Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
Perpetuities And The Genius Of A Free State, Joshua C. Tate
Perpetuities And The Genius Of A Free State, Joshua C. Tate
Vanderbilt Law Review
Legal history, like all history, is inevitably a speculative affair. No one can be sure what the editors of Justinian's Digest might have excised from long-lost works of classical Roman law; nor can one know for certain what went through the minds of certain justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in the mid-twentieth century when they formed and reformed their views on Roosevelt's New Deal. Of course, scholars can try to chip away at this uncertainty: great progress can be made through educated guesses and learned theories. But certainty about the past is reserved for those who lived in it. …
Probate Law Meets The Digital Age, Naomi Cahn
Probate Law Meets The Digital Age, Naomi Cahn
Vanderbilt Law Review
This Article explores the impact of federal law on a state fiduciary's management of digital assets. It focuses on the lessons from the Stored Communications Act ("SCA'), initially enacted in 1986 as one part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Although Congress designed the SCA to respond to concerns that Internet privacy posed new dilemmas with respect to application of the Fourth Amendment's privacy protections, the drafters did not explicitly consider how the SCA might affect property management and distribution. The resulting uncertainty affects anyone with an email account. While existing trusts and estates laws could legitimately be interpreted to …
Unconstitutional Perpetual Trusts, Steven J. Horowitz, Robert H. Sitkoff
Unconstitutional Perpetual Trusts, Steven J. Horowitz, Robert H. Sitkoff
Vanderbilt Law Review
"I never can be thankful, Mr. Bennet, for any thing about the entail."t Perpetual trusts are an established feature of today's estate planning firmament. Yet little-noticed provisions in the constitutions of nine states, including in five states that purport to allow perpetual trusts by statute, proscribe ')erpetuities." This Article examines those provisions in light of the meaning of ')erpetuity" as a legal term of art across history. We consider the constitutionality of perpetual trust statutes in states that have a constitutional ban on perpetuities and whether courts in states with such a ban may give effect to a perpetual trust …