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Louis H. Hamel, Jr., Esq. is a Massachusetts lawyer retired from the Boston firm of Wilmer Hale (formerly Hale and Dorr), where he long chaired Trusts & Estates and was active in Pensions, Exempt Organizations and Family Business practice. Earlier he taught Philosophy at Manhattanville College in Purchase NY and then managed a family industrial real estate business in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He has read Psychoanalytic materials for 40 years and has done other writings on Law and Psychoanalysis. He was a member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Allience until it ceased operations. He is a Fellow (Retired) of the American College of Trusts and Estates Counsel. We invite readers to respond with papers and letters to the editor to these fascinating pieces of legal and Psychoanalytic theory and practice.
The Common Law of England, adopted in her former North American colonies (except Louisiana), is adventitious rather than systematic like the Napoleonic and other codes of Civil Law jurisdictions (including most of continental Europe and Louisiana).
The events which gave birth to the Common Law after the 1066 Norman conquest of England included, first, the gift of large bodies of land by William the Bastard (whose victory in war won him a happy change of name) to his fellow victorious knights. “Gift” thus became a foundation of the English legal process. To this day, the words, “give, grant, etc.,” appear in deeds of land, and “to give away the bride” is a conventional element of marriage ceremonies. Marriage among the nobility, in the formative days of English law, entailed temporary estates in land - the Dower of wives and the Courtesy of husbands. The Endowments of charities were temporary estates in land arising from gifts.