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How best to disregard a deceased charitable donor’s intent

Atkinson_robRob Atkinson (Ruden, McClosky, Smith, Schuster & Russell Professor of Law, Florida State University) has recently published his article entitled The Low Road to Cy Pres Reform: Principled Practice to Remove Dead Hand Control of Charitable Assets, 58 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 97 (2007).
   

Here is the abstract of the article:
   

In recent decades many scholars have called for reduction of dead hand control of charitable assets. These scholars have recommended the “high road” to reform: sweeping, wholesale revision of legal doctrines by either courts or legislatures. These calls, for all their merit, have gone virtually unheeded. In the face of that apparent impasse, this article recommends a different route, a “low road,” to reform: an immediately available set of strategies for removing dead hand control, strategies that can be deployed, in particular cases, right now. The net effect of this piecemeal, practical approach should be to move us, albeit in small, incremental steps, around the impasse of dead hand doctrine toward the theoretically higher ground of freer, more fungible charitable assets and increased charitable autonomy.

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