Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/299

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HARVARD LAW REVIEW.
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Harvard Law Review. Published monthly, during the Academic Year, by Harvard Law Students. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, $2-50 PER ANNUM 35 CENTS PER NUMBER. Editorial Board. Wilfred Bolster Editor-itz-Chief. Guy Cunningham, Herbert H. Darling, Treasuref^ David T. Dickinson, Stephen A. Foster, Louis Hicks, Carleton Hunneman, Francis C. Huntington, Ralph A. Kellogg, M. Day Kimball, James G. King, James M. Nevveli^ Oliver Prescott, Jr., Ezra R. Thayer, Frank li. Williams. The members of the Selden Society and others will be glad to know- that vol. 3, by Mr. Baildon, is nearly ready for delivery, and that vol. 4, by Professor Maitland, is already in the press. The former is a collec- tion of placita in the King's Courts, the latter of placita in the Manor Courts. Each contains an invaluable Introduction ; the proof-sheets of Professor Maitland's Introduction being already at hand. The recent decision in Whitby v. Mitchell^ on the much-disputed question as to the existence of a rule at common law forbidding the limitation of estates for life to successive generations, seems not to have been received in England with favor. The case in brief was this : by a marriage settlement lands were conveyed to the use of the hus- band and wife successively for life, with remainder to the use of any of their children or more remote issue (born before appointment made) as the husband and wife should by deed appoint. By a deed (which of course had to be read as a part of the marriage settlement) they ap- pointed to the use of a married daughter for life, with remainder to the use of her children living at the date of the deed of appointment. I'his last clause brought the remainder within the period allowed by the rule against perpetuities, since it necessarily became vested within a hfe in being at the time of the settlement ; but the Court of Appeal decided that there was, resting on an old common-law prohibition against a possibility upon a possibility, a rule still in existence that if an estate were given to an unborn person for life followed by a remainder to any child of such unborn person, the remainder was void. It is to be noticed that the court did not decide that the rule against perpetuities did not apply to contingent remainders.^ They affirmed the existence of this other rule as entirely independent of the rule against

  • 42 Ch. D. 494, affirmed in Court of Appeal, 44 Ch. D. 85.

^ For a full discussion of this disputed question, on which the existence of the rule laid down in Whithy y. Mitchell hz^s. an important bearing, see Grav, Perp., §§ 284-298. Mr. Justice Kay has held, since his decision in Whitby v. Mitchell, that the rule againsc i)erpetuities does apply to contingent remainders. In re Froit, 43 Ch. D. 246.