Book Mart, Inc. v. Mayor of Boston

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

This action for declaratory and injunctive relief comes before the court upon a stipulation of material facts which amounts to a case stated. Frati v. Jannini, 226 Mass. 430, 431 (1917) (Rugg, C.J.). In many cases, the litigants proceed in ignorance of the law; in some there is an-absence of controlling legal precedent. In the present instance, in contrast, there is a surfeit of legal decisions and the parties appear to have parsed them exceedingly fine. To understand the case, therefore, it is necessary to understand a bit of recent legal history.

Since at least 1805,…