Law Commons^™

Guardians: A Research Note, Chris Guthrie, Lawrence M. Friedman, Joanna L. Grossman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Guardianship goes back quite far in legal history; it has been a feature of American law since the colonial period. Something like guardianship is a necessity in a system that recognizes private ownership of property, while dividing the world into those who are, and those who are not, sui juris-that is, fully capable of acting on their own. The boundaries between these two domains can be quite indistinct. Defining who is insane or incompetent can be especially problematic because these categories are socially and culturally variable. Most people committed in 1900, for example, would hardly be considered insane today; they …