Editorial
Front Page - Friday, October 1, 2010
I Swear ...
More on possession
Vic Fleming
A couple of weeks ago, I started a column off by writing that as a kid, I had heard that possession was “nine tenths of the law.”
I might have known that would provoke a response from my Property Law professor of 34 years ago.
Indeed, Arthur Murphey, one of those faculty emeriti of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law, wrote me a “Dear Judge” letter:
“I have just read your column telling how you as a child were taught that possession was nine tenths of the law. You had to figure out what the other one tenth was.”
Yep. That’s pretty much what I wrote.
“You?had it easy!” Art Murphey exclaimed, his unforgettable Southern accent practically springing off the computer screen. “I was taught that possession was nine ‘points’ of the law.”
I foresaw where this was going. Do you?
Art Murphey goes on to state the issue:
“Nobody could tell me how many points there were!”
I could see his point, almost immediately, which (regrettably) I was not always able to do when I was in law school.
But it was not his fault. I point the finger at the Socratic method, which I blame on so many things that I wonder why I use it now myself.
Art Murphey was a fine law teacher. I say that without qualification and having no exams coming up in his class.
I thought he was a tough, but fair, grader, which is another way of saying that I did not make A’s in his classes.
(He’d make an A in mine, though!).
But back to the issue.
His letter continues: “If there were 1,000 points, possession did not amount to a hill of beans.”
It’s too late to score any Brownie points with him, but I beg to differ.
If there were 1,000 points, possession would equal nine one thousandths, or, expressed differently, 0.009.
Now, as to whether 0.009 is greater than or less than a hill of beans is another kettle of fish.
However, it should be pointed out that my father is the one who taught me that possession is nine tenths of the law.
My father never lied to me, and I never sought to hide this knowledge.
The point is that if Professor Murphey had just asked me, I would have been able to tell him that there were ten points.
How else could the fractions work out so nicely?
Besides, a major premise of the Rule of Law is that if two seemingly contradictory statements of law can be interpreted so that both are true, then they should be. (Citation omitted, because I did not look one up.)
The only way possession can be both nine points of the law and nine tenths of the law is for there to be ten points. Besides, the 1,000 points, as I recall, were points of light. Or did that come later?
Now, I had this friend as a kid who was convinced that his dad had told him that possession was nine “tents” of the law. He was constantly looking for, and occasionally finding, a tenth tent – mostly on campouts.
He was a nuisance. Needless to say, he did not go to law school.
Now, that the column is over, go back through it and count the “points.”
Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at vicfleming@att.net.
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