Gale Encyclopedia Of American Law 3Rd Edition Volume 9 P38 pptx

vanquished the South but also had presided
over the period known as
RECONSTRUCTION.Asa
result, white southerners chose to join the
DEMOCRATIC PARTY and to elect only Democratic
candidates to local and state office. So one-sided
was this electoral system that for a number of
years, the former Confederate states were
known as the “solid South”.
In the decades that followed Reconstruction
the Democratic Party experienced change and
evolution regarding its official views on a
number of issues including
CIVIL RIGHTS and
INTEGRATION. Southern Democrats had begun to
feel extremely uncomfortable in the party that
they viewed as having become far too liberal. In
1947 President
HARRY S. TRUMAN gave a speech to
the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (
NAACP) that called for the
federal government to be the vigilant protector
of the civil rights of all Americans. Truman
repeated the phrase “all Americans” leaving no
doubt that he meant African Americans should
be among those who were guaranteed equality
of opportunity. This speech was anathema to
the southern Democrats who were staunch
supporters of
SEGREGATION and the preservation

of “white power”.
In 1948 the Republicans, for the second time,
chose New York governor THOMAS E. DEWEY to
be their presidential candidate. In July 1948
the Democrats held a convention in which
they nominated Harry S. Truman, the former
vice-president who had succeeded
FRANKLIN D.
ROOSEVELT when the latter died on April 12, 1945.
The linchpin of the 1948 Democratic Party
platform became its support for civil rights
legislation. Man y Democrats were wary of
supporting the platform because they feared that
the party would splinter over the opposing views
of civil rights. The delegates from the southern
states were vocal in their opposition, and other
delegates began to waver. Then
HUBERT H.
HUMPHREY, the delegate from Minnesota and
mayor of Minneapolis, gave a speech in which
he urged his fellow delegates to “get out of the
shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly
into the bright sunshine of human rights!”
Humphrey’s passionate words were the catalyst
for the majority of the Democratic Party
delegates to vote for the platform planks that
called for a federal anti-lynching law, the
ABOLITION
of POLL TAXES in federal elections, desegregation
of the armed forces, and creation of a perma-

nent Fair Employment Practices Committee
that would prevent
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION in
federal jobs.
A majority of southern delegates, including
all 22 members of the Mississippi delegation
and 13 from Alabama, walked out of the con-
vention and formed their own party—the States’
Rights Democratic Party. The Dixiecrats, as they
were known, held a one-day convention on July
17, 1948, in Birmingham, Alabama, in which
they nominated South Carolina governor
STROM
THURMOND
for president and chose Mississippi
governor Fielding L. Wright as their vice-
presidential candidate.
The States’ Rights Party sought to take votes
from both the Democratic and Republican parties
by emphasizing the sovereignty of the states and
by denouncing Truman and the Democratic
Party’s proposed civil rights legislation as an
immense threat to the states. In Alabama, the
Dixiecrats succeeded in preventing Truman’s
name from being placed on the election ballot.
The Democratic Party was greatly weakened
by the defection of the conservative Dixiecrats
and by the liberals who left to join the
PROGRESSIVE
PARTY

, which nominated former vice president
and secretary of agriculture Henry A. Wallace to
be its presidential candidate. Nevertheless, Presi-
dent Harry S. Truman won reelection. Although
Truman was reelected over Dewey by a very
narrow margin, that vote resulted in the biggest
upset in the history of United States presidential
campaigns.
Strom Thurmond,
then-governor of
South Carolina, was
nominated as the
presidential candidate
by delegates to the
States’ Rights Party
Convention held in
July 1948.
AP IMAGES
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3
RD E DITION
358 STATES’ RIGHTS PARTY
During the 1948 election, the States’ Rights
Party carried South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisi-
ana, and Alabama. Thurmond and Wright
received approximately 1.2 million votes and
39 electoral votes. The party officially dissolved
after the 1948 election, but members of the party
remained as an active faction of the Democratic
Party. In 1954 Thurmond was elected as a
Democratic senator. He joined with other con-

servative Democrats (many former Dixiecrats)
and used the
FILIBUSTER and other political
strategies to oppose civil rights legislation. Thur-
mond later became a member of the Republican
Party.
FURTHER READINGS
Cohodas, Nadine. 1994. Strom Thurmond & the Politics of
Southern Change. Atlanta: Mercer Univ. Press.
Frederickson, Kari. 2001. The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of
the Solid South, 1932–1968. Charlotte: Univ. of North
Carolina Press.
Karabell, Zachary. 2000. The Last Campaign: How Harry
Truman Won the 1948 Election. New York: Random
House.
CROSS REFERENCES
CivilRights Acts; Democratic Party; James Strom Thurmond.
STATUS
The standing, state, or condition of an individual;
the rights, obligations, capacities, and incapacities
that assign an individual to a given class.
For example, the term status is used in
reference to the legal state of being an infant, a
ward, or a prisoner, as well as in reference to
a person’s social standing in the community .
STATUS OFFENSE
A type of crime that is not based upon prohibited
action or inaction but rests on the fact that the
offender has a certain personal condition or is of
a specified character.

Vagrancy—the act of traveling from place to
place with no visible means of support—is an
example of a
STATUS OFFENSE . Another example:
In all states, a child can be brought before the
juvenile court and charged with “status offenses,”
acts that would not be illegal were the youth
an adult. Thus, status offenders are children
who commit acts which are illegal solely due to
their age (status). For example, truancy, curfew
violations, underage drinking, and other offenses
are traditionally included in this category.
STATUS QUO
[Latin, The existing state of things at any given
date.] Status quo ante bellum means the state
of things before the war. The status quo to be
preserved by a preliminary injunction is the last
actual, peaceable, uncontested status which pre-
ceded the pending controversy.
STATUTE
A statue is an act of a legislature that declares,
proscribes, or commands something; it is a specific
law, expressed in writing.
A statute is a written law passed by a
legislature on the state or federal level. Statutes
set forth general propositions of law that courts
apply to specific situations. A statute may forbid
a certain act, direct a certain act, make a decla-
ration, or set forth governmental mechanisms
to aid society.

A statute begins as a bill proposed or
sponsored by a legislator. If the bill survives the
legislative committee process and is approved by
both houses of the legislature, the bill becomes
law when it is signed by the executive officer
(the president on the federal level or the governor
on the state level). When a bill becomes law, the
various provisions in the bill are called statutes.
The term statute signifies the elevation of a bill
from legislative proposal to law. State and federal
statutes are compiled in statutory codes that group
the statutes by subject. These codes are published
in book form and are available at law libraries.
Lawmaking powers are vested chiefly in
elected officials in the legislative branch. The
vesting of the chief lawmaking power in elected
lawmakers is the foundation of a representative
democracy. Aside from the federal and state
constitutions, statutes passed by elected law-
makers are the first laws to consult in finding
the law that applies to a case. However, legislative
power is constrained by constitutional provi-
sions against
EX POST FACTO LAWS and bills of
ATTAINDER. In addition, a legislature may only
regulate conduct within the powers enumerated
in the U.S. Constitution or a state constitution.
Some state legislatures are constrained by con-
stitutional provisions and judicial rulings to
enact state laws on single subjects rather than

through omnibus bills that have been called
Christmas tree bills or ga rbage bills.
The power of statutes over other forms of
laws is not complete, however. Under the U.S.
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
STATUTE 359
Constitution and state constitutions, federal
and state governments are comprised of a system
of checks and balances among the legislative,
executive, and judicial branches. As the system
of checks and balances plays out, the executive
and judicial branches have the opportunity to
fashion laws within certain limits. The executive
branch may possess certain lawmaking powers
under the federal or state constitutions, and
the judiciary has the power to review statutes to
determine whether they are valid under those
constitutions. When a court strikes down a
statute, it in effect creates a law of its own that
applies to the general public.
Laws created through judicial opinion stand
in contradistinction to laws created in statutes.
CASE LAW has the same legally binding effect as
statutory law, but there are important distinc-
tions between statutes and case law. Case law is
written by judges, not by elected lawmakers,
and it is written in response to a specific case
before the court. A judicial opinion may be used
as precedent for similar cases, however, which
means that the judicial opinion in the case will

guide the result in similar cases. In this sense,
a judicial opinion can constitute the law on
certain issues withi n a particular jurisdiction.
Courts can establish law in this way when no
statute exists to govern a case or when the court
interprets a statute.
For example, if an appeals court holds that
witness testimony on memory recovered through
therapy is not admissible at trial, that decision
will become the rule for similar cases within the
appeals court’s jurisdiction. The decision will
remain law until the court reverses itself or is
reversed by a higher court, or until the state or
federal legislature passes a statute that overrides
the judicial decision. If the courts strike down a
statute and the legislature passes a similar statute,
the courts may have an opportunity to declare
the new statute unconstitutional. This cycle can
be repeated over and over if legislatures continu-
ally test the constitutional limits on their law-
making powers.
Judicial opinions also provide legal author-
ity in cases that are not covered by statute.
Legislatures have not passed statutes that govern
every conceivable dispute. Furthermore, the
language contained in statutes does not cover
every possible situation. Statutes may be written
in broad terms, and judicial opinions must
interpret the language of relevant statutes
according to the facts of the case at hand.

Regulations passed by administrative agencies
also fill in statutory gaps, and courts occasion-
ally are called on to interpret regulations as
well as statutes.
Courts tend to follow a few general rules in
determining the meaning or scope of a statute.
If a statute does not provide satisfactory defini-
tions of ambiguous terms, courts must interpret
the words or phrases according to ordinary
rules of grammar and dictionary definitions. If
a word or phrase is technical or legal, it is
interpreted within the context of the statute.
For example, the term interest can refer to a
monetary charge or ownership of property. If
the term interest appears in t he context of a
statute on
REAL ESTATE ownership, a court will
construe the word to mean property ownership.
Previous interpretations of similar statutes are
also helpful in determining a statute’s meaning.
Statutes are not static and irreversible. A
statute may be changed or repealed by the
lawmaking body that enacted it, or it may be
overturned by a court. A statute may lapse, or
terminate, under the terms of the statute itself
or under legislative rules that automatically
terminate statutes unless they are reapproved
before a certain amount of time has passed.
Although most legal disputes are covered at
least in part by statutes, tort and contract

disputes are exceptions, in that they are largely
governed by case law.
CRIMINAL LAW, patent law,
tax law,
PROPERTY LAW, and BANKRUPTCY law are
among the areas of law that are covered first and
foremost by statute.
CROSS REFERENCES
Judicial Review; Legislation; Legislative History; Statutory
Construction.
STATUTE OF FRAUDS
A type of state law, modeled after an old ENGLISH
LAW
, that requires certain types of contracts to be
in writing.
U.S. law has adopted a 1677 English law,
called the Statute of Frauds, which is a device
employed as a defense in a breach of contract
lawsuit. Every state has some type of statute
of frauds; the law’s purpose is to prevent the
possibility of a nonexistent agreement between
two parties being “proved” by perjury or
FRAUD.
This objective is accomplished by prescribing
that particular contracts not be enforced unless
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
360 STATUTE OF FRAUDS
a written note or memorandum of agreement
exists that is signed by the persons bound by
the contract’s terms or their authorized repre-

sentatives.
The statute of frauds is invoked by a
defendant in a breach of contract action. If the
defendant can establish that the contract he has
failed to perform is legally unenforceable because
it has not satisfied the requirement of the statute,
then the defendant cannot be liable for its breach.
For example, suppose that a plaintiff claims that
a defendant agreed to pay her a commission for
selling his building. If the defendant can demon-
strate that no commission contract was signed,
the statute of frauds will prevent the plaintiff
from recovering the commission.
The English Statute of Frauds, which was
enacted by Parliament in 1677, applied to only
specific types of contracts. These included
promises to a creditor of another to pay that
individual’s debts when they became due, a
marriage contract or promise to marry, other
than the mutual promises of a man and woman
to wed, a contract for the sale of real estate, and
a contract that cannot be performed within one
year of its formation and has not been completely
performed by one side.
States have expanded the application of the
statute to other categories of contracts, such
as a life insurance contract that is not to be
performed within the lifetime of the person
making the promise. It also applies to a contract
to bequeath or devise property by will and to

a contract that authorizes an agent to sell real
property for a commission.
A strict application of the statute of frauds
can produce an unjust result. A party, who in
GOOD FAITH believes a contract exists and there-
fore spends time and money to perform the
contract, would be unable to force the other
party to perform because the agreement was not
in writing. Therefore, courts often employ the
term part perfo rmance to determine whether
a plaintiff’s conduct based on her belief that
a contract exists justifies enforcement of the
contract even though it has failed to comply
with the statute of frauds. Part performance
refers to acts performed by the plaintiff in
reliance on the performance of the duties
imposed on the defendant by the terms of the
contract. The plaintiff’s actions must be sub-
stantial in order to demonstrate that he actually
has relied on the terms of the contract.
When the alleged contract involves real pro-
perty, the acts of taking possession and making
part payment—when performed in reliance
upon an oral contract under circumstances
that clearly show a buyer-seller relationship—
are usually sufficient to remove a contract from
the requirements of the statute of frauds. The
oral contract, therefore, would be enforced.
However, payment or posse ssion alone gener-
ally will not suffice to overcome the statute of

frauds.
Where services have been performed based
upon a contract that is unenforceable because of
the statute of frauds, the value of those services
can nevertheless be recovered on the basis of
quantum meruit, or the reasonable value of
those services. If a person performs services in
reliance on an oral promise that he will inherit
certain property and that promise is not fulfilled,
that individual can sue the decedent’s estate on
a
QUANTUM MERUIT basis for the reasonable value
of his services.
If a contract is unenforceable, a person can
recover expenses incurred at the other party’s
request even though they pertain to the unen-
forceable contract. The recovery of expenses is
not affected because the law implies a promise
by the defendant to pay for expenses incurred at
her request, and liability is not based upon
breach of contract.
If one party has performed in reli ance on an
oral contract and will be irreparably harmed if
the contract is not enforced, some courts apply
the theory of
EQUITABLE ESTOPPEL to prevent the
statute of frauds from being employed as a
defense. Equitable estoppel holds that if a person
has so altered his position that justice demands
the enforcement of the contract, the court will

enforce the contract even though it fails to
comply with the statute.
FURTHER READINGS
Browne, Causten. 1997. A Treatise on the Construction of the
Statute of Frauds, as in Force in England and the United
States. Holmes Beach, Fla.: Gaunt.
Kidwell, John. 2000. “Ruminations on Teaching the Statute
of Frauds.” Saint Louis Univ. Law Journal 44 (fall).
Randolph, Patrick A., Jr. 2001. “Has E-Sign Murdered the
Statute of Frauds?” Probate & Property 15 (July-August).
Vietzen, Laurel. 2007. Understanding, Creating, and Imple-
menting Contracts. New York: Aspen Publishers.
CROSS REFERENCE
Quasi Contract.
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
STATUTE OF FRAUDS 361
STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS
A statute of limitations is a type of federal or state
law that restricts the time within which legal
proceedings may be brought.
Statutes of limitations, which date back to
early
ROMAN LAW, are a fundamental part of
European and U.S. law. These statutes, which
apply to both civil and criminal actions, are
designed to prevent fraudulent and stale claims
from arising after all evidence has been lost or
after the facts have become obscure through the
passage of time or the defective memory, death,
or disappearance of witnesses. An underlying

purpose of such statutes is to require the diligent
pursuit of known claims, which provides finality
and predictability for potential defendants.
The statute of limitations is a defense that is
ordinarily asserted by the
DEFENDANT to defeat an
action brought against him after the appropriate
time has elapsed. Therefore, the defendant must
plead the defense before the court upon answer-
ing the plaintiff’s complaint. If the defendant
does not do so, he is regarded as having waived
the defense and will not be permitted to use it
in any subs equent proceedings.
Statutes of limitations are enacted by the
legislature, which may either extend or reduce
the time limits, subject to certain restrictions. A
court cannot extend the time period unless the
statute provides such authority. With respect to
civil lawsuits, a statute must afford a reasonable
period in which an action can be brought. A
statute of limitations is unconstitutional if it
immediately curtails an existing remedy or pro-
vides so little time that it deprives an individual
of a reasonable opportunity to start a lawsuit.
Depending upon the state statute, the parties
themselves may either shorten or extend the
prescribed time period by agreement, such as a
provision in a contract.
Criminal Actions
A majority of states have a statute of limitations

for all crimes except
MURDER. Once the statute
has expired, the court lacks jurisdiction to try
or punish a defendant.
Criminal statutes of limitations apply to
different crimes on the basis of their general
classification as either felonies or misdemeanors.
Generally, the time limit starts to run on the
date the offense was committed, not from the
time the crime was discovered or the accused
was identified. The running of the statute may
be suspended for any period the accused is
absent from the state or, in certain states, while
any other
INDICTMENT for the same crime is
pending. This suspension occurs so that the
state will be able to obtain a new indictment in
the event the first one is declared invalid.
Civil Actions
In determining which statute of limitations will
control in a
CIVIL ACTION, the type of CAUSE OF
ACTION
under which the claim will be pursued
is critical. States establish different deadline s
depending on whether the cause of action involves
a contract,
PERSONAL IN JURY, libel, FRAUD, or other
claim.
Once the cause of action is determined, the

date of the injury mu st be fixed. A cause of
action ordinarily arises when the party has a
right to apply to the proper court for relief.
Some states, for example, require a person to
bring a lawsuit for breach of contract within
six years from the date the contract was
breached. The action cannot be started until
the contract has actually been violated, even
though serious disagreements between the
parties might have occurred earlier. Conversely,
the time limit within which to bring an actio n
for fraud does not begin until the fraud has
been discovered.
Waiving the Defense
A court cannot force a defendant to use a statute
of limitations defense, but it is usually in the
person’s best legal interests to do so. Neverthe-
less, defendants do sometimes waive the defense.
The defense may be waived by an agreement of
the parties to the controversy, provided that the
agreement is supported by adequate consider-
ation. For example, a debtor’s agreement to
waive the statute of limitations in exchange for
a creditor’s agreement not to sue is
VALUABLE
CONSIDERATION
that prevents the debtor from
using the defense.
A defendant may be unable to use the
limitations defense due to her agreement, con-

duct, or representations. To be estopped, or
prevented, from using this defense, a defendant
need not have signed a written statement, unless
required by statute. The defendant must, how-
ever, have done something that amounted to
an affirmative inducement to the
PLAINTIFF to
delay bringing the action. Statements that only
attempt to discourage a person from bringing
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
362 STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS
a suit or mere negotiations looking toward an
amicable settlement will not estop a defendant
from invoking the statute of limitations.
Tolling the Statute
Statutes of limitations are designed to aid
defendants. A plaintiff, however, can prevent
the dismissal of his action for untimeliness by
seeking to toll the statute. When the statute is
tolled, the running of the time period is suspended
until some event specified by law takes place.
Tolling provisions benefit a plaintiff by extend-
ing the time period in which he is permitted to
BRING SUIT.
Various events or circumstances will toll a
statute of limitations. It is tolled when one of
the parties is under a legal disability (the lack of
legal capacity to do an act) at the time the cause
of action accrues. A child or a person with a
mental illness is regarded as being incapable of

initiating a legal action on her own behalf.
Therefore, the time limit will be tolled until some
fixed time after the disability has been removed.
For example, once a child reaches the
AGE OF
MAJORITY
, the counting of time will be resumed.
A personal disability that postpones the opera-
tion of the statute against an individual may be
asserted only by that individual. If a party is
under more than one disability, the statute of
limitations does not begin to run until all the
disabilities are removed. Once the statute begins
to run, it will not be suspended by the subsequent
Recovered Memory: Stopping
the Clock
S
B
tatutes of limitations are intended to encour-
age the re solution of lega l claims within a
reasonable amount of time. Courts and legislatures
have had to reconsider the purpose of time limits in
dealing with the controversial issue of recovered
memory by child sexual abuse victims. For t he most
part, the clock has been stopped until a victim
remembers the abuse.
In the 1980s some mental health therapists
began exploring the nature of child sexual abuse.
They contended that memories of childhood trauma
are so disturbing that the child represses them.

Many years later, while in therapy or by happen-
stance, the person remembers the traumatic events.
Therapists built on this concept, working with
patients to fully recover these memories.
Victims of child sexual abuse who sought to
sue their abusers for damages faced a statute of
limitations question: Had the time e xpired to file a
civil lawsuit because the memory of abuse was not
recovered until many years after the actual abuse?
Courts that faced this issue for the first time sought
ways to circumvent the time barrier. One method
was to apply the “discovery rule” found in tort law.
The discovery rule appl ies if the injury is one that
is not readily perceptible as having an external
source. Thus, a person who has serious mental
health problems but does not know the cause will
be allowed to toll (suspend the running of) the
statute of limitations until he or she discovers that
the injury was caused by the defendant’stortious
conduct.
Legislatures have been urged to amend their
statutes of l imitations to permit recovered memory
plaintiffs to sue their abusers. Between 1989 and
1995, 24 s tates had amended their laws. As of 2009,
28 states had codified some form of a “delayed
discovery rule” for recovered-memory sexual abuse
cases. Typically recovered-memory laws provide
that the action must be filed within a certai n number
of years after the plaintiff e ither reaches the age of
majority or knew or had reason to know that sexual

abuse caused the injury. Because of these judicial
and legislative changes, many lawsuits have been
filed alleging child sexual abuse that occurred many
yearsbefore,sometimesaslongas20yearsearlier.
FURTHER READINGS
Haaken, Jan. Memory Matters: Contexts for Understanding
Sexual Abuse Recollections. New York: Routledge.
Isaac, Rael Jean. 2001. “Down Pseudo-Memory Lane.” Priorities
for Health 13.
CROSS REFERENCES
Child Abuse; Sex Offenses; Sexual Abuse.
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS 363
disability of any of the parties unless specified
by statute.
Mere ignorance of the existence of a cause
of action generally does not toll the statute of
limitations, particularly when the facts could
have been learned by inquiry or diligence. In
cases where a cause of action has been fraud-
ulently concealed, the statute of limitations is
tolled until the action is, or could have been,
discovered through the exercise of due diligence.
Ordinarily, silence or failure to disclose the
existence of a cause of action does not toll the
statute. The absence of the plaintiff or defen-
dant from the jurisdiction does not suspe nd
the running of the statute of limitations, unless
the statute so provides.
The statute of limitations for a debt or

obligation may be tolled by either an uncondi-
tional promise to pay the debt or an acknowl-
edgement of the debt. The time limitation on
bringing a lawsuit to enforce payment of the
debt is suspended until the time for payment
established under the promise or acknowledg-
ment has arrived. Upon that due date, the period
of limitations will start again.
FURTHER READINGS
Corman, Calvin W. 1991. Limitation of Actions. Boston:
Little, Brown.
Lazo, Joy. 1995. “True or False: Expert Testimony on
Repressed Memory.” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review
28 (June).
Levy, Adolph J. 1987. Solving Statute of Limitations Problems.
New York: Kluwer Law.
STATUTE OF USES
An ENGLISH LAW enacted in 1535 to end the
practice of creating uses in real property by
changing the purely equitable title of those entitled
to a use into absolute ownership with the right
of possession.
The Statute of Uses was a radical statute
forced through a recalcitrant English Parliament
in 1535 by a willful King Henry VIII. Essentially,
the statute eliminated a sleight of hand that had
been fashioned by landholders to avoid paying
royal fees associated with land. These roya l fees,
called feudal incidents, had been slipping away
from the Crown for a century or so before the

statute was passed.
Landholders in sixteenth-century England
were supposed to hold their land at the will of a
lord, who worked in the service of the king or
queen. In exchange for the land, landholders
were obliged to pay certain fees to the lord, who
kept some and turned the rest over to the
Crown. Many of the royal in cidents associated
with real property were exacted by the Crown
when the landholder died. However, the Crown
could collect incidents only if the legal title
passed from the landholder to an heir.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
landholders had devised a way to both profit
from their land and avoid feudal incidents.
The landholders would place their prop erty in
the name of one person for the benefit of a
third party. This third party, called the cestui
que use, the beneficiary of the use, was either
the original landholder or a person of the
landholder’s choosing. The arrangement created
a form of land ownership, or estate in land,
called a use.
Soon courts began to recognize the right of
a landholder, as feoffor, to give possession of
his land to a peasant tenant while giving
legal title to a third party, or feoffee. They
also enforced agreements between a feoffor
and feoffee in which the feoffee held title to
the land only for the benefit of the cestui

que use.
Under the
COMMON LAW, when legal title to
land was held by more than one feoffee, partial
title did not pass to the deceased feoffee’s heirs
upon the death of a feoffee. Instead, the deceased
feoffee’s portion of the title passed to the other
feoffees. A landholder, as a feoffor, could give
legal title to several feoffees and add a new feoffee
to the legal title upon the death of any feoffee.
Under this system, the death of a title-holding
feoffee did not give rise to an inheritance
incident. Thus, a landholder could avoid feudal
incidents while he himself or a person of his
choosing continued to reap profits from the
land.
By giving legal title to two or more feoffees,
a feoffor also was able to avoid other royal
incidents, such as marriage fees and other fees
associated with the death of a landholder. If the
property was held in other persons’ names, a
landholder could also avoid losing the property
due to debt or felony conviction. By the end of
the fifteenth century, almost all of the land in
England was owned in use. Because most of the
land was owned by a relatively small number of
wealthy landowners, in most cases the actual
title owners did not actually live on their parcels
of land. Another consequence was that the
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION

364 STATUTE OF USES
Crown had lost substantial revenues due to the
avoidance of the land-based feudal incidents.
King Henry VIII attempted to reclaim these
lost revenues with the passage of the Statute of
Uses. Under the act, the full title to land was
automatically given to the person for whom
the property was being used, the cestui que use.
The act also reinstated the old feudal rule of
primogeniture, which held that land should
go to the oldest son up on the death of the
landowner.
Landholders strenuously objected to the
statute. Over the next four years they conducted
a Pilgrimage of Grace to London in an effort to
convince the king and Parliament to eliminat e
primogeniture and reverse the
ABOLITION of the
use estate.
The campaig n caused Henry VIII to loosen
the royal grip on land ownership. In 1540
Parliament passed the Statute of Wills, which
abolished primogeniture and gave landholders
the right to devise their property to whomever
they pleased in a written will and testament.
However, Parliament did not abolish the Statute
of Uses.
Immediately after the act was passed, land-
holders set about creating loopholes. The courts
also were hostile to the legislation. They accom-

modated landholders by giving the statute a strict
technical construction and by expanding other
methods for landholders to put their property
in the name of another person while keeping
it for their own use or profit or for the use or
profit of another person. In particular, the English
courts expanded the concept of the trust to fill
the void. A land trust is an arrangement whereby
one person holds full title to property for the
benefit of another person, who may direct the
management and use of the property.
Courts focused on the difference between a
trust and a use to achieve essentially the same
result for landowners. In a trust the title owner
plays some active role in connection with the
use of the property. In contrast, with a bare use,
the feoffee performed no work in connection
with the property and served only as a straw-
person. If a feoffee was performing duties in
connection with the property, the land was not
in use, courts reasoned, but in trust. Many of the
rulesonlandtruststhatdevelopedinresponseto
the Statute of Uses were adopted in the United
States and continue in effect in the early twenty-
first century.
In 1660 Parliament abolished all remaining
feudal incidents associated with land in the
Statute of Tenure. This obviated the need for
a Statu te of Uses because there no longer was
any need to evade feudal incidents. The Statute

of Uses was finally repealed by Parliament in
1925 by the Law of Pro perty Act (12 & 13 Geo.
5, ch. 16, sec. 1(7)).
FURTHER READINGS
Baade, Hans W. 1994. “The Casus Omissus: A Pre-History
of Statutory Analogy.” Syracuse Journal of International
Law and Commerce 20.
Haar, Charles M., and Lance Liebman. 2008. Property and
Law. 2d ed. Los Altos, CA: Indo American Books.
Holmes, William J. 1995. “The Evolution of the Trust: A
Creative Solution to Trustee Liability under CERCLA.”
Villanova Environmental Law Journal 6.
Kurtz, Sheldon F., and Herbert Hovenkamp. 2007. Cases and
Materials on American Property Law. 5th ed. St. Paul,
Minn.: Thomson/West.
Reid, Charles J. 1995. “The Seventeenth-Century Revolution
in the English Land Law.” Cleveland State Law Review 43.
Zschau, Julius J. and Ulysses Clayborn. 2009. “Using Land
Trusts to Prevent Small Farmer Land Loss.” Real
Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal 44 (fall).
CROSS REFERENCE
Feudalism.
STATUTE OF WILLS
An early ENGLISH LAW that provided that all
individuals who owned land were permitted to leave
or devise two-thirds of their property to anyone
by written will and testament, effective upon their
death.
The Statute of Wills (32 Hen. 8, c. 1) gave to
landowners in England the right to dispose of

land through a written will. Before the Statute
of Wills was enacted by the English Parliament
in 1540, landowners did not have the right to
determine who would become the new owner
of the land upon their death. The inheritance
of land was dependent on whether the deceased
landowner was survived by a competent relative
or descendant. Generally, if a landowner died with
no relatives, the land reverted into the possession
of the Crown. This reversion was called
ESCHEAT.
The Statute of Wills made it possible for a
landholder to decide who would inherit the
land upon his death. The statute was passed a
mere four years after the
STATUTE OF USES banned
the practice of splitting the title to land to avoid
paying royal fees associated with the property.
The Statute of Wills was seen as a policy retreat
by King Henry VIII, who faced tremendous
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
STATUTE OF WILLS 365
opposition from landowners seeking relief from
royal control of land.
Some of the procedures created by the
Statute of Wills remain effective in modern law.
The statute req uired that wills be in writing, that
they be signed by the person making the will,
or testator, and that they be properly witnessed
by other persons. If any of these requirements

was not met, the will could not be enforced in
court. These requirements currently exist in
state law and are intended to ensure that wills
are not fabricated and that the testator’s intent
is fulfilled.
FURTHER READING
Kurtz, Sheldon F., and Herbert Hovenkamp. 2007. Cases and
Materials on American Property Law. 5th ed. St. Paul,
Minn.: Thomson/West.
STATUTE OF YORK
An ENGLISH LAW enacted in 1318 that required the
consent of Parliament in all legislative ma tters.
The Statute of York was an important step
toward the development of a constitutional
monarchy in England. The law was enacted in
the city of York in 1318, at a time when King
Edward II was attempting to reass ert his control
over the kingdom.
Historians generally regard Edward II as an
unqualified failure as king. Seven years before
the Statute of York, the nobility had forced him
to accept the Ordinances of 1311, which required
baronial consent for foreign war, restricted the
Crown’s power to interfere with the judicial
system, and required the king to obtain the
advice and consent of the barons in Parliament
for a long list of officials he wished to appoint.
Edward II regained political strength in
1318 and managed to have the Ordinances
repealed. The Statute of York, however, speci-

fied that the “consent of the prelates, earls, and
barons, and of the community of the realm”
was required for legislation. Though some his-
torians believe the statute restored baronial
control over Englis h government, many histor-
ians see the phrase “community of the realm” as
signifying a shift of power to those outside the
noble class. In addition, the powers of the king
were constrained.
FURTHER READING
Haskins, George Lee. 1935. The Statute of York and the
Interest of the Commons. Reprint,, 1977. Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press.
STATUTES AT LARGE
An official compilation of the acts and resolutions
of each session of Congress published by the Office
of the Federal Register in the National Archives
and Record Service.
The Statutes at Large are divided into two
parts: the first is composed of public acts and
joint resolutions; the second includes private
acts and joint resolutions, concurrent resolu-
tions, treaties, proposed and ratified amendments
to the Constitution, and presidential proclama-
tions. Volum es from 1951 to the present are
arranged by public law number; older volumes
are arranged by chapter number.
The Statutes at Large are considered the
official publication of the law for citation pur-
poses when titles of the United States Code have

not been enacted as positiv e law.
STATUTORY
Created, defined, or relating to a statute; required
by statute; conforming to a statute.
A statutory penalty, for example, is punish-
ment in the form of a fine, prison sente nce,
or both, that is imposed against an offender for
committing some statutory violation.
STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION
See CANONS OF CONSTRUCTION.
STATUTORY INTERPRETATION
See CANONS OF CONSTRUCTION.
STATUTORY RAPE
Sexual intercours e by an adult with a person
below a statutorily designated age.
The criminal offense of statutory rape is
committed when an adult has sexual intercourse
with a person who, under the law, is incapable
of consenting to sex. Minors and physically
and mentally incapacitated persons are deemed
incapable of consenting to sex under rape
statutes in all states. These persons are consid-
ered deserving of special protection because
they are especially vulnerable due to their youth
or condition.
Most legislatures include statutory rape
provisions in statutes that punish a number of
different types of sexual
ASSAULT. Statutory rap e
is different from other types of rape in that force

GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
366 STATUTE OF YORK
and lack of actual consent are not necessary for
conviction. A DEFENDANT may be convicted of
statutory rape even if the
COMPLAINANT explicitly
consented to the sexual contact and no force
was used by the actor. By contrast, other rape
generally occurs when a person overcomes
another person by force and without the person’s
consent.
The actor’s age is an important factor in
statutory rape where the offense is based on the
victim’s age. Furthermore, a defendant may
not argue that he or she was mistaken as to the
minor’s age or incapacity. Most rape statutes
specify that a rape occurs when the complainant
is under a certain age and the perpetrator is over
a certain age. In Minnesota, for example, crimi-
nal sexual conduct in the first degree is defined
as sexual contact with a person under 13 years
of age by a person who is more than 36 months
older than the victim. The offense also is
committed if the complainant is between 13
and 16 years old and the actor is more than
48 months older than the complainant (Minn.
Stat. Ann. § 609.342 [West 1996]).
Wisconsin’s statutory rape laws are unusual
in that they not only prohibit sexual conduct
between an adult and an underage victim, but

also criminalize all sexual conduct involving
underage persons, even when that conduct
involves peers and is fully consensual. Thus, any
time a person under the age of 16 in Wisconsin
engages in an act that is more sexually intimate
than a kiss, a felony has been committed. Should
both partners be underage, then by the same act
each partner is simultaneously a victim and a
perpetrator. Enforcement of these laws when both
victim and perpetrator are underage has been
uneven at best, and politically divisive at worst.
FURTHER READING
Cocca, Carolyn E. 2004. Jailbait: The Politics of Statutory
Rape Laws in the United States. Albany: State Univ. of
New York Press.
CROSS REFERENCES
Child Abuse; Sexual Abuse.
STATUTORY REDEMPTION
The right granted by legislation to a mortgagor,
one who pledges property as security for a debt, as
well as to certain others, to recover the mortgaged
property after a foreclosure sale.
Statutory redemption is the right of a
mortgagor to regain ownership of property
after foreclosure. A mortgagor is a person or
party who borrows money from a mortgagee to
purchase property. The arrangement between a
mortgagor and mortgagee is called a mortgage.
Foreclosure is the termination of rights to
property bought with a mortgage. Most fore-

closures occur when the mortgagor fails to
make mortgage payments to the mortgagee. After
foreclosing a mortgage, the mortgagee may sell
the property at a foreclosure sale. Statutory
redemption gives a mortgagor a certain period
of time, usually one year, to pay the amount that
the property was sold for at the foreclosure sale.
If the mortgagor pays all of the foreclosure sale
pricebeforetheendofoneyearafterthefore-
closure sale, or within the statutory redemption
period, the mortgagor can keep the prop erty.
A mortgagor in a state that offers statutory
redemption may stay on the premises after
foreclosure during the statutory redemption
period. If the mortgagor does not redeem the
property by the end of the period, the purchaser
at the foreclosure sale receives title to, and
possession of, the property.
In states that have redemption statutes, an
individual mortgagor cannot waive a statutory
redemption period. Many states that offer statu-
tory redemption make a special exception for
corporations, which may waive the statutory
redemption period if it is incompatible with the
reorganization or dissolution of the corporation.
Approximately half of al l states have passed
statutes that allow mortgagors to redeem prop-
erty after a mortgage foreclosure. The states that
allow statutory redemption have done so to drive
up foreclosure sale prices for the benefit of both

the defaulting mortgagor and creditors of the
mortgagor who have obtained an interest in
the property. Statutory redemption is designed
to prevent extremely low sale prices by giving the
mortgagor an opportunity to match the sale
price. Some legal commentators have observed,
however, that statutory redemption has failed
to increase the amount of bids on foreclosed
property because title to property that is subject
to statutory redemption is so uncertain. Because
the mortgagor could redeem the property within
a year and creditors of the mortgagor could
make claims to the property, potential buyers of
foreclosed property adjust their bids to account
for these hazards.
Statutory redemption is distinct from equi-
table redemption. Equitable redemption is the
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
STATUTORY REDEMPTION 367