Law Commons^™

Exclusionary Megacities, Wendell Pritchett, Shitong Qiao

All Faculty Scholarship

Human beings should live in places where they are most productive, and megacities, where information, innovation and opportunities congregate, would be the optimal choice. Yet megacities in both China and the U.S. are excluding people by limiting housing supply. Why, despite their many differences, is the same type of exclusion happening in both Chinese and U.S. megacities? Urban law and policy scholars argue that Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) homeowners are taking over megacities in the U.S. and hindering housing development therein. They pin their hopes on an efficient growth machine that makes sure “above all, nothing gets in the way of building.” …

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Journal, Volume 6, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

The Role of Property in Secure Societies

October 19-21, 2016

Panel 1: Land Titling, Inclusion, and the Role of Property Rights in Secure Socities

Panel 3: Property's Role in the Fundamental Political Structure of Nations

Panel 5: Eminent Domain and Expropriations as Wealth Redistribution Tools

Panel 6: Defining and Protecting Property Rights in Intangible Assets

Panel 7: Rising Seas and Private Property: Advocates and Academics Debate Format

Panel 8: Property Rights as Defined and Protected by International Courts

Property As A Management Institution, Lynda L. Butler

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Study Of Implicit Takings, James E. Krier, Stewart E. Sterk

William & Mary Law Review

Takings scholarship has long focused on the niceties of Supreme Court doctrine, while ignoring the operation of takings law “on the ground”—in the state and lower federal courts, which together decide the vast bulk of all takings cases. This study, based primarily on an empirical analysis of more than 2000 reported decisions over the period 1979 through 2012, attempts to fill that void.

This study establishes that the Supreme Court’s categorical rules govern almost no state takings cases, and that takings claims based on government regulation almost invariably fail. By contrast, when takings claims arise out of government action other …

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Journal, Volume 5, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

Property as a Form of Governance

October 1-2, 2015

Panel 1: Property as a Form of Governance

Panel 3: Of Pipelines, Drilling, & the Use of Eminent Domain

Panel 4: Property Rights in the Digital Age

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Journal, Volume 4, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

Defining the Reach of Property

October 30-31, 2014

Panel 1: The Role of the Advocate in Defining Property

Panel 3: Balancing Private Property and Community Rights

Panel 4: Property Rights in Developing and Transitional Countries

Panel 3 Q&A: Discussion on Balancing Private Property and Community Rights

Land Use And Climate Change Bubbles: Resilience, Retreat, And Due Diligence, John R. Nolon

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Article examines events on the ground in several localities where climate change is lowering property values and analyzes how those changes in value can be reckoned with by regulators. It merges practices and principles of real estate transactions and finance with those of land use and environmental regulation.

Climate change is a planetary phenomenon whose environmental implications are far-reaching. Reports on climate change consequences increasingly focus on what is happening locally and presently, while speculation continues about long-term global consequences. In numerous communities, property values are declining because of repeated flooding, continued threats of storm surges, sustained high temperatures, …

Kelo's Moral Failure, Laura S. Underkuffler

Laura S. Underkuffler

Presented at the 2004 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference.

The Informal Property Rights Of Boomerang Children In The Home, Shelly Kreiczer-Levy

Maryland Law Review

Adult children living with their parents represent an increasingly common social phenomenon in the United States that challenges the boundaries of both the family and formal property rights. What is the legal status of adult children living with their parents? Do parents have any additional duties when they rescind permission for their child to live with them? Property and family scholars have not addressed this important issue. This Article fills the void. Instead of treating people who live together as strangers, owing no legal obligations to one another, I argue that under certain conditions living with others creates a property …

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Journal, Volume 3, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

The Essence of Property

October 17-18, 2013

Panel 1: The Impact of a Leading Property Scholar: Defining the Essence of Property

Panel 2: Promoting Government Forbearance

Roundtable Panel: Implications of the Court's Recent Takings Cases

Panel 4: Property Rights in Times of Transition

Conflicting Property Rights Between Conservation Easements And Oil And Gas Leases In Ohio: Why Current Law Could Benefit Conservation Efforts, Nicholas R. House

William & Mary Law Review

First, this Note will establish why conservation easements and oil and gas leases are likely to conflict. Second, this Note will present two scenarios under which conservation easements and oil and gas leases might conflict and then demonstrate how current law sorts out the conflicting rights. Third, it will advance several arguments for how conservation easements should be adapted, identifying specific provisions that should be altered in light of the Internal Revenue Code and Ohio’s current legal structure. By doing so, this Note will elucidate how the oil and gas boom in Ohio offers conservation organizations a unique opportunity to …

Informal Institutions And Property Rights, Lan Cao

Lan Cao

No abstract provided.

Cities, Property, And Positive Externalities, Gideon Parchomovsky, Peter Siegelman

Peter Siegelman

Cities are the locales of numerous interactions that generate externalities—both negative and positive. Although the common law provides a vast array of mechanisms for limiting negative externalities, there is a striking absence of provisions for stimulating the production of positive ones. As a consequence, activities whose social benefits are greater than their private costs are not undertaken, with a resulting efficiency loss.

In this Article, we demonstrate how cities can develop commercial districts that allow for the capture of positive externalities by following the example of suburban malls. In malls, anchor stores provide positive externalities—additional customers—to neighboring stores. Anchors capture …

From Coercion To Politics To Law: The Evolution Of Property Rights Protection, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper shows how property rights security improves over time as a result of increasing legal quality and political democratization in a political economy context, where political and legal institutions adapt to evolving factor composition of land and capital in the dynamic economic development process. There seems to exist a clear sequence of di⁄erent forms of protection in that it is unlikely to have a strong rule of law with an exploitative political regime, or to have a democratic political system when the distribution of potential coercive power is too skewed. The routine form of protection thus shifts from coercion …

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Journal, Volume 2, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Property

October 11-12, 2012

Panel 1: The Impact of a Leading Property Scholar

Panel 3: Property Rights in Times of Economic Crisis

Panel 4: Property's Moral Dimension

Property's Constitution, James Y. Stern

Faculty Publications

Long-standing disagreements over the definition of property as a matter of legal theory present a special problem in constitutional law. The Due Process and Takings Clauses establish individual rights that can be asserted only if “property” is at stake. Yet the leading cases interpreting constitutional property doctrines have never managed to articulate a coherent general view of property, and in some instances have reached opposite conclusions about its meaning. Most notably, government benefits provided in the form of individual legal entitlements are considered “property” for purposes of due process but not takings doctrines, a conflict the cases acknowledge but do …

Cities, Property, And Positive Externalities, Gideon Parchomovsky, Peter Siegelman

William & Mary Law Review

Cities are the locales of numerous interactions that generate externalities—both negative and positive. Although the common law provides a vast array of mechanisms for limiting negative externalities, there is a striking absence of provisions for stimulating the production of positive ones. As a consequence, activities whose social benefits are greater than their private costs are not undertaken, with a resulting efficiency loss.

In this Article, we demonstrate how cities can develop commercial districts that allow for the capture of positive externalities by following the example of suburban malls. In malls, anchor stores provide positive externalities—additional customers—to neighboring stores. Anchors capture …

Informal Institutions And Property Rights, Lan Cao

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Journal, Volume 1, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

Comparative Property Rights

October 14-15, 2011

Panel 1: Legal Protection of Property Rights: A Comparative Look

Panel 2: Reflections on Justice O'Connor's Important Property Rights Decisions

Panel 3: Property as an Instrument of Social Policy

Panel 4: Culture and Property

Panel 5: Property as an Economic Institution

Panel 6: Property Rights and the Environment

"Property" In The Constitution: The View From The Third Amendment, Tom W. Bell

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

During World War II, after Japan attacked the Aleutian Islands off Alaska’s coast, the United States forcibly evacuated the islands’ natives and quartered soldiers in private homes. That hitherto unremarked violation of the Third Amendment gives us a fresh perspective on what the term “property” means in the United States Constitution. As a general legal matter, property includes not just real estate—land, fixtures attached thereto, and related rights—but also various kinds of personal property, ranging from tangibles, such as books, to intangibles, such as causes of action. That knowledge would, if we interpreted the Constitution as we do other legal …

The Public Pore Space: Enabling Carbon Capture And Sequestration By Reconceptualizing Subsurface Property Rights, James Robert Zadick

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Comparative Property Rights, Lynda L. Butler

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Foxy Hedgehog: The Consistent Perceptions Of Carol Rose, Jedediah Purdy

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Presented at the 2010 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference.

Response, Carol M. Rose

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Presented at the 2010 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference.

The Inevitable Trend Toward Universally Recognizable Signals Of Property Claims: An Essay For Carol Rose, Robert C. Ellickson

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Presented at the 2010 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference.

The Backwards Gesture: Historical Narratives In Carol Rose's Property Scholarship, Daniel J. Sharfstein

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Presented at the 2010 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference.

Rose's Human Nature Of Property, Henry E. Smith

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Presented at the 2010 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference.

Government Property And Government Speech, Joseph Blocher

William & Mary Law Review

The relationship between property and speech is close, but complicated. Speakers use places and things to deliver their messages, and rely on property rights both to protect expressive acts and to serve as an independent means of expression. And yet courts and scholars have struggled to make sense of the property-speech connection. Is property merely a means of expression, or can it be expressive in and of itself? And what kind of “property” do speakers need to have—physical things, bundles of rights, or something else entirely?

In the context of government property and government speech, the ill-defined relationship between property …

Kelo, Conservation Easements, And Forever: Why Eminent Domain Is Not A Sufficient Check On Conservation Easements' Perpetual Duration, Derrick P. Fellows

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Property And Collective Undertaking: The Principle Of Numerus Clausus, Avihay Dorfman

Avihay Dorfman

Property rights are subject to the principle of numerus clausus, which is a restriction that means that it cannot be up to the contracting parties - or private persons, more generally - to create new forms of property right, but only to trade rights that take existing forms. What can explain this peculiar limitation? All the answers offered so far by property theorists have marshaled functional explanations either in favor of or against the numerus clausus principle (hereinafter: NC). In this paper I shall set out to articulate a novel explanation of this principle. My argument develops two general claims. …