Law Commons^™

Parks And Separation: How The Mississippi Legislature Decided Just Compensation In Bay Point Properties, Inc. V. Mississippi Transportation Commission, Kyle Usner

Mississippi College Law Review

At first glance, Bay Point comes across as the standard, run-of-the-mill eminent domain case: the government contracts with a citizen for an express easement over privately-owned land limited to a certain use; the government then exceeds the scope of that easement, resulting in a taking. Governmental taking is usually not anything outside of the norm. But with a potential seven billion dollars' worth of federally funded highway projects destined for Mississippi highway only a Presidential signature away from being approved, this decision is not one Mississippi landowners should ignore. Further, the crux of Bay Point lies with an issue of …

Redefining The Injury-In-Fact: Treating Personally Identifying Information As Bailed Property, Austin Headrick

Georgia Law Review

There is a long-existing circuit split among federal courts of appeals as to whether an individual has standing under Article III of the United States Constitution when their personally identifying information (PII) is stolen from an entity to which they entrusted it such as a hospital or bank. Federal courts disagree as to whether an individual whose PII has been stolen—without more—has suffered an injury-in-fact, a necessary element of standing. The disagreement between the courts centers on whether the injury-in-fact has already occurred at the time the PII is stolen or whether the injury occurs once the PII has been …

Title Theft, Stewart E. Sterk

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Real property owners across the country have been targeted by scammers who prepare deeds purporting to convey title to property the scammers do not own. Sometimes, the true owners are entirely unaware of these bogus transfers. In other instances, the scammers use misrepresentation to induce unsophisticated owners to sign documents they do not understand.

Property doctrine protects owners against forgery and fraud—the primary vehicles scammers use in their efforts to transfer title. Owners enjoy protection not only against the scammers themselves, but generally against unsuspecting purchasers to whom the scammers transfer purported title.

Recovery of title, however, involves costs and …

Soil Governance And Private Property, Sarah J. Fox

Utah Law Review

This is an Article about soil. In consequence, it is also an Article about our relationship to land, and about how that relationship can and must change to confront the many environmental crises facing the United States. Questions about our relationship with the physical environment around us necessarily come to the fore in conversations about soil because of its several identities. It is one of Earth’s most precious resources—the substance responsible for allowing plants to grow, filtering pollutants out of water, providing habitat to countless organisms, sequestering carbon, and providing many other valuable functions. Soil also, however, makes up the …

Wrong Or (Fundamental) Right?: Substantive Due Process And The Right To Exclude, Jack May

Washington Law Review

Substantive due process provides heightened protection from government interference with enumerated constitutional rights and unenumerated—but nevertheless “fundamental”—rights. To date, the United States Supreme Court has never recognized any property right as a fundamental right for substantive due process purposes. But in Yim v. City of Seattle, a case recently decided by the Ninth Circuit, landlords and tenant screening companies argued that the right to exclude from one’s property should be a fundamental right. Yim involved a challenge to Seattle’s Fair Chance Housing Ordinance, which, among other things, prohibits landlords and tenant screening companies from inquiring about or considering a …

What’S Your Damage?! The Supreme Court Has Wrecked Temporary Takings Jurisprudence, Timothy M. Harris

University of Miami Law Review

In Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, the U.S. Supreme Court unnecessarily expanded the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. In doing so, the Court veered away from established precedent and overturned prior case law—without expressly admitting to doing so.

In 2021, the Court held that a California law allowing union organizers to access private property under certain conditions took away a landowner’s right to exclude others and was (apparently) immediately compensable under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. Prior law had subjected temporary takings to an uncertain, unpopular, and ambiguous balancing test—but the Cedar Point holding turned temporary takings jurisprudence on its head …

Matter Of Will Of Ratcliff And The Not-So-Harmless Error: A Call To Change Mississippi’S Approach To Will Formalities, Kelsi Baldwin

Mississippi College Law Review

A will provides a mechanism to dispose of property at death. But costly litigation—or worse, a will’s invalidation—often thwart this purpose. The law of probate is state-specific, which leaves jurisdictions with the burden of ensuring that their laws promote rather than defeat the purpose of probate—to honor the testator’s intent. Mississippi attempts to recognize this purpose by requiring strict compliance with the statutory requirements for creating a will. This “better safe than sorry” approach errs on the side of invalidity with the hope that denying a non-compliant instrument for probate will prevent fraud and other wrongdoing.

Despite its intention, Mississippi’s …

Digital Property Cycles, Joshua Fairfield

Washington and Lee Law Review

The present downturn in non-fungible token (“NFT”) markets is no cause for immediate alarm. There have been multiple cycles in both the legal and media focus on digital intangible property, and these cycles will recur. The cycles are easily explainable: demand for intangible property is constant, even increasing. The legal regimes governing ownership of these assets are unstable and poorly suited to satisfying the preferences of buyers and sellers. The combination of demand and poor legal regulation gives rise to the climate of fraud that has come to characterize NFTs, but it has nothing to do with the value of …

Theft Of The American Dream: New York City's Third-Party Transfer Program, Joseph Mottola

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

On September 5, 2018, Paul Saunders discovered a notice on the front door of his mother’s home: it stated that the property, a Brooklyn brownstone owned by the family for over forty years, now belonged to a company called Bridge Street. His mother, seventy-four-year-old retired nurse Marlene Saunders, had been notified several months earlier that her home, valued at two million dollars, was in danger of being foreclosed because she owed New York City (the “City”) $3,792 in unpaid water charges. Her son had already paid the water bill, but when he contacted the water department, he discovered that …

Property And Prosperity, A Demythifying Story, Xiaoqian Hu

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Economic development is fundamentally a property law story. Prominent thinkers―from Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham, to Douglass North and Richard Posner―tell us that protection of private property rights is essential for economic growth and wealth accumulation. Clear and freely alienable property rights reduce transaction costs and allow private bargaining to produce efficient results. Property rights allow owners to internalize the costs and benefits of their own behavior, reduce production costs, and encourage innovation. Secure property rights protect owners from arbitrary confiscation by the government, foster owner expectations, and facilitate investment, trade, and the development of financial markets. The idea …

Adapting Private Law For Climate Change Adaptation, Jim Rossi, J. B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law Review

The private law of torts, property, and contracts will and should play an important role in resolving disputes regarding how private individuals and entities respond to and manage the harms of climate change that cannot be avoided through mitigation (known in climate change policy dialogue as “adaptation”). While adaptation is commonly presented as a problem needing legislative solutions, this Article presents a novel and overdue case for private law to take climate adaptation seriously.

To date, the role of private law is a significant blind spot in scholarly discussions of climate adaptation. Litigation invoking common-law doctrines in climate adaption disputes …

The Stewardship Model Of Necessity, Joseph Graziano

Notre Dame Law Review

The current understanding of the necessity defense to trespass to property in American law stems from a simple—or perhaps simplistic—balancing of rights. Based in the individualistic understanding of property as a right against the world that creates an obligation for others, necessity pits the interloper’s right to life, liberty, or property against the property owner’s right. Although feasible in the extremes, dueling rights leads to an unwieldy judicial task, discouraging advocates from alleging the privilege and discouraging judges from recognizing the privilege. Overall, the right to exclude has become more and more the libertarian vision of a right to be …

Is “Touch And Concern” Dead In Arkansas?: A Recent Case And Its Implications For Real Covenants, Bennett J. Waddell

Arkansas Law Review

Real covenants occupy a doctrinal abyss within property law. The subject perpetually frustrates first-year law students and legal scholars alike, as they confront concepts that appear esoteric and even anachronistic. Naturally, the criticism has been sharp, with commentators quipping that the field “is an unspeakable quagmire,” a “formidable wilderness,” and plainly “ridiculous.”

On The Rightful Deprivation Of Rights, Frederick Schauer

Notre Dame Law Review

When people are deprived of their property rights so that the state can build a highway, a school, or a hospital, they are typically compensated through what is commonly referred to as “takings” doctrine. But when people are deprived of their free speech rights because of a clear and present danger, or deprived of their equal protection, due process, or free exercise rights because of a “compelling” governmental interest, they typically get nothing. Why this is so, and whether it should be so, is the puzzle that motivates this Article. Drawing on the philosophical literature on conflicts of rights and …

Remedying The Immortal: The Doctrine Of Accession And Patented Human Cell Lines, Julia E. Fissore-O'Leary

Notre Dame Law Review

Importantly, though this Note employs Henrietta Lacks as the illustrative, paradigmatic case for the theory of accession it proposes, accession can be, and should be, broadly construed to apply to all like-situated patients. Part I of this Note briefly explains the timeless human-body-as-property debate. Next, Part II addresses the concept of accession—its theoretical underpinnings, definitions, and amenability to this and other lawsuits. Part III applies accession to HeLa and develops a methodology for calculating damages in this unique setting. This Note does not pretend to present a perfectly wrought formula. Instead, it offers several possibilities for determining compensation. Finally, …

Ownership Concentration: Lessons From Natural Resources, Vanessa Casado Pérez

Northwestern University Law Review

Concentration of ownership over land or other resources is both a sign and a cause of inequality. Concentration of ownership makes access to such resources difficult for those less powerful, and it can have negative effects on local communities that benefit from a more distributed ownership pattern. Such concentration goes against the antimonopoly principles behind the homesteading land policies and the legal regimes that regulate many natural resources. This Essay suggests that where concentration is a concern, one might draw lessons for reform by looking to the field of natural resources law, which employs a range of deconcentration mechanisms affecting …

Climate Change Adaptation As A Problem Of Inequality And Possible Legal Reforms, David A. Dana

Northwestern University Law Review

Climate change will necessitate adaptation in all parts of the United States, but some individuals and localities will be better able to adapt than others. Wealth inequalities among individuals and localities already are translating—and will continue to translate—into inequalities between the rich and poor in their capacity to adapt. Current federal disaster aid programs and policies exacerbate these inequalities by favoring the wealthy, and future government resource management decisions and investments also may broaden the gap between rich and poor in terms of the economic and other costs they will bear from climate change. Some have suggested broadening Takings Clause …

Compulsory Terms In Property, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Northwestern University Law Review

The state’s imposition of compulsory terms in property relations—such as habitability warranties binding landlords and tenants and minimum wages binding employers and employees—has long been conceived by analysts generally situated on the political right as an affront to individual freedom and inevitably harmful to the terms’ intended beneficiaries. This critique, though, seems to have special purchase in public discourse today not only within its traditional circle of supporters on the right but, at least in some instances, for a sizable number on the left as well. The bipartisan acceptance of this critique is serving as a substantial roadblock to a …

American Courts' Image Of A Tenant, Nadav Shoked

Northwestern University Law Review

What is the core of current American residential landlord–tenant law, and how was that core formed? This Essay argues that in the past few decades courts have settled on a two-pronged landlord–tenant law regime. The law provides tenants with assurances respecting the quality of the units they rent. It does not, conversely, provide them with any assurances respecting the price of the rental units—and, therefore, respecting their ability to remain in those units.

The first component of the regime was established through the well-known judicial creation and endorsement of the warranty of habitability. The second component’s entrenchment is often attributed …

Eviction Court Displacement Rates, Nicole Summers

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay introduces the concept of eviction court displacement rates, defined as the percentage of eviction filings that result in tenant displacement. The Essay argues that a jurisdiction’s eviction court displacement rate provides crucial insight into the role of its legal system in driving substantive eviction outcomes. The Essay then compiles existing data on court displacement rates and compares those rates across jurisdictions. This comparison reveals massive variation in court displacement rates nationwide. In some jurisdictions, a tenant’s likelihood of displacement upon receiving an eviction filing is approximately one in twenty. In other jurisdictions, it is higher than one in …

Streaming Property, Lee Anne Fennell

Northwestern University Law Review

People acquire property rights in objects and real estate in order to capture the stream of services that these assets can provide over time. The thing or parcel itself is merely a delivery mechanism, a way of packaging and protecting rights to that value stream. And, significantly, these assets cannot stream services to anyone without a set of facilitating conditions and complementary goods, such as public infrastructure, that do not lie within the asset owner’s individual control. This Essay argues that we can gain fresh traction on inequality by recasting property as service streams rather than as owned things. Doing …

Property Law And Inequality: Lessons From Racially Restrictive Covenants, Carol M. Rose

Northwestern University Law Review

A long-standing justification for the institution of property is that it encourages effort and planning, enabling not only individual wealth creation but, indirectly, wealth creation for an entire society. Equal opportunity is a precondition for this happy outcome, but some have argued that past inequalities of opportunity have distorted wealth distribution in contemporary America. This article explores the possible role of property law in such a distortion, using the historical example of racially restrictive covenants in the first half of the twentieth century. I will argue that the increasing professionalization and standardization of real estate practices in that era included …

How Judicial Accounting Law Fails Occupying Cotenants, Phil Rich

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Few law students remember judicial accounting law from their property law course, and it’s hard to blame them. This little-discussed body of law is formulaic and rarely addressed by appellate courts. Judicial accounting law, however, should not be ignored. The law, which allocates equity to cotenants (or, more colloquially, co-owners) of residential property upon partition of that property, guides homeowners’ behavior and shifts wealth between them. This Note argues that state legislatures should reform judicial accounting law to better protect those cotenants living in their homes from partitions brought by cotenants living elsewhere.

The problem with judicial accounting law lies …

The Commodification Of Public Land Records, Reid K. Weisbord, Stewart E. Sterk

Notre Dame Law Review

The United States deed recording system alters the “first in time, first in right” doctrine to enable good faith purchasers to record their deeds to protect themselves against prior unrecorded conveyances and to provide constructive notice of their interests to potential subsequent purchasers. Constructive notice, however, works only when land records are available for public inspection, a practice that had long proved uncontroversial. For centuries, deed archives were almost exclusively patronized by land-transacting parties because the difficulty and cost of title examination deterred nearly everyone else.

The modern information economy, however, propelled this staid corner of property law into a …

Possessing Intangibles, João Marinotti

Northwestern University Law Review

The concept of possession is currently considered inapplicable to intangible assets, whether data, cryptocurrency, or NFTs. Under this view, intangible assets categorically fall outside the purview of property law’s foundational doctrines. Such sweeping conclusions stem from a misunderstanding of the role of possession in property law. This Article refutes the idea that possession constitutes—or even requires—physical control by distinguishing possession from another foundational concept, that of thinghood. It highlights possession’s unique purpose within the property process: conveying the status of in rem claims. In property law, the concept of possession conveys to third parties the allocation of property rights and …

A Timeshare By Any Other Name: Fractional Homeownership And The Challenges And Effects Of Commodified Single-Family Homes, Christopher Markuson

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Property And Local Knowledge, Malcolm Lavoie

Catholic University Law Review

Property rights play an important but largely under-appreciated role in channeling local knowledge into decisions about physical resources. Property devolves decision-making authority to a dispersed pool of owners, who are likely to be aware of local conditions relevant to their resources. As a result, property owners are often in a position to make better-informed decisions about the use of the resource than other parties. The homeowner who preemptively repairs an old roof, the retailer who offers a new product for sale, and the farmer who decides to switch crops are all decision-makers who are empowered through property rights to act …

Reforming The Visual Artists Rights Act To Protect #Streetart In The Digital Age, Ellen Matthews

William & Mary Law Review

Consider the following: Building Owner commissions Artist to paint a mural on the wall of his building. A decade later, Business buys that building from Building Owner and, unaware of details relative to Artist’s wall mural, develops plans to renovate the building for a new use. Upon hearing of Business’s attempt to alter its newly acquired property, Artist seeks an injunction to prevent Business from restoring its building in a way that would change or destroy her mural. Would a court prevent Business from altering its building due to Artist’s moral rights to her work? If the court follows the …

Property Law For The Ages, Michael C. Pollack, Lior Jacob Strahilevitz

William & Mary Law Review

Within the next forty years, the number of Americans over age sixty-five is projected to nearly double. This seismic demographic shift will necessitate a reckoning in several areas of law and policy, but property law is especially unprepared. Built primarily for young and middle-aged white men, the common law of property has been critiqued for decades for the ways in which it oppresses or simply leaves behind people based on their race, sex, Native heritage, and more. This Article contributes a new focus on property law’s treatment of people based on their advanced age. Burdened by higher relocation costs, more …

Police Or Pirates? Reforming Washington's Civil Asset Forfeiture System, Jasmin Chigbrow

Washington Law Review

Civil asset forfeiture laws permit police officers to seize property they suspect is connected to criminal activity and sell or retain the property for the police department’s use. In many states, including Washington, civil forfeiture occurs independent of any criminal case—many property owners are never charged with the offense police allege occurred. Because the government is not required to file criminal charges, property owners facing civil forfeiture lack the constitutional safeguards normally guaranteed to defendants in the criminal justice system: the right to an attorney, the presumption of innocence, the government’s burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, …