Kennedy Library to commemorate
the 40th anniversary of his admission to the
University of Mississippi.
On February 8, 2008, James Meredith’s son,
Joseph Howard Meredith, died at age 39 from
complications stemming from having lupus. In
July of 2009 a book about Meredith, The Price
of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration
of Ole Miss, was published.
FURTHER READINGS
Doyle, William. 2001. An American Insurrection: The Battle
of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962. New York: Doubleday.
Eagles, Charles W. 2009. The Price of Defiance: James
Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss. Chapel Hill,

NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press.
Harris, Janet. 1967. The Long Freedom Road: The Civil Rights
Story. Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: McGrawHill.
Levy, Peter B. 1992. Let Freedom Ring: A Documentary
History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. New York:
Praeger.
Motley, Constance Baker. 1999. Equal Justice under Law: An
Autobiography. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux.
Weisbrot, Robert. 1990. Freedom Bound: A History of
America’s Civil Rights Movement. New York: Norton.
MERGER
The combination or fusion of one thing or right
into another thing or right of greater or larger
importance so that the lesser thing or right loses its
individuality and becomes identified with the
greater whole.
In contract law, agreements are merged
when one contract is absorbed into another.
The merger of contracts is generally based on
the lang uage of the agreement and the intent
of the parties. The merger of contracts is not
the same as a merger clause, which is a provision
in a contract stating that the written terms
cannot be varied by prior or oral agreements.
Estates affecting ownership of land are
merged where a greater estate and a lesser estate
coincide and are held by the same individual.
For example, merger occurs when a person who
leases land from another subsequently is given
ownership of it upon the death of the lessor

who has so provided in his will.
In
CRIMINAL LAW, the commission of a major
crime that includes a lesser offense results in the
latter being merged in the former. For example,
the crime of rape includes the lesser offense of
SEXUAL ABUSE which is merged into one prosecu-
tion for rape.
CROSS REFERENCES
Lesser Included Offense; Mergers and Acquisitions.
MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS
Methods by which corporations legally unify
ownership of assets formerly subject to separate
controls.
A merger or acquisition is a combination of
two companies where one corporation is
completely absorbed by another corporation.
The less important compan y loses its identity
and becomes part of the more important
corporation, which retains its identity. A merger
extinguishes the merged corporation, and the
surviving corporation assumes all the rights,
privileges, and liabilities of the merged corpora-
tion. A merger is not the same as a consolidation,
in which two corporations lose their separate
identities and unite to form a completely new
corporation.
Federal and state laws regulate mergers and
acquisitions. Regulation is based on the concern
that mergers inevitably eliminate competition

between the merging firms. This concern is
most acute where the participants are direct
rivals, because co urts often presume that such
arrangements are more prone to restrict output
and to increase prices. On one hand, the fear that
mergers and acquisitions reduce competition has
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
46 MERGER
meant that the government carefully scrutinizes
proposed mergers. On the other hand, since the
1980s the federal government has become less
aggressive in seeking the prevention of mergers.
Despite concerns about a lessening of com-
petition, U.S. law has left firms relatively free to
buy or sell entire companies or specific parts of a
company. Mergers and acquisitions often result
in a number of social benefits. Mergers can bring
better management or technical skill to bear on
underused assets. They also can produce econo-
mies of scale and scope that reduce costs, improve
quality, and increase output. The possibility of a
takeover can discourage company managers from
behaving in ways that fail to maximize profits. A
merger can enable a business owner to sell the
firm to someone who is already familiar with the
industry and who would be in a better position
to pay the highest price. The prospect of a
lucrative sale induces entrepreneurs to form new
firms. Finally, many mergers pose few risks to
competition.

Antitrust merger law seeks to prohibit trans-
actions whose probable anticompetitive con-
sequences outweigh their likely benefits. The
critical time for review usually is when the merger
is first proposed. This requires enforcement
agencies and courts to forecast market trends
and future effects. Merger cases examine past
events or periods to understand each merging
party’s position in its market and to predict the
merger’s competitive impact.
Types of Mergers
Mergers appear in three forms, based on the
competitive relationships between the merging
parties. In a horizontal merger, one firm acquires
another firm that produces and sells an identical
or similar product in the same geographic area
and thereby eliminates competition between the
two firms. In a
VERTICAL MERGER, one firm acquires
either a customer or a supplier. Conglomerate
mergers encompass all other acquisitions, includ-
ing pure conglomerate transactions where the
merging parties have no evident relationship
(e.g., when a shoe producer buys an appliance
manufacturer), geographic extension mergers,
where the buyer makes the same product as the
target firm but does so in a different geographic
market (e.g., when a baker in Chicago buys a
bakery in Miami), and product-extension mer-
gers, where a firm that produces one product

buys a firm that makes a different product that
requires the application of similar manufacturing
or marketing techniques (e.g., when a producer
of household detergents buys a producer of
liquid bleach).
Corporate Merger Procedures
State statutes establish procedures to accom-
plish corporate mergers. Generally, the board
of directors for each corporation must initially
pass a resolution adopting a plan of merger that
specifies the names of the corporations that are
involved, the name of the proposed merged
company, the manner of converting shares of
both corporations, and any other legal provision
to which the corporations agree. Each corpora-
tion notifies all of its shareholders that a
meeting will be held to approve the merger. If
the proper number of shareholders approves
the plan, the directors sign the papers and file
them with the state. The
SECRETARY OF STATE
issues a certificate of merger to authorize the
new corporation.
Some statutes permit the directors to
abandon the plan at any point up to the filing
of the final papers. States with the most liberal
corporation laws permit a surviving corporation
to absorb another company by merger without
submitting the plan to its shareholders for
approval unless otherwise required in its

certificate of incorporation.
Statutes often provide that corporations that
are formed in two different states must follow
the rules in their respective states for a merger to
be effective. Some corporation statutes require
the surviving corporation to purchase the shares
of stockholders who voted against the merger.
Competitive Concerns
Horizontal, vertical, and conglomerate mergers
each raise distinctive competitive concerns.
Horizontal Mergers Horizontal mergers raise
three basic competitive problems. The first is the
elimination of competition between the merging
firms, which, depending on their size, could be
significant. The second is that the unification
of the merging firms’ operations might create
substantial market power and might enable the
merged entity to raise prices by reducing output
unilaterally. The third problem is that, by
increasing concentration in the relevant market,
the transaction might strengthen the ability of the
market’s remaining participants to coordinate
their pricing and output decisions. The fear is not
that the entities will engage in secret collaboration
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS 47