A Painful Approach to Land Disputes
It is not unusual for lawyers or title
insurers to feel like pulling their hair out when dealing with difficult land
descriptions. But recent scholarship indicates that hair pulling was once an
accepted means of preserving evidence of boundary location.
In The Influence of Immanuel Kant on Evidentiary Approaches in Eighteenth Century Bulgaria, The
Green Bag 2d (Forthcoming), Professor Orin S. Kerr of The George Washington
University Law School reveals that “children were
allowed to testify only in cases involving border disputes involving
land plots. According to one account, the custom was to bring children to the
relevant plot and then painfully pull their hair to ensure that they would
remember the borders and be able to testify about them in court.”
While his essay is a tongue-in-cheek riposte to SCOTUS
Chief Justice Roberts’ disdain for impractical legal scholarship, Prof. Kerr
cites to a 1927 Bulgarian treatise on customary procedural law to support his
assertion.
Comment:
The rationale for relying on children lies in their anticipated longevity. Even in the Anglo-American tradition, it is not unusual to find witnesses whose testimonial strength rests on their familiarity with local conditions since birth. Prof. Kerr's essay does not indicate whether the hair pulling increased the reliability of the testimony. Our Bulgarian-fluent readers are invited to supply additional details after reviewing the cited treatise.
For another unusual approach to land title evidencing, please
see Land Records & Bog Mummies, the Constructive Notice newsletter from July 12,
2012.