"This exciting text breathes new life into the scholarly discussion of the rule against perpetuities. Professor Moran's contextual approach sheds important light on John Chipman Gray's explanation of the rule, and contemporizes the debate on the rule's future efficacy."---Blake D. Morant, Dean, Wake Forest University School of Law<BR><BR>An historic essay on the life and times of John Chipman Gray, the principal interpreter of an ancient rule of law referred to as the Rule Against Perpetuities (RAP). Law students have anguished for generations in their attempts to comprehend the complex mysticism that clouds its application. John Chipman Gray, one of the giants of the Harvard Law School faculty during the late nineteenth century, created a verbal formula allegedly eliminating the mystique surrounding an application of the RAP, providing a simple and mathematically correct answer. His academic achievement was accepted as gospel by the courts on both sides of the Atlantic. Gray outdid his contemporary English common law critics---much to their personal regret and intense jealousy.<BR><BR>Gray necessarily projected all of tl.ese factors and influences onto his greatest and most lasting scholarly achievement: the deciphering of the so-called Rule Against Perpetuities!<BR><BR>"The name `John Chipman Gray' has evoked terror in generations of attorneys....Gray's famous Rule now lays gravely ill, the victim of an admirable desire for efficiency and a less-than-admirable desire of wealthy clients to reach for immortality, of lawyers and trust companies to make money by abetting them, and by state legislatures happy to race to the bottom. Gerald Moran tells the story of the Rule with verve, but goes far beyond that. His book is a fascinating guide to a towering figure of a formative period in American law. It also has astute observations about the manners, mores, and intellectual climate that shaped our times. I recommend it to lawyers and general readers alike."---Steven J. Eagle, Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law<BR><BR>"As Professor Moran describes (and as generations of law students came to learn), Gray is the Rule Against Perpetuities. Professor Moran's biographical essay elegantly traces the personal, family, cultural, social, and professional influences that worked to shape Gray's approach to the Rule. He thoroughly describes the obvious tension (indeed, contradiction) between Gray the inchoate Realist lawyer and Gray the successful academic purveyor of arid conceptualism. His exploration usefully demonstrates the central importance of the character and personalities of those who devise and explain the rules.<BR><BR>Professor Moran lucidly shows the degree to which the ideology that shapes legal rules is in turn shaped by the personalities and experience of the rule-makers. The result is a thoughtful and thought-provoking exploration of the life, character, and times of an important scholar whose doctrinal influence still endures. Professor Moran's insightful and sympathetic discussion of Gray's life and of the influence of that life on legal doctrine is an important and valuable contribution to our own understanding of how legal doctrine develops."---Charles G. Hallinan, Professor of Law, University of Dayton School of Law<BR><BR>Gerald P. Moran has an extensive legal background. He represented individuals, companies, and the IRS on both sides of tax controbersies, including the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in the United States Tax Court. He also speciaslized in tax planning and resolving tax controversies against the Internal Revenue Service. He argued before the United States Tax Court, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.<BR><BR>Mr. Moran's academic career began in 1972 when he was invited to teach tax courses on a partime basis at the University of Toledo College while continuing to practice on a full-time basis. In 1974 he accepted a full-time teaching appointment from the College of Law and remained engaged in practice on a part-time basis serving Of Counsel to two firms over the next nineteen years. In 1999 he retired from the college of Law as a professor emeritus, holding ast that time the Eugene N. Balk Professorship. He then accepted an appointment to the faculty of the Florida Coastal School of Law where he now teaches property law, jurisprudence, and several tax courses.<BR><BR>Mr. Moran was also quite active in the Ohio Bar Association --- addressing numerous tax issues at conferences and seminars, engaging in scholarship, and testifying on several occasions before the principle tax writing committees of the Congress. In the 1990s he engaged with other members of the Ohio Bar Association to study the continuied feasibility of the Rule Against Perpetuities (RAP). As a result of this study, and upon the rfecommendation of the Ohio Bar Association, the recommendation of the Ohio Bar Association, the Ohio legislature decided to allow grantors of private trusts to elect out ofthe RAP. This expe4rience led to a search for a comprehensive understnading of the function of the RAP in contemporary times and, more impportantly, to a study of the personhood of John Chipman Gray.