After the recent Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference in the Netherlands (very appropriate, as it was the home of the Dutch lawyer and property rights guy Hugo Grotius), we had the opportunity to visit one of that country's notable museums, where we came across this odd piece, a somewhat worn and nondescript wooden chest.
Upon closer inspection, it turns out that this might be the box in which Grotius stored his law books while he was in prison for life.
Turns out that it also might be the box in which he escaped from said imprisonment. We say "might be" because there are other boxes which lay claim to being "the" box.
No matter, because even if this box is only one "long thought to be the one from this famous story" and not the actual box, in our view, we're still now only one degree of separation, or at most two, from Mr. Grotius and his famous escape.
The story is that he requested the chest from his jailers to store his law books. He got in the box, was covered up with some books, then carried past the unsuspecting guards. (Although we suspect the guards were not as "unsuspecting" as they let on.)
Hugo Grotius has the upper hand!
Who said law books are obsolete? Try doing that on Westlaw.
(Prison Administration 101: if a convict requests a "man-sized chest" for his books ... you may not want to take it at face value.)
