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21st Century Fox: Pierson v. Post, Then and Now

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2010

Stuart Banner
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Extract

Most court opinions are like actors: the older they get, the less people pay attention to them. For instance, the case immediately after Pierson v. Post in volume 3 of Caines's Reports is called Hollingsworth v. Napier. It was an important case in its day, much more important than Pierson v. Post, because it involved a recurring question of commercial law: what rights, if any, did a seller retain in goods stored in a public warehouse after he had delivered a bill of sale to the buyer? Hollingsworth went on to be cited in forty court opinions distributed fairly evenly through the 1870s, but then its career was over. It was cited twice in the 1880s, once in 1892, and never again.

Type
Forum: Comment
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , Spring 2009 , pp. 185 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 2009

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References

1. Hollingsworth v. Napier, 3 Caines 182 (1805).

2. Apart from Angela Fernandez's article in this volume, these include Angela Fernandez, “The Pushy Pedagogy of Pierson v. Post and the Fading Federalism of James Kent,” http://ssrn.com/abstract=984163 ; McDowell, Andrea, “Legal Fictions in Pierson v. Post,” Michigan Law Review 105 (2007): 735–77Google Scholar; Berger, Bethany R., “It's Not About the Fox: The Untold History of Pierson v. Post,” Duke Law Journal 55 (2006): 1089–1143Google Scholar; and Dharmapala, Dhammika and Pitchford, Rohan, “An Economic Analysis of ‘Riding to Hounds’: Pierson v. Post Revisited,” Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 18 (2002): 39–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Gillet v. Mason, 7 Johns. 16 (1810)Google Scholar; Buster v. Newkirk, 20 Johns. 75 (1822)Google Scholar; Swift v. Gifford, 23 F. Cas. 558 (D. Mass. 1872)Google Scholar.

4. Alliance Against IFQs v. Brown, 84 F.3d 343, 344 (9th Cir. 1996)Google Scholar; Bilida v. McCleod, 41 F. Supp. 2d 142, 151 (D.R.I. 1999)Google Scholar.

5. Pattee, W. S., Illustrative Cases in Personalty (Philadelphia: T. & J.W. Johnson & Co., 1893–1894), 1:19Google Scholar ; Lawson, John D., Select Cases in the Law of Personal Property (Columbia, Mo.: E. W. Stephens, 1896), 164Google Scholar; Warren, Edward H., Select Cases and Other Authorities on the Law of Property (Cambridge: Edward H. Warren, 1915), 1Google Scholar ; Bigelow, Harry A., Personal Property (St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1917), 1:141Google Scholar.

6. Library of American Law and Practice (Chicago: American Technical Society, 1919), 3:34.Google Scholar

7. City of San Marcos v. Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, 128 S.W.3d 264, 270 (Tex. App. 2004)Google Scholar; Popov v. Hayashi, 2002 WL 31833731 (Cal. Super. 2002); In re Seizure of $82,000 More or Less, 119 F. Supp. 2d 1013, 1019 (W.D. Mo. 2000)Google Scholar; Mercury Bay Boating Club Inc. v. San Diego Yacht Club, 545 N.Y.S.2d 693, 704 (App. Div. 1989)Google Scholar.

8. Wendel, Peter T., “Protecting Newly Discovered Antiquities: Thinking Outside the ‘Fee Simple’ Box,” Fordham Law Review 76 (2007): 1035Google Scholar; Rao, Radhika, “Genes and Spleens: Property, Contract, or Privacy Rights in the Human Body?” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 35 (2007): 376CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; McKenna, Mark P., “The Normative Foundations of Trademark Law,” Notre Dame Law Review 82 (2007): 1875Google Scholar; Scales, Adam F., “A Nation of Policyholders: Governmental and Market Failure in Flood Insurance,” Mississippi College Law Review 26 (2006): 37Google Scholar.