Mind you, the old land law was one of the most arcane subject matters ever concocted by the human mind. Brian Whatsisname, prof now at U of Mich who has written wonderfully entertaining sociologically informed, highly accessible and extremely witty books like Cannibalism and the Common Law, about a famous case where shipwrecked sailors ate the cabin boy, and Leading Cases In The Common Law --a blast to read despite the title, really! -- made his bones with a book on The Land Law; Maitland and Pollack (the classic history of the early common law) is about 80% about the land law,and of course Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice under James I until he pissed off the king by suggesting he was subject to the law, made his intellectual fame with his Commentaries On Littleton, a 14th century treatiseon the Land Law. Now it's all statutory and contractual and not nearly as complicated as tax law or M&A. But there's still real $$ in that there dirt.
--- Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> > "Dirt" was really good, actually. In my biz, we
> call it "real" estate,
> > actual weath, as opposed to mere personal property
> like gold and jewels
> > and stocks and bonds.
>
> True, although occasionally tax lawyers and
> corporate lawyers mock and
> demean real estate law as "dirt law," implying that
> it takes no intellectual
> firepower to master it.
>
> > "Spacious in the possession of dirt," Hamlet
> dismisses Oscric -- but he's
> > insulting Osric's syncophancy and stupidity, not
> his wealth.
>
> Hamlet also deliver's one of Western literature's
> most wonderful expressions
> of the idea that we are dirt, as part of his "Alas
> dear Yorick" soliloquy:
>
> URL:
>
http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/hamlet/hamlet.5.1.html
>
> HAMLET
>
> To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why
> may
> not imagination trace the noble dust of
> Alexander,
> till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
>
> HORATIO
>
> 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider
> so.
>
> HAMLET
>
> No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him
> thither with
> modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as
> thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
> Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is
> earth; of
> earth we make loam; and why of that loam,
> whereto he
> was converted, might they not stop a
> beer-barrel?
> Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
> Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
> O, that that earth, which kept the world in
> awe,
> Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!
> But soft! but soft! aside: here comes the
> king.
>
> <end quote>
>
> So when you look at it that way, the idea that we
> become dirt is really
> irrefutable. Even if we get burned or buried at
> sea, we still become
> species of dirt, ash and mud respectively.
>
> And the idea that we are made out of dirt is hard to
> avoid even today if we
> accept that "being made out of chemicals" is just a
> fancy way of saying
> "being made out of things you find in the earth."
>
> The more you think about it, the more the recurrence
> of this idea of
> autochthonous creation in primitive myths all over
> the world seems basically
> explicable as the obvious conclusion that anyone who
> sat down back then and
> thought about it would reach -- as much the begining
> of science and
> philosophy as the beginning of religion.
>
> Michael
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