Blackacre
Encyclopedia
Blackacre, Whiteacre, Greenacre, Brownacre, and variations are the placeholder name
Placeholder name
Placeholder names are words that can refer to objects or people whose names are either temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown in the context in which they are being discussed...

s used for fictitious estates in land
Estate (law)
An estate is the net worth of a person at any point in time. It is the sum of a person's assets - legal rights, interests and entitlements to property of any kind - less all liabilities at that time. The issue is of special legal significance on a question of bankruptcy and death of the person...

.

The names are used by professors of law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 in common law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...

 jurisdictions, particularly in the area of real property
Real property
In English Common Law, real property, real estate, realty, or immovable property is any subset of land that has been legally defined and the improvements to it made by human efforts: any buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, roads, various property rights, and so forth...

 and occasionally in contracts, to discuss the rights of various parties to a piece of land. A typical law school
Law school
A law school is an institution specializing in legal education.- Law degrees :- Canada :...

 or bar exam question on real property might say:

Where more than one estate is needed to demonstrate a point perhaps relating to a dispute over boundaries or riparian rights a second estate will usually be called Whiteacre, a third, Greenacre, and a fourth, Brownacre.

Jesse Dukeminier
Jesse Dukeminier
Jesse Dukeminier 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, trusts, and estates...

, author of one of the leading series of textbook
Textbook
A textbook or coursebook is a manual of instruction in any branch of study. Textbooks are produced according to the demands of educational institutions...

s on property, traces the use of Blackacre and Whiteacre for this purpose to a 1628 treatise by Sir Edward Coke
Edward Coke
Sir Edward Coke SL PC was an English barrister, judge and politician considered to be the greatest jurist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Born into a middle class family, Coke was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge before leaving to study at the Inner Temple, where he was called to the...

. Dukeminier suggests that the term might originate with references to colors associated with certain crops
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

 ("peas
PEAS
P.E.A.S. is an acronym in artificial intelligence that stands for Performance, Environment, Actuators, Sensors.-Performance:Performance is a function that measures the quality of the actions the agent did....

 and beans are black, corn
Cereal
Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...

 and potatoes are white, hay
Hay
Hay is grass, legumes or other herbaceous plants that have been cut, dried, and stored for use as animal fodder, particularly for grazing livestock such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. Hay is also fed to pets such as rabbits and guinea pigs...

 is green"), or with the means by which rents were to be paid, with black rents payable in produce
Produce
Produce is a generalized term for a group of farm-produced goods and, not limited to fruits and vegetables . More specifically, the term "produce" often implies that the products are fresh and generally in the same state as where they were harvested. In supermarkets the term is also used to refer...

 and white rents in silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

.

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
University of Texas School of Law
The University of Texas School of Law, also known as UT Law, is an ABA-certified American law school located on the University of Texas at Austin campus. The law school has been in operation since the founding of the University in 1883. It was one of only two schools at the University when it was...

. The journal is compiled and edited each year by the Texas Law Writers League, an organization co-founded by Meera George, Ben Love, and Matt Matthews in 2004. Blackacre is also the name of a journal at the University of Sydney Law School
Sydney Law School
Sydney Law School is the law faculty of the University of Sydney and is regarded as one of the most prestigious institutions of legal education in Australia and the Asia Pacific. Located in the main Camperdown campus of the University, with some operations at the St...

, published annually by the Sydney University Law Society. Blackacre is also the name of the William Mitchell College of Law
William Mitchell College of Law
William Mitchell College of Law, or WMCL, is a private, independent law school located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Accredited by the American Bar Association , it offers full and part-time legal education in pursuit of the Juris Doctor degree....

 formal, held most recently at the James J. Hill House
James J. Hill House
The James J. Hill House, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was built by railroad magnate James J. Hill. The house, completed in 1891, is near the eastern end of Summit Avenue near the Cathedral of Saint Paul. The house, for its time, was very large and was the "showcase of St. Paul" until James J. Hill's...

.

The Blackacre Nature Preserve and Historic Homestead in Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

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

.

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.

Louisiana legal scholarly works

In various law journals, treatises, etc. in Louisiana, authors have used the term "arpent
Arpent
An arpent 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 as well as in some areas of the United States that were part of French Louisiana.-Unit of length:...

noir" as a placeholder name for the purpose of discussing rights concerning immovables.
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