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Full-Text Articles in Law
Complexity's Shadow: American Indian Property, Sovereignty, And The Future, Jessica A. Shoemaker
Complexity's Shadow: American Indian Property, Sovereignty, And The Future, Jessica A. Shoemaker
Michigan Law Review
This Article offers a new perspective on the challenges of the modern American Indian land tenure system. While some property theorists have renewed focus on isolated aspects of Indian land tenure, including the historic inequities of colonial takings of Indian lands, this Article argues that the complexity of today’s federally imposed reservation property system does much of the same colonizing work that historic Indian land policies—from allotment to removal to termination—did overtly. But now, these inequities are largely overshadowed by the daunting complexity of the whole land tenure structure. This Article introduces a new taxonomy of complexity in American Indian …
Valuing Control, Peter Dicola
Valuing Control, Peter Dicola
Michigan Law Review
Control over property is valuable in and of itself. Scholars have not fully recognized or explored that straightforward premise, which has profound implications for the economic analysis of property rights. A party to a property dispute may actually prefer liability-rule protection for an entitlement resting with the other party to liability-rule protection for an entitlement resting with her. This Article presents a novel economic model that determines the conditions under which that is the case—by taking account of how parties value control. The model suggests new opportunities for policymakers to resolve conflicts and to develop better information about property disputes …
Due Process For Cash Civil Forfeitures In Structuring Cases, Timothy J. Ford
Due Process For Cash Civil Forfeitures In Structuring Cases, Timothy J. Ford
Michigan Law Review
On January 22, 2013, Tarik “Terry” Dehko sat down to pay the bills for his small Michigan grocery store when a federal agent entered his office. The agent told Dehko that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had executed a seizure warrant and taken the market’s entire bank account—more than $35,000. When Dehko asked how he could run his business without its bank account, the agent replied, “I don’t care.” The government did not charge Dehko with a crime that day. In fact, Dehko had never been charged with any crime in his life. Instead, the government waited until July 19 …
Emergency Takings, Brian Angelo Lee
Emergency Takings, Brian Angelo Lee
Michigan Law Review
Takings law has long contained a puzzle. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to pay “just compensation” to owners of private property that the government “takes.” In ordinary circumstances, this requirement applies equally whether the property is confiscated or destroyed, and it also applies to property confiscated in emergencies. Remarkably, however, courts have repeatedly held that if the government destroys property to address an emergency, then a “necessity exception” relieves the government of any obligation to compensate the owner of the property that was sacrificed for the public good. Although the roots of this startling principle …
Passive Takings: The State's Affirmative Duty To Protect Property, Christopher Serkin
Passive Takings: The State's Affirmative Duty To Protect Property, Christopher Serkin
Michigan Law Review
The purpose of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause is to protect property owners from the most significant costs of legal transitions. Paradigmatically, a regulatory taking involves a government action that interferes with expectations about the content of property rights. Legal change has therefore always been central to regulatory takings claims. This Article argues that it does not need to be and that governments can violate the Takings Clause by failing to act in the face of a changing world. This argument represents much more than a minor refinement of takings law because recognizing governmental liability for failing to act means …
Unclaimed Property And Due Process: Justifying 'Revenue-Raising' Modern Escheat, Teagan J. Gregory
Unclaimed Property And Due Process: Justifying 'Revenue-Raising' Modern Escheat, Teagan J. Gregory
Michigan Law Review
States have long claimed the right to take custody of presumably abandoned property and hold it for the benefit of the true owner under the doctrine of escheat. In the face of increasing fiscal challenges, states have worked to increase their collection of unclaimed property via new escheat legislation that appears to bear little or no relation to protecting the interests of owners. Holders of unclaimed property have raised substantive due process challenges in response to these modern escheat statutes. This Note contends that two categories of these disputed laws-those shortening dormancy periods and those allowing states to estimate a …
The Illusory Right To Abandon, Eduardo M. Penalver
The Illusory Right To Abandon, Eduardo M. Penalver
Michigan Law Review
The unilateral and unqualified nature of the right to abandon (at least as it is usually described) appears to make it a robust example of the law's concern to safeguard the individual autonomy interests that many contemporary commentators have identified as lying at the heart of the concept of private ownership. The doctrine supposedly empowers owners of chattels freely and unilaterally to abandon them by manifesting the clear intent to do so, typically by renouncing possession of the object in a way that communicates the intent to forgo any future claim to it. A complication immediately arises, however due to …
Of Property And Antiproperty, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Of Property And Antiproperty, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Michigan Law Review
Private property is widely perceived as a potent prodevelopment and anticonservationist force. The drive to accumulate wealth through private property rights is thought to encourage environmentally destructive development; legal protection of such property rights is believed to thwart environmentally friendly public measures. Indeed, property rights advocates and environmentalists are generally described as irreconcilable foes. This presumed clash often leads environmentalists to urge public acquisition of private lands. Interestingly, less attention is paid to the possibility that the government may prove no better a conservator than private owners. Government actors often mismanage conservation properties, collaborating with private developers to dispose of …
Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Michigan Law Review
In 1543, the Polish astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus, determined the heliocentric design of the solar system. Copernicus was motivated in large part by the conviction that Claudius Ptolemy's geocentric astronomical model, which dominated scientific thought at that time, was too incoherent, complex, and convoluted to be true. Hence, Copernicus made a point of making his model coherent, simple, and elegant. Nearly three and a half centuries later, at the height of the impressionist movement, the French painter Claude Monet set out to depict the Ruen Cathedral in a series of twenty paintings, each presenting the cathedral in a different light. Monet's …
Toward A Constitutional Kleptocracy: Civil Forfeiture In America, Stephan B. Herpel
Toward A Constitutional Kleptocracy: Civil Forfeiture In America, Stephan B. Herpel
Michigan Law Review
Leonard Levy, the legal historian who has written a number of highly regarded historical studies on various provisions of the United States Constitution, has added to his impressive oeuvre a new study of civil and criminal forfeiture. A License to Steal brings together a discussion of English legal history, a review of a number of Nineteenth Century and late Twentieth Century Supreme Court forfeiture decisions, accounts of actual applications of civil and criminal forfeiture, and a summary and critique of legislative proposals that have been made for reform of the civil forfeiture provisions of the federal drug statute. There is …
Stories About Property, William W. Fisher Iii
Stories About Property, William W. Fisher Iii
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Carol M. Rose, Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership
Why Is This Man A Moderate?, Richard A. Epstein
Why Is This Man A Moderate?, Richard A. Epstein
Michigan Law Review
A Review of William A. Fischel, Regulatory Takings: Law, Economics, and Politics
Transfers Of Property In Eleventh-Century Norman Law, William John Gallagher
Transfers Of Property In Eleventh-Century Norman Law, William John Gallagher
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Transfers of Property in Eleventh-Century Norman Law by Emily Zack Tabuteau
Purchaser's Depreciation Rights In Property Subject To A Lease, Michigan Law Review
Purchaser's Depreciation Rights In Property Subject To A Lease, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
This Note argues that the purchase of property subject to a lease may produce several types of depreciable interests. Part I of the Note examines the requirements for depreciability and the role that depreciation plays in tax law. It concludes that even where the method set out by Congress also accommodates other goals, depreciation primarily provides a way to recover costs during a depreciable asset's income-producing life. Part II applies these principles to the task of determining whether improvements - for example, buildings on the property subject to the lease - are depreciable in the purchaser's hands. It concludes that …
Executors And Administrators-Sale Of Realty In The Estate-Better Price As Reason For Permitting Sale Under "Best Interests Of The Estate" Provision, William J. Bogaard
Executors And Administrators-Sale Of Realty In The Estate-Better Price As Reason For Permitting Sale Under "Best Interests Of The Estate" Provision, William J. Bogaard
Michigan Law Review
Pursuant to a Missouri statute permitting sale of real property for any purpose in the best interests of the estate, administrator filed a petition for power to sell realty in the estate of the decedent for the reason, inter alia, that a better price could be obtained at a private sale than at a judicial sale resulting from a suit for partition. The plaintiff heir's subsequent bill for partition of the real estate was dismissed by the trial court, which found that the administrator's petition for power to sell had conferred jurisdiction of the property on the probate court. …
Descent And Distribution - Joint Ownership - Imposition Of Constructive Trust On Murderer Of Co-Tenant, John B. Schwemm S.Ed.
Descent And Distribution - Joint Ownership - Imposition Of Constructive Trust On Murderer Of Co-Tenant, John B. Schwemm S.Ed.
Michigan Law Review
A husband, owning land with his wife as tenants by the entireties, killed her and immediately thereafter committed suicide. In an action to determine ownership of the realty, both the probate and appellate courts declared that since a relevant disinheritance statute was inapplicable, full title vested in the husband and, upon his death, descended to his heirs. On appeal, held, reversed. Despite the common law nature of such tenancies, equity will impose on the husband a constructive trust in one-half the property for the benefit of the victim's estate. National City Bank of Evansville v. Bledsoe, (Ind. 1957) …
Dispositions Of Property To Unincorporated Non-Profit Associations, Harold A.J. Ford
Dispositions Of Property To Unincorporated Non-Profit Associations, Harold A.J. Ford
Michigan Law Review
It now becomes necessary to examine the cases in which the disposition could not be treated as one to the existing members. This treatment will disclose that some courts have been prepared to regard some dispositions to associations as being for the purposes of the association. The only way in which property may be devoted to a purpose without conferring beneficial interests on particular individuals is by a trust. Accordingly in many instances the disposition takes effect as a trust.
Real Property - Compensation For Abrogation Of A Restrictive Covenant By Public Authority, Howard N. Thiele, Jr. S.Ed.
Real Property - Compensation For Abrogation Of A Restrictive Covenant By Public Authority, Howard N. Thiele, Jr. S.Ed.
Michigan Law Review
It is the purpose of this comment to examine the legal consequences produced when the tranquility of the residential district is disturbed by governmental action.
Is The Rule Against Perpetuities Doomed?, Lewis M. Simes
Is The Rule Against Perpetuities Doomed?, Lewis M. Simes
Michigan Law Review
Few rules of the common law have shown such amazing vitality as the rule against perpetuities. Emerging in the Duke of Norfolk's Case in 1682, as a rule to restrict unbarrable entails in land, it is now applied, not only to interests in land, legal and equitable, but also to personal estate, tangible and intangible, including beneficial interests in trusts. It is regarded as a part of the common law of nearly every English speaking country, except a few of the United States where statutory substitutes have been provided. Since 1930, statutory substitutes have been abolished and there has been …
Compulsory Construction Of New Lines Of Railroad, Kenneth F. Burgess
Compulsory Construction Of New Lines Of Railroad, Kenneth F. Burgess
Michigan Law Review
In the half century of public regulation of railroads in the United States, regulatory legislation has dealt primarily with functions incident to the operation of existing enterprises. The basic concept has been that railroad corporations as common carriers have voluntarily assumed obligations to the public which the public has a right to require to be performed.
Nature And Importance Of Legal Possession, Joseph W. Bingham
Nature And Importance Of Legal Possession, Joseph W. Bingham
Michigan Law Review
To impress these unfamiliar facts on our consciousness, so that we shall not lose sight of them during the rest of our discussion, so that we shall not slur them or cloud them by vague use of symbolic ideas or terms concerning property and title, let us repeat the essence of the legal situation. Jackson is the holder of a fee simple acquired tortiously. His title to that fee--i. e. the facts which would induce the courts upon occasion to give him the remedies "vindicating" the existence of this vested fee in him--consist in his actual exclusive use and control …
Nature And Importance Of Legal Possession, Joseph W. Bingham
Nature And Importance Of Legal Possession, Joseph W. Bingham
Michigan Law Review
The careful student of our law of property needs no demonstration of the importance of legal possession. From before the date of the earliest year book the word possession and its synonym seisin have pervaded legal language and have signified matters of great consequence in the decision of cases. "In the history of our law," say Pollock and Maitland, "there is no idea more cardinal than that of seisin. Even in the law of the present day it plays a part which must be studied by every lawyer; but in the past it was so important that we may almost …