Meaning:
The person who has physical control of a property has an advantage over anyone claiming rightful ownership.
Background:
Other variations (all considered correct): Possession is nine points of the law (nine parts of the law, nine-tenths of the law etc).
Possession is nine-tenths of the law is not a law at all, merely a truism of human nature - that the person who actually holds the item, land or whatever, is in a stronger position than any claimant.
Based on a brief glance at human history, it seems likely that variations on this sentiment would trace back a long, long way, but the earliest written use of the proverb in its modern day form is in Thomas Draxe's Bibliotheca Scholastica (1616): "Possession is nine points of the Law".
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
Full Story
