studied in Gray's Cases. That does not mean that most of the propositions learned from Gray's Cases are not law in Illinois. It does mean that the departures from those propositions and the new topics are such that until the whole field is covered and all the Illinois cases classified and arranged so as to reveal the departures, the new topics, the exact propositions incorporated into the Illinois law by actual decisions, and those left still undecided, no exact or professionally valuable knowledge of the state of the law in Illinois can be had.

The student of Gray's Cases will think that a right of entry for condition broken is inalienable by deed and very likely also inalienable by devise. Yet he can be shown Illinois cases where alienation in both ways has been sustained. The student will know that legal contingent remainders and executory interests are inalienable by deed at law. Nevertheless, he can be shown a recent Illinois case which holds that such interests are alienable at law within certain peculiar limits.2 The student no doubt thinks that in the absence of statute a legal contingent remainder is destructible in Illinois, and yet he can be shown a case where a life estate preceding a contingent remainder was determined by merger in the reversion prior to the birth of the child to whom the contingent remainder was limited, and where, nevertheless, the remainder was held not to be destroyed. No doubt the student has preconceived ideas concerning what remainders are vested and what are contingent. If so, upon the production of a few recent Illinois cases he will readily perceive that there are at least four different distinctions between vested and contingent interests in daily use. In short, he will find in the Illinois cases that his notions of what interests are vested and what not are in a very puzzling state of decay. The student has learned that upon the dissolution of a charitable corporation without debts, the title to land held by it will escheat to the state.5 But the Illinois cases hold that there is a right of reverter to the donor or his heirs. In accordance with one of the cases reprinted by Mr. Gray, the student doubtless

1 Helm v. Webster, 85 Ill. 116; Gray v. Chicago, etc., R. R., 189 Ill. 400.

2 Boatman v. Boatman, 198 Ill. 414.

8 Frazer v. Board of Supervisors, 74 Ill. 282.

4 See Vested and Contingent Future Interests in Illinois, 2 Ill. L. Rev. (Dec. 1907).

5 Gray, Rule Perp., 2 ed., §§ 44-51; Johnson v. Norway, Winch 37.

6 Life Ass'n of Am. v. Fassett, 102 Ill. 315, 323, semble; Mott v. Danville Seminary,

129 Ill. 403; Presbyterian Church v. Venable, 159 Ill. 215.

Papillon v. Voice, 2 P. Wms. 471, 5 Gray, Cas. on Prop., 95.

thinks that the Rule in Shelley's Case does not apply where, after an equitable life estate to A, there is a direction to trustees to convey to A's heirs. Yet an Illinois case holds that to such limitations the Rule does apply.1 No doubt there is to the student no proposition more fundamental or more certain than that shifting interests in deeds which may take effect as bargains and sales under the Statute of Uses are valid. Yet the Illinois Supreme Court has frequently denied this, declaring a shifting interest, or, as it is often termed, "a fee on a fee," void when attempted to be created by deed.2 In one case at least the court squarely so held. In the same way the student will regard a conveyance by deed capable of taking effect by way of bargain and sale to A and his children born and to be born, as valid to carry the fee to all the members of the class born at the time of the conveyance or afterwards. Nevertheless, in Illinois the inference from the cases is that the conveyance is valid only as to those who are in esse at the time the deed is executed. Perhaps the student would be amused if he were asked seriously whether a shifting executory devise were valid. Yet there was a time not very long ago when two cases in the Illinois reports holding that an unobjectionable shifting interest by will was void, on grounds which would make all executory devises invalid, stood unimpeached. The student will no doubt think that upon the failure of a gift over for remoteness the preceding gift stands as limited.' But several striking cases in Illinois appear to make the rule rather that the preceding gifts which are not too remote will also fail.6 A gift over if the first taker “die without issue," the student will have learned means die without issue either before or after the death of the testator or settlor. Yet an Illinois case can be produced where without any special context it meant die without issue in the lifetime of the testator only. So he has learned that "die without issue" means primarily, in the absence of statute, an indefinite failure of issue.

1 Wicker v. Ray, 118 Ill. 472.

2 Siegwald v. Siegwald, 37 Ill. 430, 438; Glover v. Condell, 163 Ill. 566, 592; Strain v. Sweeney, 163 Ill. 603, 605; Stewart v. Stewart, 186 Ill. 60; Kron v. Kron, 195 Ill. 181; Johnson v. Buck, 220 Ill. 226, 1 Ill. L. Rev. 188.

• Palmer v. Cook, 159 Ill. 300.

4 Miller v. McAlister, 197 Ill. 72; Morris v. Caudle, 178 Ill. 9.

5 Ewing v. Barnes, 156 Ill. 61, 67; Silva v. Hopkinson, 158 Ill. 386, 389.

• Lawrence v. Smith, 163 Ill. 149; Eldred v. Meek, 183 Ill. 26; Petzel v. Schneider, 216 Ill. 87.

7 Kohtz v. Eldred, 208 Ill. 60.

Yet an examination of the Illinois cases will tend to persuade him that without the aid of statute the regular rule has been so changed that the phrase means primarily a definite failure of issue in the first generation.1 He will have learned that a gift over of real estate on an indefinite failure of issue turns the preceding interest of the first taker into an estate tail. Yet an examination of the Illinois cases and a consideration of the indirect effect of the Illinois Statute on Entails will cause him to doubt the soundness of this result in Illinois.2 The Illinois case of Carper v. Crowl will make our student wonder whether the Rule of Yates v. Phettiplace, that a legacy to A to be paid at twenty-one charged on real estate is contingent upon A's reaching twenty-one, is the law of Illinois. Our student will find the Rule in Wild's Case 5 and the doctrine of illusory appointments abolished without the direct aid of statute. He will find an Illinois case, apparently departing from the Rule of Holloway v. Holloway, that upon a devise to A for life and then to the testator's heirs, of whom A is one, heirs means those who are heirs of the testator at the time of his death, including A. The student will have learned that the doctrine of the common law and everywhere upheld, that a condition of forfeiture on alienation attached to a life estate upon its creation, is valid, but that a restraint on alienation attached to a legal life estate is everywhere wholly void. Nevertheless, in Illinois both these results seem to have been reversed. The condition of forfeiture attached to a life estate is void, while the restraint on alienation of a legal life estate is valid.10 Our student has no doubt learned that bad as is the spendthrift trust doctrine, it can nowhere be invoked unless the settlor expressly imposes the re

1 Summers v. Smith, 127 Ill. 645, 650-651; Smith v. Kimbell, 153 Ill. 368, 376; Healy v. Eastlake, 152 Ill. 424; Kellett v. Shepard, 139 Ill. 433; Seymour v. Bowles, 172 Ill. 521; Johnson v. Askey, 190 Ill. 58; Strain v. Sweeney, 163 Ill. 603; Gannon v. Peterson, 193 Ill. 372.

2 Strain v. Sweeney, 163 Ill. 603; Healy v. Eastlake, 152 Ill. 424; Seymour v. Bowles, 172 Ill. 521; Johnson v. Askey, 190 Ill. 58.

8 149 Ill. 465, 482-485.

4 2 Vern. 416, 5 Gray, Cas. on Prop., 263.

5 6 Co. 17.

• Davis v. Ripley, 194 Ill. 399; Boehm v. Baldwin, 221 Ill. 59; Hawthorn v. Ulrich, 207 Ill. 430.

10 Christy v. Pulliam, 17 Ill. 59; Pulliam v. Christy, 19 Ill. 331; Christy v. Ogle, 33

Ill. 295; Emerson v. Marks, 24 Ill. App. 642.

straint on alienation desired. Nevertheless, he must learn that in Illinois a practical restraint on involuntary alienation for the benefit of creditors exists in favor of a cestui who does not settle property upon himself, even where no express language provides for any such protection.1

The retort to this recital is very obvious. It is easy to make fun of the Illinois Supreme Court, and to declare that if anything needs reforming, it evidently does. But this vein of humor is futile. It is grim comfort to your graduate who has passed upon a title, made a fatal mistake, and is put down as incompetent. Your humor will fall flat, and your teachings will receive less credit than they deserve when your graduate finds that commercially and professionally his knowledge is still far from what it must be. While you are indulging a mild propensity for humor, somebody is condemning your school for the very inaccurate and incomplete picture of the law which it has given.

There are not merely departures in the Illinois law to be learned by the Harvard Law School case-book graduate. Important new topics directly connected with the fabric of the whole subject-matter exist to be mastered. Mention of these will also tend to convince the student that his knowledge of the Illinois law is in posse rather than in esse. The rights of the dedicator and the abutting owner when there has been a statutory dedication is an exceedingly important subject. Legislation and the cases have made it extremely difficult to handle. A knowledge of statutory conditions of forfeiture and the statutory modes of perfecting a forfeiture of terms for years is an indispensable part of the law of landlord and tenant in daily use, and fully dealt with in the decided cases.3 A whole chapter on the statutory remainder created by the Statute on Entails must be mastered. Most puzzling questions arise in regard to it, all of which are dealt with in some fashion in the Illinois cases and the cases from four other states having the same statute. The application of the inheritance tax law to future interests is of extreme practical importance.5

If the student has by this time come to recognize the professional difference between knowing what the Illinois Supreme Court has

1 Potter v. Couch, 141 U. S. 296; Binns v. La Forge, 191 Ill. 598. See 1 Ill. L. Rev. 321-322.

2 Kales, Future Interests in Illinois, §§ 2-13.

8 Kales, ibid., §§ 21-26, and 30a-40a.

4 Kales, ibid., §§ 114-120.

Kales, ibid., § 185, note.

held and what Gray's Cases teach us to expect that it will hold or may have held, he will be ready with becoming humility to collect the Illinois cases en masse on the subject of future interests and classify them under each of the chapters and sub-sections of the fifth and part of the sixth volume of Gray's Cases, so as to show what propositions learned from those cases have become the law of this state by actual incorporation, and what, on the other hand, have yet to be expressly adopted.

The student will find approximately six hundred Illinois cases on the subjects of conditional and future interests, and illegal conditions and restraints as developed in Gray's Cases. Practically all of these six hundred cases are from the Supreme Court reports. A classification and arrangement of them according to the chapters and sub-sections of Gray's Cases will reveal quite a surprising amount of material. I venture to assert that at least two-thirds of all the points developed by this portion of Gray's Cases can be reproduced in the Illinois cases. Many topics can be duplicated almost entire. This is especially true of the subject of vested and contingent remainders and the Rule in Shelley's Case; that part of the subject of cross-limitations which Mr. Gray was accustomed to cover when I took his course; gifts over on failure of issue; vesting of legacies; determination of classes; and the Rule against Perpetuities, excepting the section on powers. We shall find also that many cases which Mr. Gray gives can be duplicated by Illinois cases. The doctrine of Dumpor's Case1 is indicated and an important practical qualification of it announced in Kew v. Trainor.2 The Rule of Hayden v. Stoughton, that a right of entry for condition broken is transferable by devise, is applied in Gray v. Chicago, Mil. & St. Paul Ry. Co. On the distinction between vested and contingent remainders, Haward v. Peavey could be substituted for Blanchard v. Blanchard, and Harvard College v. Balch for Doe v. Martin. Practically all of the points on the Rule in Shelley's Case, including the problem presented in Perrin v. Blake, which