Complex English conveyancing rules were intolerable in America’s mass land market

Evidence

In the United States, every (white) man (and later, quite a few white women) was or might be a conveyancer: someone who bought and sold a piece of land; or many pieces of land. The technicalities of English law were a drag on the land market. Legal sophistication was a scarce resource. A small upper class in England could live with English land law, but complex rules were intolerable in the great American mass market. Outmoded forms of tenure and conveyancing could hold out in some parts of the country, particularly the plantation South, like rare, endangered species. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1424

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier Massachusetts/Virginia legal-exporter and statute-borrowing chapters, and the elite-versus-amateur lawyer thread. — connects to: Mass land ownership forced American law to shed technical complexity. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 257; Colonial land law radically simplified English doctrine — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 277; Quitrents failed in America because land was abundant — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 278

Broader Connections

• Colonial land law radically simplified English doctrine #contradicts (0.95) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 277
• Quitrents failed in America because land was abundant #expands (0.90) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 278