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Direct Voting By Property Owners, Thomas W. Merrill
Direct Voting By Property Owners, Thomas W. Merrill
Faculty Scholarship
Direct voting by property owners is a widespread but controversial tool for resolving disputes over local collective goods. Direct voting has powerful advantages, in that it can harness the superior knowledge of many local minds, resolve controversies in a way that is perceived to be legitimate, and eliminate corrupt dealmaking. But it also has serious pitfalls, if local voters are poorly informed, or if they ignore external effects on other communities, or if the process is distorted by majoritarian or minoritarian bias. To capitalize on the advantages of local voting, and minimize the risks, this Article proposes that direct voting …
A Freedom-Promoting Approach To Property: A Renewed Tradition For New Debates, Jedediah S. Purdy
A Freedom-Promoting Approach To Property: A Renewed Tradition For New Debates, Jedediah S. Purdy
Faculty Scholarship
This should be a heady time for theorists and practitioners of property law. Some of the most important recent proposals to improve human wellbeing rest on the expansion or reform of property rights. From Peru, the political economist Hernando de Soto recently captured the world's attention by contending that a lack of property rights stands between the slum dwellers of the world's poor countries and new horizons of prosperity. Nearer home, Yale economist Robert Shiller has proposed a new market in risk, essentially propertizing present expectations of good fortune, which would represent one of the most dramatic expansions in the …
The Origins Of The American Public Trust Doctrine: What Really Happened In Illinois Central, Joseph D. Kearney, Thomas W. Merrill
The Origins Of The American Public Trust Doctrine: What Really Happened In Illinois Central, Joseph D. Kearney, Thomas W. Merrill
Faculty Scholarship
The public trust doctrine has always been controversial. The general rule in American law favors ownership of natural resources as private property. The public trust doctrine, a jarring exception of uncertain dimensions, posits that some resources are subject to a perpetual trust that forecloses private exclusion rights. For environmentalists and preservationists who view private ownership as a source of the degradation of our natural and historical resources, the public trust doctrine holds out the hope of salvation through what amounts to a judicially enforced inalienability rule that locks resources into public ownership. For those who view private property as the …