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Gambling On Housing: Is Adverse Possession A Valid Tool For The Reallocation Of Vacant Property?, Kelsey Dunn Apr 2024

Gambling On Housing: Is Adverse Possession A Valid Tool For The Reallocation Of Vacant Property?, Kelsey Dunn

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Adverse possession, a staple of first-year law school property classes, never fails to shock the conscience of unsuspecting law students. Some are surprised to learn that a squatter can acquire legal title to another person’s property by moving in and using it for a period of years. In recent years, housing activists have begun to view the doctrine as an outside-the-box solution to our nation’s housing crisis. There are dozens of vacant homes for every person experiencing homelessness in America. Why not give those properties to people who actually use them?

However, this well-intended impulse does not square with reality. …


Royalty Wars: The Dark Side To Raising The Minimum Royalty Rate For Oil And Gas Leasing On Federal Land, Audrey A. Helm Apr 2024

Royalty Wars: The Dark Side To Raising The Minimum Royalty Rate For Oil And Gas Leasing On Federal Land, Audrey A. Helm

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act took marked steps toward changing the course of the oil and gas industry for the first time in over 100 years, requiring that all federal oil and gas leases issued for the following decade have a minimum royalty rate of 16.67%. This paved the way for a major adjustment in the oil and gas industry, which has seen a 12.5% minimum royalty for the past century. In 2023, the Department of the Interior proposed to permanently codify these changes, citing purposes of ensuring a fair return to taxpayers and protecting the environment.

This Article …


Climate Change And Implications For National Security And International Law In The Arctic, Choteau X. Kammel Apr 2024

Climate Change And Implications For National Security And International Law In The Arctic, Choteau X. Kammel

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Climate change threatens national security due to the potential it carries to destabilize fragile regions, damage military installations, and exacerbate existing tensions between countries. While these effects will be global, the Arctic region represents a microcosm of a future where climate change affects the strategic priorities of states and renders existing governing institutions inadequate. Moreover, climate change will challenge the collage of “soft” international law that governs the Arctic, administered primarily through the Arctic Council’s collaborative forum. While this system has been effective, the opening of the Far North to increased sea passage, commercial exploitation, and great powers’ interests necessitates …


Beyond The Binary: Ai, Ethics, And Liability In The Legal Landscape, Cathina L. Gunn-Rosas Apr 2024

Beyond The Binary: Ai, Ethics, And Liability In The Legal Landscape, Cathina L. Gunn-Rosas

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

As the legal landscape evolves with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), attorneys will face ever more complex ethical challenges and practical dilemmas. This article delves into the intricacies of AI utilization in legal practice, emphasizing the need for proactive strategies to uphold ethical standards while harnessing the benefits of AI tools. Through real-world examples and hypothetical scenarios, it examines the importance of AI training and education for attorneys, highlighting the necessity of understanding AI tool functions, limitations, and potential pitfalls. Moreover, the article advocates for the implementation of rigorous AI oversight and review processes within law firms to ensure …


The Motivation Paradox: Exploring Copyright’S Assumptions About Creativity And The Allocation Of Creative Resources, Alina Ng Apr 2024

The Motivation Paradox: Exploring Copyright’S Assumptions About Creativity And The Allocation Of Creative Resources, Alina Ng

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Copyright is instrumental in promoting the progress of science by encouraging authors and other creators to produce and disseminate creative works by granting them an exclusive property right over the creative resources they produce. However, only some copyrighted works correlate with this goal. Some works do not promote a better society, while others harm society’s well-being. The existence of these works demonstrates that the legal structures in copyright law are somehow encouraging the production of works that do not correlate with the goals of progress. One reason might be that the law has not adequately defined the word “progress.” The …


Like, Comment, And Follow: How To Amend Copyright Law To Protect Black Tiktokers, Ny'esha Young Apr 2024

Like, Comment, And Follow: How To Amend Copyright Law To Protect Black Tiktokers, Ny'esha Young

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

The Black community has long suffered through a cycle of trauma and pain, with history repeating itself throughout generations. From the civil rights movement to the Black Lives Matter movement, this cycle persists, showing up again in the experiences of Black TikTokers. Despite looking race-neutral on its face, copyright law’s lack of understanding of how Black art can manifest itself has become more obvious in the world of digital creativity. Stuck in a cycle of appropriation, Black TikTokers find themselves facing a familiar dilemma as their work is replicated without compensation or credit, echoing the historical struggles of Black musicians. …


Full Speed Ahead? Reexamining Texas's Approach To Eminent Domain, Emma Blackmon Apr 2024

Full Speed Ahead? Reexamining Texas's Approach To Eminent Domain, Emma Blackmon

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Property rights are traditionally held sacred in Texas. But through eminent domain, landowners lose their property rights, purportedly in service of the broader public. Sometimes, the legislature confers eminent domain power on for-profit companies. Landowners are then forced to surrender their property while the companies benefit economically. The result is that landowners are stripped of the right to fully use and enjoy their property.

The recent Texas Supreme Court case, Miles v. Texas Central Railroad & Infrastructure, Inc., demonstrates the tension between property rights and economic development created by eminent domain. Facially, Miles concerns whether a for-profit company’s high-speed …


A Tall Summit: Securing Lasting, Reliable Public Access For Recreational Use On Colorado’S Privately Owned Fourteeners, Michael Betrus Apr 2024

A Tall Summit: Securing Lasting, Reliable Public Access For Recreational Use On Colorado’S Privately Owned Fourteeners, Michael Betrus

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

From the National Scenic Trails to mountains to other destinations in nature drawing the public’s interest and time for recreational activities, privately owned land can cause difficulties in ensuring reliable and consistent public access. A specific example is the Decalibron Loop, a trail in Colorado linking together a few mountains; public access has wavered over the years, and a recent Tenth Circuit case, Nelson v. United States, greatly affected landowner dispositions—particularly with regard to liability—toward the privately owned property. Similar situations across the country provide a variety of potential approaches to helping provide public access and reducing landowner concerns.

With …


All Aboard: Understanding Property Rights In Texas After Texas Central, Asher K. Gregg Apr 2024

All Aboard: Understanding Property Rights In Texas After Texas Central, Asher K. Gregg

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Our forefathers intended the United States Bill of Rights to protect individuals from government overreach. Specifically, the Fifth Amendment, as applied to the States via the Fourteenth Amendment, in part protects individuals from unnecessary takings. Eminent domain authority—its more common name—has long been recognized as a power to be used cautiously and only when necessary. Although most often associated with government exercise, states are permitted to grant this unyielding authority to private entities via their state constitutions and statutes. Despite Texas serving as a beacon for individual property rights, the Texas Supreme Court’s recent decision in Miles v. Texas Central …


Far Out: The Extended Denial Of Public Access To Psychedelic Therapeutics, Andrew R. Waldeck Apr 2024

Far Out: The Extended Denial Of Public Access To Psychedelic Therapeutics, Andrew R. Waldeck

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

The United States patent regime is designed to promote dissemination of information that undergirds a particular innovation. To incentivize disclosure, inventors are granted a time-limited right to exclude others from practicing the invention, thereby affording the inventor a period in which to commercialize and financially benefit from their inventive contribution. The disclosure provides information sufficient for one of skill in the relevant art to make and use the invention, and the public may freely do so upon the patent’s expiry. Global advancement of human medicine is fundamentally intertwined with the United States patent system; medical progress largely depends upon the …


Unequal Land: Towards Full Recognition Of Indigenous People’S Religious Rights, Emily Campbell Apr 2024

Unequal Land: Towards Full Recognition Of Indigenous People’S Religious Rights, Emily Campbell

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Indigenous people face disparate treatment regarding religious free-exercise claims in the United States court system. Specifically, courts misconstrue native religious practices and hold native religious practitioners to a higher standard of proof than practitioners of mainstream religions in their free-exercise claims. This Article analyzes the history of oppression of indigenous people in the United States and the congressional intent to remedy such oppression through legislation. Further, this Article argues that despite Congress’s efforts to remedy the oppression of indigenous peoples, courts still utilize a problematic analysis of indigenous free-exercise claims. To resolve the inconsistent treatment between native and mainstream religious …


The Lack Of Victim Protection In The Enforcement Of The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, Kelly R. Fitzgerald Valiev Apr 2024

The Lack Of Victim Protection In The Enforcement Of The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, Kelly R. Fitzgerald Valiev

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Over the past twenty-two years, United States federal courts have seen many cases regarding forced labor and the importation of goods produced by victims of forced labor trafficking. To resolve these cases, the court must interpret § 307 of the Tariff Act to determine whether victims can recover against their traffickers. Recently, an issue in the interpretation of forced labor has arisen in courts: whether an attempt at importing goods is sufficient to establish a cause of action as a violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act’s prohibition on forced labor imports. Courts that interpret forced labor narrowly to …


Keeping Up With The Joneses: Texas’ Nil Battle For Student-Athletes, Stephanie Garner Apr 2024

Keeping Up With The Joneses: Texas’ Nil Battle For Student-Athletes, Stephanie Garner

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Starting in 2021, college athletes could earn financial compensation from their name, image, and likeness (“NIL”). With the change in laws, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) created an interim regulation for states to follow. After the Supreme Court decision, some states’ trigger laws went into effect, some states made new NIL regulations, and some states continued to follow the regulation set out by the NCAA. With all these laws and no federal regulation, each state stands on different footing. In Texas, a restrictive NIL statute will affect its recruiting for years unless adjusted. This Comment suggests improvements to the …


Can They Fix It? Yes, They Can: Rebalancing The Scale Of Financial Security On Construction Projects, Allie Grubb Apr 2024

Can They Fix It? Yes, They Can: Rebalancing The Scale Of Financial Security On Construction Projects, Allie Grubb

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

The construction industry is one of the most dominant industries worldwide. The United States is no stranger to development and growth, and as so, it possesses one of the largest construction industries in the world. Given the magnitude of the industry, it is no secret that every party involved in a construction project feels the loom of financial risks and that such risks continue to plague the industry. The government, particularly the legislature, has a special influence in that the laws it passes can either encourage continued development and make the industry flourish or bring it to a complete stop, …


Cultural Property: “Progressive Property In Action”, J. Peter Byrne Mar 2024

Cultural Property: “Progressive Property In Action”, J. Peter Byrne

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Cultural property law fulfills many of the normative and jurisprudential goals of progressive property theory. Cultural property limits the normal prerogatives of owners in order to give legal substance to the interests of the public or of specially protected non-owners. It recognizes that preservation of and access to heritage resources advance public values such as cultural enrichment and community identity. The proliferation of cultural property laws and their acceptance by courts has occurred despite a resurgent property fundamentalism embraced by the Supreme Court. Thus, this Article seeks to explicate the category of cultural property, its fulfillment of progressive theory, and …


Constitutional Property And Progressive Property’S Compatibility: A Reappraisal, Rachael Walsh Mar 2024

Constitutional Property And Progressive Property’S Compatibility: A Reappraisal, Rachael Walsh

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Progressive property theory is driven by a desire to improve the law, and legal outcomes, for those on the margins of society. At the same time, it largely assumes the compatibility of constitutional property rights with its aims. However, constitutional property doctrine is often ambiguous on the core question of what distribution of collective burdens is susceptible to invalidation. Such ambiguity in turn can support political over-inflation of the strength of constitutional protection for property rights. Given the resulting chilling effect that constitutional property rights can have on measures that interfere with property rights, the Article argues that progressive property …


Operationalising Progressive Ideas About Property: Resilient Property, Scale, And Systemic Compromise, Lorna Fox O'Mahony, Marc Roark Mar 2024

Operationalising Progressive Ideas About Property: Resilient Property, Scale, And Systemic Compromise, Lorna Fox O'Mahony, Marc Roark

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Property theory is at a crossroads. In recent decades, scholars seeking to advance progressive ideas about property have embraced ‘Progressive Property’ theories that seek to advance the goals of social justice and the common good, offering a vital counter-weight to utilitarian and neo-conservative accounts of property. Progressive Property theories seek to correct an imbalance in American property discourse which—across the temporal scale—has sustained a range of narratives and normative commitments, but which has veered towards extreme acquisitive individualism and the rhetoric of property absolutism since the 1970s. The idea that individual property rights are not absolute but defined by the …


Natural Property Rights: A Reply, Eric R. Claeys May 2023

Natural Property Rights: A Reply, Eric R. Claeys

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Reply concludes the symposium hosted by the Texas A&M University Journal of Property Law on the author’s forthcoming book Natural Property Rights. The Reply shows how natural law and rights apply to a wide range of doctrinal examples raised in this symposium—including business associations, correlative oil rights, timber extraction, sinking coastlands, water law, nuisance law, property rights in subsurface minerals, and the issues about sovereignty and property disposition associated with Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823). The Reply also addresses a wide range of skeptical objections to natural law—especially the arguments that it relies too much on intuitions and …


Balancing The Inequities In Applying Natural Property Rights To Rights In Real Or Intellectual Property, Lolita Darden May 2023

Balancing The Inequities In Applying Natural Property Rights To Rights In Real Or Intellectual Property, Lolita Darden

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Eric Claeys’s book, Natural Property Rights, introduces a Lockean-based theory of interest-based natural property rights. Central to Claeys’s theory are the concepts of justified interests and productive use. A justified interest, Claeys writes, exists when an individual demonstrates a stronger interest in a resource than anyone else in the community and uses the resource productively in a manner that is “intelligent, purposeful, value-creating, . . . sociable,” and leads to survival or flourishing. Claeys’s theory demonstrates “how a standard justification for property gets implemented in practice” and how a community’s “goods” build on the individual’s goods.

Claeys’s community “goods” focus, …


How Far Does Natural Law Protect Private Property?, James W. Ely Jr. May 2023

How Far Does Natural Law Protect Private Property?, James W. Ely Jr.

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Article first explores the ambiguous relationship between natural law and the rights of property owners in American history. It points out that invocation of natural law principles was frequently conflated with English common law guarantees of property rights in the Revolutionary Era. Reliance on natural law as a source of protection for private property faded during the nineteenth century and was largely rejected in the early twentieth century.

The Article then considers the extent to which natural law principles are useful in addressing contemporary issues relating to eminent domain and police power regulation of private property. Taking a skeptical …


Opus As The Core Of Property, Adam Macleod May 2023

Opus As The Core Of Property, Adam Macleod

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

No account of property law can achieve a comprehensive understanding without factoring in natural rights. Professor Eric Claeys’s new book offers a significant contribution to contemporary property theory by setting out the most comprehensive and defensible theory of natural property rights to appear in a long time. Claeys describes the function of property as productive work. Intentional planning, purposeful effort, and creative ordering enable people to achieve lives of flourishing. And, as Claeys demonstrates in careful detail, the various norms and institutions of property law make possible those exercises of practical reason and the flourishing that results from them. Natural …


The Natural Right Of Property, Timothy Sandefur May 2023

The Natural Right Of Property, Timothy Sandefur

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Article offers a critical examination of Eric Claeys’s argument for natural property rights, focusing in particular on the questions of self-ownership and the so-called “Lockean proviso.” It argues that while Claeys is generally on the right track in his argument for natural property rights, he errs in omitting a self-ownership argument, some version of which is necessary for a proper naturalistic account of property, and that the Lockean proviso is neither necessary for such an account nor defensible in its own right. I conclude that the concerns animating the Lockean proviso argument are adequately dealt with by an alternative …


Comparing & Contrasting Economic And Natural Law Approaches To Policymaking, Eric Kades May 2023

Comparing & Contrasting Economic And Natural Law Approaches To Policymaking, Eric Kades

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Eric Claeys’s monograph, Natural Property Rights, offers a comprehensive and thoughtful articulation of a general theory of property rights rooted in the natural law tradition. This detailed review compares Claeys’s work with the consequentialist law and economics perspective on property. After contrasting their objectives, assumptions, and methodologies this article concludes that, unlike more absolutist approaches, Claeys’s flavor of natural property rights places a modicum of weight on the welfare effects central to economic analysis. This restrained nod in the direction of practicality, however, does not eliminate some of the long-known weaknesses of natural law. Perhaps the most glaring gap …


Natural Property Rights: An Introduction, Eric R. Claeys May 2023

Natural Property Rights: An Introduction, Eric R. Claeys

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Article introduces a symposium hosted by the Texas A&M University Journal of Property Law. The symposium is on a forthcoming book, and in that book the author introduces and defends a theory of property relying on labor, natural rights, and mine-run principles of natural law. Parts I and II of the Article preview the main claims of the book, summarizing part by part and chapter by chapter.

The rest of the Article illustrates how the theory introduced in the book applies to a contemporary resource dispute. The Article studies an ongoing lawsuit styled Campo v. United States, now …


Ad Coelum And The Design Of Property Rights, Joseph A. Schremmer May 2023

Ad Coelum And The Design Of Property Rights, Joseph A. Schremmer

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Article seizes on a specific doctrinal discussion in Eric Claeys’s Natural Property Rights to argue for the importance of understanding property doctrines in the context of a system of interconnecting rules and standards and not in isolation. The ad coelum doctrine provides that land ownership entails ownership of the suprajacent airspace as well as the underlying subsurface. As Claeys’s discussion highlights, scholars disagree about the significance of ad coelum both conceptually, as to what function the rule serves in defining and allocating property, and normatively. It is only by viewing ad coelum in the context of how it interacts …


The Future Of Natural Property Law: Comments On Eric Claeys’S Natural Property Rights, Christopher Serkin May 2023

The Future Of Natural Property Law: Comments On Eric Claeys’S Natural Property Rights, Christopher Serkin

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Professor Eric Claeys is among the most thoughtful modern proponents of natural property rights. His new book, provided to conference participants in draft form, is typical of his rigorously analytical approach. It is an impressive articulation of a natural rights-based account of property. It significantly advances the debate over natural rights and should be taken seriously even by those who do not find it entirely convincing.

There are real-world political stakes in abstract-seeming questions of property theory because natural rights are often deployed to limit government regulation of property. Natural rights contrast with positivist accounts that locate the content of …


Too Simple Rules For A Complex World? Prior Appropriation Water Rights As Natural Rights, Vanessa Casado-Pérez May 2023

Too Simple Rules For A Complex World? Prior Appropriation Water Rights As Natural Rights, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Article assesses the fit of Professor Claeys’s theory of Natural Property Rights to traditional prior appropriation, the regime that allocates water in the West, and its capacity to fit the future of the regime. Natural Property Rights does not offer clear answers to the conflicts under the prior appropriation doctrine of water when there is scarcity. This Article explores the lack of determinacy of Claeys’s theory and the maladjustment between the theory and some of the foundational prior appropriation principles, which cannot be ignored even in the most stylized form of the regime. In particular, the Article analyzes the …


Business Organizations As Natural Objects Of Ownership, Kevin Douglas May 2023

Business Organizations As Natural Objects Of Ownership, Kevin Douglas

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Given the importance of “property rights” in American law and cul- ture, academic and judicial disagreement over the content of the con- cept is a problem. Professor Eric Claeys makes considerable progress toward resolving this problem in his forthcoming book, Natural Prop- erty Rights. Using John Locke’s labor theory of property, the treatise identifies intelligible limits to the kinds of objects that qualify as prop- erty and provides guidance on how legal rights should operate for a given category of objects. It also identifies several examples of American law that already follow a Lockean framework. The chapters Designing Property Rights …


Oil, Trees, And Water: Evaluating The Transition From Natural Property Rights To Property Conventions, John A. Lovett May 2023

Oil, Trees, And Water: Evaluating The Transition From Natural Property Rights To Property Conventions, John A. Lovett

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

In his new book, Natural Property Rights, Eric Claeys offers a property theory grounded in a person’s ability to make productive or purposive use of a resource and the requirement of clear communication about the extent of a person’s claim to that resource. This Article illustrates some of the normative and practical advantages of Claeys’s theory by using it to explicate three property disputes that have arisen in Louisiana concerning highly contested natural resources—oil, trees, and water. The Article argues that Claeys’s theory illuminates a major focal case in the development of Louisiana’s law of the obligations of neighborhood, …


Natural Law, Assumptions, And Humility, Ezra Rosser May 2023

Natural Law, Assumptions, And Humility, Ezra Rosser

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This review of Natural Property Rights celebrates Eric Claeys’s efforts to resuscitate natural law as a viable approach to property law. Although readers unlikely to be convinced that natural law is the way to best understand property rights, Claeys succeeds in breathing new life into natural law. Natural Property Rights’ emphasis on use as property law’s fundamental value creates space to reconceptualize the rights of property owners and the place of non-owners within a just theory of property rights. The main critiques of Natural Property Rights offered in this review center around the choice to prioritize rights over duties …