The Development of the Public Benefit Requirement for Charitable Trusts in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The development of the public benefit requirement for charitable trusts in the nineteenth century MATTHEW MILLS The first express judicial reliance on the public benefit requirement for charitable trusts to conclusively determine charitable validity seems to occur in 1862, although implied references to similar ideas are seen up to a century previously. With limited exceptions, the origin of the public benefit requirement has been under-examined. This article argues that a multi-factorial and contextual approach best explains its adoption in the nineteenth century. Three developments in nineteenth century law and society encouraged judges to broaden charity law: (1) increasing religious pluralism, (2) increasing state education, and (3) regular income taxation. These changes, combined with the formalisation of the doctrine of precedent, required both some limit on the scope of charity law and a new substantive justification for novel decisions on charitable validity. This article argues that judges and lawyers, whether intentionally or subconsciously, borrowed ideas of public benefit from closely-related mortmain cases to develop the public benefit requirement.

Regulation as Political Control: China’s First Charity Law and Its Implications for Civil Society

“…Many studies have highlighted how democratic countries have struggled with operational and technical issues surrounding nonprofits. Such studies cover efforts to develop a socially and culturally appropriate definition of “charity” (Mills, 2016), practices of self-regulation and promotion of the voluntary and charitable sector (Pratten, 2007), questions of transparency and accountability (Irvin, 2005), distinctions in accounting practices for nonprofits as compared with for-profit organizations (Breen, 2013), and the promotion of particular “good governance” practices within nonprofits (Phillips, 2012).…”