Just came across this again: the steely, heartless heart of property law. It's best if you imagine the speaker getting louder and more exercised as you go:
"...That sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe."-- Sir William Blackstone foreswears masturbation, inadvertently defines the word "property."
It's a beautifully heavy-handed definition. My property professor liked to recite it at full volume and then jump on top of a desk, Dead Poets-style, and scream "MOO HAH HAH!" While pumping his fists. This fellow. Good man. Seriously, Blackstone -- the dude liked his property. Imagine him and Chief Seattle fighting over a joint, and you can see exactly how things went wrong.*
*I was going to write just such a hypothetical dialogue, kind of the whole goal of this post, and believe me it would have been gangbusters. But I looked into it and -- now who woulda thunk it? -- apparently hippies put a whole bunch of pinko words into Chief Seattle's mouth back in the 1960's. True, like Jeebus, he's got no verbatim quotes, so he may well have spewed that pap about Man belonging to the Earth, knowing in a century or so it would look great on the bumpers of grubby little Hondas. But the contemporaneous account of his speech makes him sound a lot more like Blackstone:
"We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children."At the very least, he seems to be holding out for an access easement.
Oh, you gotta love the legal humor.
Posted by FLOG at October 3, 2005 10:34 PM