Ann Mumford, Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London, has published "Re-Enacting The Judicial Philosophy Of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: Saunders v. Vautier and Claflin v. Claflin Compared"open access, in Comparative Legal History.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. sat on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1889, when, in the case of Claflin v Claflin, he joined the decision that a trust may not be modified if the intention of the testator would be undermined. Claflin rejected Lord Cottenham's reasoning in Saunders v Vautier that, under certain circumstances, beneficiaries may compel the termination of the trust and transfer the property to them. Claflin v Claflin and Saunders v Vautier are perhaps the two most famous cases in Anglo-American Equity. Through a detailed examination of manuscripts, this article offers a comparative expansion of the US and English histories, and particularly considers the role played by Holmes. Re-enactment theory offers the possibility of creating, or reliving, the intellectual process that led to Claflin, thus revealing a significant moment in the history of US federalism.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (NYPL)
--Dan Ernst