REPORT OF THE D'HAUTEVILLE CASE: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, at the Suggestion of Paul Daniel Gonsalve Grand d'Hauteville, versus David Sears, Miriam C. Sears, and Ellen Sears Grand d'Hauteville. Habeas Corpus for the custody of an infant child
Philadelphia, [PA]: Printed by William S. Martien, and for sale by the booksellers generally, 1840. First edition. 8vo. [5], 6-295 pp. Original printed front wrapper, rear wrapper lacking. Bound into recent plain blue paper wrappers, covering the original. OCLC: AAS, Huntington, Cornell, Social Law Lib., Fenimore Art Museum, British Lib., Archives Cantonales Vaudoises. COHEN: 11423 adds MA Hist Lib. Ex R.I. State Library (small sticker on front wrapper) where it probably came to be as the wife Ellen Sears took up residence in Rhode Island after David Sears returned to Switzerland as it passed an act extinguishing the rights of husbands of women in such circumstances. A celebrated American legal case in family and international law.
A Swiss citizen, Paul Daniel Grand D'Hauteville, married an American woman, Ellen Sears. They produced a child. Ellen moved to the U.S. with the child and thereafter refused access to her husband. The case turned not only on the welfare of the sickly child and the perceived importance of the maternal bond, but also on the relative claims of Swiss and American law in the father's efforts to regain custody of the child. The court found broadly in favor of the mother/child relationship, while seeing in this case no problem in sufficient paternal visiting. The judgment recognized that a father's right of custody could be forfeited not only by "immoral conduct or character", or by "unfittness to superintend the moral and intellectual culture of his child," but also because the welfare of the child demanded it. "The interests of the child may imperatively demand the denial of the father's rights, and its continuance with the mother." Item #66349
Price: $275.00