Blackacre, Whiteacre, Greenacre, Brownacre, and variations are the

placeholder name Placeholder names are words that can refer to things or people whose names do not exist, are temporarily forgotten, are not relevant to the salient point at hand, are to avoid stigmatization, are unknowable/unpredictable in the context in wh ...

s used for fictitious estates in land. The names are used by professors of

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipres ...

jurisdictions, particularly in the area of real property and occasionally in contracts, to discuss the rights of various parties to a piece of land. A typical law school or

bar exam A bar examination is an examination administered by the bar association of a jurisdiction that a lawyer must pass in order to be admitted to the bar of that jurisdiction. Australia Administering bar exams is the responsibility of the bar associat ...

question on real property might say: Where more than one estate is needed to demonstrate a pointperhaps relating to a dispute over boundaries,

easement An easement is a nonpossessory right to use and/or enter onto the real property of another without possessing it. It is "best typified in the right of way which one landowner, A, may enjoy over the land of another, B". An easement is a propert ...

s or

riparian rights Riparian water rights (or simply riparian rights) is a system for allocating water among those who possess land along its path. It has its origins in English common law. Riparian water rights exist in many jurisdictions with a common law heri ...

a second estate will usually be called Whiteacre, a third, Greenacre, and a fourth, Brownacre.

Origin

Jesse Dukeminier Jesse Dukeminier (August 12, 1925 – April 20, 2003) was a professor of law for 40 years at the University of California, Los Angeles, and authored or co-authored a significant number of articles and textbooks in the areas of property law, wills ...

, author of one of the leading series of

textbook A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textbook ...

s on property, traces the use of Blackacre and Whiteacre for this purpose to a 1628 treatise by Sir Edward Coke. Dukeminier suggests that the term might originate with references to colors associated with certain crops ("

peas The pea is most commonly the small spherical seed or the seed-pod of the flowering plant species ''Pisum sativum''. Each pod contains several peas, which can be green or yellow. Botanically, pea pods are fruit, since they contain seeds and d ...

and

beans A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes thr ...

are black, corn and potatoes are white, hay is green"), or with the means by which rents were to be paid, with black rents payable in

produce Produce is a generalized term for many farm-produced crops, including fruits and vegetables (grains, oats, etc. are also sometimes considered ''produce''). More specifically, the term ''produce'' often implies that the products are fresh and g ...

and white rents in

silver Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...

. A 1790 treatise by Francis Buller similarly uses these placeholder names, stating: "If A. have Black Acre and C. have White Acre, and A. has a way over White Acre to Black Acre, and then purchases White Acre, the way will be extinct; and if A. afterwards enfeoff C. of White Acre without excepting the road, it is gone". In various law journals and treatises in Louisiana, which uses a unique form of the civil law influenced by but not identical to the Napoleonic Code, authors have used the term "

arpent An arpent (, sometimes called arpen) is a unit of length and a unit of area. It is a pre- metric French unit based on the Roman ''actus''. It is used in Quebec, some areas of the United States that were part of French Louisiana, and in Maur ...

noir" as a placeholder name for the purpose of discussing rights concerning immovables. One of the more basic theories is that Blackacre and Whiteacre are related to what professors could draw on dark chalkboards in early law-school settings. A simple outline of the property on the "blackboard" being "blackacre" and a chalk-colored-in property being "whiteacre".

In popular culture

Because of its association with legal education, a number of legal publications and events utilize the name. For example, ''Blackacre'' was adopted as the name of the literary journal at the

University of Texas School of Law The University of Texas School of Law (Texas Law) is the law school of the University of Texas at Austin. Texas Law is consistently ranked as one of the top law schools in the United States and is highly selective—registering the 8th lowest ac ...

. ''Blackacre'' is also the name of a journal at the University of Sydney Law School, published annually by the Sydney University Law Society, the name of the open-air courtyard and weekly student social at Vanderbilt Law School, and the name of a

William Mitchell College of Law William Mitchell College of Law was a private, independent law school located in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States, from 1956 to 2015. Accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA), it offered full- and part-time legal education in pursuit of ...

formal. The

Blackacre Nature Preserve and Historic Homestead Blackacre State Nature Preserve is a nature preserve and historic homestead in Louisville, Kentucky. The preserve features rolling fields, streams, forests, and a homestead dating back to the 18th century. For visitors, the preserve features sev ...

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

was so named by the donor of the land, Macauley Smith, who had been a judge on the

Kentucky Court of Appeals The Kentucky Court of Appeals is the lower of Kentucky's two appellate courts, under the Kentucky Supreme Court. Prior to a 1975 amendment to the Kentucky Constitution the Kentucky Court of Appeals was the only appellate court in Kentucky. Th ...

. In July 2010, a legal humor website wrote an article chronicling the foreclosure sale of Blackacre. A group of law students in Indianapolis founded a brewery named Black Acre Brewing Co. in late 2010 as a homage to their legal schooling.

Monica Youn Monica Youngna Youn is an American poet and lawyer. Life Youn was raised in Houston, Texas. She graduated from St. Agnes Academy (Texas), Princeton University, Yale Law School with a J.D., and Oxford University with a M. Phil, where she was a Rh ...

's 2016 book of poetry from Graywolf Press is titled ''Blackacre'', in reference to the legal concept (Youn has a law degree from Yale).

References

{{reflist Real property law Placeholder names

Origin

In popular culture

See also

References