Repository: UIHistories Project: Booklet - UI Charter of Freedom (1942) [PAGE 59]

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58 one of its legally trained employees for services in part of a legal nature, the plain principles of the common law as well as of modern constitutional procedure, like white stones, marked the correct path for him to travel. On the contrary, he chose to follow the course of unregulated power and by an imperial flourish to strike down contracts and practices, as old as the common law itself, without an opportunity to those interested to be heard in their support. This 19 not what Blackstone meant when he said that the right of visitation must be asserted by the King in accordance with the great and salutary principles of the common law. We ask the respondents: j 1. What case or illustration can you cite from English history, legal or general, where the Attorney General claimed or exercised the right to exclusive representation of English public corporations comparable to our municipal corporations, or to the University of Illinois ? 2. What principle, or principles, of the common law required that a national corporation like Oxford University, or a public corporation, like the City of Oxford, stand defenseless and undefended by legal counsel while the Attorney General, acting in behalf of the Crown, moved against them either for the DUTDOBi of restraining alleged corporate excesses, or for the 7 eventual destruction of the corporation itself