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Full-Text Articles in Law
A Few Questions About The Social-Obligation Norm, Jedediah S. Purdy
A Few Questions About The Social-Obligation Norm, Jedediah S. Purdy
Faculty Scholarship
I applaud Gregory Alexander for proposing an innovative view of property, one focused on the obligations of ownership. His project locates what I think of as the liberal aim of personal freedom (meaning both formal autonomy and real opportunity) within a social context of distributive choices and conceptions of mutual obligation. That is, he is asking what counts as a free society, and he is putting property regimes at the center of the answer. I want to set out some questions about where his project goes from here.
The American Transformation Of Waste Doctrine: A Pluralist Interpretation, Jedediah S. Purdy
The American Transformation Of Waste Doctrine: A Pluralist Interpretation, Jedediah S. Purdy
Faculty Scholarship
This Article draws on an episode of nineteenth-century American doctrinal history to develop a pluralist approach to explaining changes in property law. It addresses the question: What causes account for the development of property regimes across time? The courts' answer emerges from examination of nineteenth-century American reform of the law of waste, which governs the changes tenants may make in the estates they occupy. A line of state supreme court cases, beginning in 1810, transformed the doctrine from the strict rule of English common law to a flexible standard. Economic analysis helps to explain the change; the full story, however, …
Economics Of Public Use, Thomas W. Merrill
Economics Of Public Use, Thomas W. Merrill
Faculty Scholarship
The fifth amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as most state constitutions, provides that private property shall not be taken "for public use" unless just compensation is paid. American courts have long construed this to mean that some showing of "publicness" is a condition precedent to a legitimate exercise of the power of eminent domain. Thus, when a proposed condemnation of property lacks the appropriate public quality, the taking is deemed to be unconstitutional and can be enjoined. In practice, however, most observers today think the public use limitation is a dead letter. Three recent decisions, upholding takings …
Of "Liberty" And "Property", Henry Paul Monaghan
Of "Liberty" And "Property", Henry Paul Monaghan
Faculty Scholarship
After a century of experience, we are now thoroughly accustomed to viewing the fourteenth amendment as imposing upon the experimentation otherwise permitted in our fifty separate "laboratories" limitations that do not materially differ from those fastened upon the national government by the bill of rights. The history of this evolution is far too well known to justify rehearsing here even in the barest outline. But it bears noting that few, if any, observers believe that the language of the amendment has played a significant role in this historical evolution. Here, as elsewhere, "[b]ehind the words ... are postulates which limit …