Property Rites
Property Rites

Author: Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2009-04-30

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0807894176

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In 1925 Leonard Rhinelander, the youngest son of a wealthy New York society family, sued to end his marriage to Alice Jones, a former domestic servant and the daughter of a "colored" cabman. After being married only one month, Rhinelander pressed for the dissolution of his marriage on the grounds that his wife had lied to him about her racial background. The subsequent marital annulment trial became a massive public spectacle, not only in New York but across the nation--despite the fact that the state had never outlawed interracial marriage. Elizabeth Smith-Pryor makes extensive use of trial transcripts, in addition to contemporary newspaper coverage and archival sources, to explore why Leonard Rhinelander was allowed his day in court. She moves fluidly between legal history, a day-by-day narrative of the trial itself, and analyses of the trial's place in the culture of the 1920s North to show how notions of race, property, and the law were--and are--inextricably intertwined.

Property on Trial
Property on Trial

Author: Eric Tucker

Publisher: Irwin Law

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 9781552212967

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Co-Published with the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History Property on Trial is a collection of 14 studies of Canadian property law disputes -- some well-known, some more obscure -- that have helped to shape the contours of the principles and rules of property law over 150 years. These studies, written by some of Canada's leading legal historians, range in time from a discussion of a nineteenth-century dispute over the ownership of seal pelts in Newfoundland to modern questions of what constitutes private property in a digital age. They investigate the relationship between private and public interests in property; the limits of private property owners' rights in relation to others, particularly neighbours and family; and the intersection of property law principles with other branches of the law, including criminal law, family law, and human rights. The authors describe, in rich detail, the social, cultural, and political contexts in which the events unfolded, the backgrounds and personalities of the litigants, the skills of the lawyers, and the judicial attitudes of the day. On the one hand, Property on Trial is a collection of thoughtful and compelling stories about conflict in a wide variety of contexts, each with its own heroines and heroes, villains and ne'er-do-wells, winners and losers. On the other, it is an insightful look at the history of property law doctrine in Canada.