Blackstone Plants a Tree
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh Book the Second. Chapter the Eighth. Of FREEHOLDS, NOT of INHERITANCE. There’s a saying that the rich plan for three generations while the poor plan for...
Jurisprudence
Trickster Lawyer, Trickster Daughter
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh Book the Second. Chapter the Seventh. Of FREEHOLD ESTATES, of INHERITANCE. This chapter is about the way you need to own something in order to pass it...
Castles in the Air
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh Book the Second, Chapter the Sixth. Of the Modern ENGLISH TENURES. Okay, I finally get it. I get why it’s such a big deal to ‘own...
Sing in me, oh Muse!
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh Book the Second. Chapter the Fifth. Of the Antient ENGLISH TENURES. This self-consciously historical chapter describes a kind of land ownership that was, as the chapter’s...
Law in the Ruins
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh Book the Second. Chapter the Fourth. Of the FEODAL SYSTEM. For Blackstone it is an article of faith that the way things are can be...
Theater of the Invisible
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh Book the Second. Chapter the Third. Of Incorporeal Hereditaments. Blackstone isn’t famous for making something out of nothing, but for giving a new twist to...
The Symbols of Property
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh Book II. Chapter the second. Of REAL PROPERTY; and, first, of CORPOREAL HEREDITAMENTS. This chapter is about things that last. Blackstone’s property law is obsessed with...
Money Talks
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh Blackstone Weekly needs to pause to mark the moment. The last post of 2010 (on corporations, death and the Second Circuit’s provocative Kiobel decision) completed Volume I...
For Christine
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh BOOK I. Chapter the eighteenth. Of CORPORATIONS. This chapter is about death — and the attempt to outlaw it. Blackstone puts it right out there in his first...
Now you see it, now you don’t
Jessie Allen, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh Book the First. Chapter the seventeenth. Of GUARDIAN and WARD. This is a small chapter about a big and vexing subject. The very word “guardian” fills me with...