After reposing for more than a century in the state of Ohio, being sold to a buyer who kept it in the state of Connecticut for three years, then spending five years in a state of uncertainty as lawyers battled to establish its ownership, the copy of the Bill of Rights that was penned especially for North Carolina is here to stay.

According to Attorney General Roy Cooper, Monday's order by Superior Court Judge Henry Hight resolved the last remaining claim. Cases closed.

It shouldn't have taken so long, but antiquities can be tricky, even when no theft is involved.

The copy, by most accounts, was spirited away by a Union soldier as Gen. William T. Sherman's army swept through Raleigh.

It's safe to assume that the soldier is supremely indifferent to all this to-do, and that the statute of limitations ran out long, long ago.

Fortunately, the fact that the document thereafter passed through several hands, an FBI sting operation and more than one dispute doesn't alter the fact that it was stolen property, and stolen property always reverts to the owner if the owner can be found. North Carolina is easy to find.

The 1789 document, which includes a couple of amendments that didn't make the final cut, also passed through Fayetteville last year on a statewide tour, spending a few days at the Airborne & Special Operations Museum downtown. There was special significance to that, since this is the city where the North Carolina legislature met to ratify the U.S. Constitution -- on the site now known as Market Square.

It's been a long pull, largely because there were several other claimants -- including a Tennessee woman who advanced the peculiar and historically challenged idea that a document laboriously penned for North Carolina actually belonged to Tennessee because Tennessee had once been part of North Carolina. An appraiser for the PBS program "Antiques Road Show" relinquished his claim five years ago, but a former business associate did not.

In the end, North Carolina yielded nothing, insisting that it "exclusively and continuously has had all legal and equitable right, title and interest in this manuscript copy of the Bill of Rights since it was received from President George Washington in October 1789," according to Cooper's court filing.

That's lawyer talk for "Don't be second-guessing The Father of Our Country." But don't knock legalese: It's as much a part of our heritage as the Bill of Rights, and has served us well for more than two centuries -- and did again this week.

That ought to be worth a little bunting and a few huzzahs.