Steel v Houghton

Steel v Houghton (1788)
Court House of Lords
Decided 1788 (1788)
Citation(s) (1788) 1 H Bl 51; 126 ER 32.
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting Lord Loughborough
Keywords
gleaning property law

Steel v Houghton (1788) 1 H Bl 51; 126 ER 32[1] is a landmark judgment in English law by the House of Lords that is considered to mark the modern legal understanding of private property rights. Ostensibly the matter found that no person has a right at common law to glean the harvest of a private field, but the judgment has been taken to be a more general precedent for private land matters.

Background

In early modern England gleaning was an important source of income for labouring families, at a time when many parishes were affected by enclosure and the wholesale transformation of property rights.

Over the harvests of 1785-1787, conflict had been escalating between land owners and gleaners in the village of Timworth, Suffolk. In 1787 Mary Houghton gleaned on the farm of a wealthy land owner, James Steel, who sued for trespass.

Verdict

The court sided with landlords and found against the gleaners' claims, rejecting arguments from Mosaic Law and from the traditional Anglo-Saxon constitution as a basis for the common law.[2][3] Although precedent was raised by the gleaners that appeared to support gleaning,[4] the court held that this was only to be viewed in the narrowest of terms with conditions, as was legislation which had provision for gleaning (the sections that were discussed dealt only with penalties). The Court held gleaning to be only a ‘privilege’ and not a right; the poor of a parish had no legal right to glean, hence gleaning was trespass.[5]

Lord Loughborough gave the leading judgment of the majority and argued that:

Loughborough's conclusion was that the gleaners' defence was "inconsistent with the nature of property which imports absolute enjoyment".

Criticism

The decision has been criticized on legal grounds for ignoring statute and precedence for an outcome that denied natural justice and has been criticized by Marxist scholars as a decision that was thinly veiled class oppression, particularly citing Loughborough's choice of words.[6]

See also

References

  1. The full case name is "Steel against Houghton et Uxor" ("Steel against Houghton and wife"). Since at that time a married woman's rights and duties were subsumed in those of her husband, under the doctrine of coverture, Mary Houghton could only be sued through her husband.
  2. William Selwyn, An abridgement of the law of nisi prius, Volume 2 page 489
  3. Muncie, John; McLaughlin, Eugene (2001). The Problem of Crime (2 ed.). London: Sage. p. 114.
  4. Blackstone Vol.2. page55.
  5. King, Peter (1992). "Legal Change, Customary Right, and Social Conflict in Late Eighteenth-Century England: the Origins of the Great Gleaning Case of 1788". Law and History Review. 10: 1. doi:10.2307/743812.
  6. Linebaugh, Peter (2011). "At war with Jonah's whale, and after". Marxist update. Retrieved 9 August 2014.
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