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Articles 1 - 29 of 29
Full-Text Articles in Law
An Empirical Study Of Implicit Takings., James E. Krier, Stewart E. Sterk
An Empirical Study Of Implicit Takings., James E. Krier, Stewart E. Sterk
Articles
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 ovcr 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 …
Judicial Takings: Musings On Stop The Beach, James E. Krier
Judicial Takings: Musings On Stop The Beach, James E. Krier
Articles
Judicial takings weren’t much talked about until a few years ago, when the Stop the Beach case made them suddenly salient. The case arose from a Florida statute, enacted in 1961, that authorizes public restoration of eroded beaches by adding sand to widen them seaward. Under the statute, the state has title to any new dry land resulting from restored beaches, meaning that waterfront owners whose land had previously extended to the mean high-tide line end up with public beaches between their land and the water. This, the owners claimed, resulted in a taking of their property, more particularly their …
Evolutionary Theory And The Origin Of Property Rights, James E. Krier
Evolutionary Theory And The Origin Of Property Rights, James E. Krier
Articles
For legal scholars, the evolution of property rights has been a topic in search of a theory. My aim here is to draw together various accounts (some of them largely neglected in the legal literature), from dated to modern, and suggest a way they can be melded into a plausible explanation of property's genesis and early development. What results hardly amounts to a theory, but it does suggest an outline for one. Moreover, it provides a primer on the subject, a reasonably solid foundation for thinking and talking about the evolution of property rights.
Property In Writing, Property On The Ground: Pigs, Horses, Land, And Citizenship In The Aftermath Of Slavery, Cuba, 1880-1909, Rebecca J. Scott, Michael Zeuske
Property In Writing, Property On The Ground: Pigs, Horses, Land, And Citizenship In The Aftermath Of Slavery, Cuba, 1880-1909, Rebecca J. Scott, Michael Zeuske
Articles
In the most literal sense, the abolition of slavery marks the moment when one human being cannot be held as property by another human being, for it ends the juridical conceit of a "person with a price." At the same time, the aftermath of emancipation forcibly reminds us that property as a concept rests on relations among human beings, not just between people and things. The end of slavery finds former masters losing possession of persons, and former slaves acquiring it. But it also finds other resources being claimed and contested, including land, tools, and animals-resources that have shaped former …
The Liberal Commons, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller
The Liberal Commons, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller
Articles
Following the Civil War, black Americans began acquiring land in earnest; by 1920 almost one million black families owned farms. Since then, black rural landownership has dropped by more than 98% and continues in rapid decline-there are now fewer than 19,000 black-operated farms left in America. By contrast, white-operated farms dropped only by half, from about 5.5 million to 2.4 million. Commentators have offered as partial explanations the consolidation of inefficient small farms and intense racial discrimination in farm lending. However, even absent these factors, the unintended effects of old-fashioned American property law might have led to the same outcome. …
Basis Of Relief From Penalties And Forfeitures, Edgar N. Durfee
Basis Of Relief From Penalties And Forfeitures, Edgar N. Durfee
Articles
The equitable principle of relief from penalties and forfeitures is so far elementary as almost to defy analysis. Many, perhaps most, of the judicial explanations of the principle have based it upon interpretation or construction, appealing to the doctrine that equity regards intent rather than form. Yet a logical application of this doctrine would lead to results very different from those which have actually been arrived at in the decisions. Thus, a stipulation in a mortgage that the mortgagor waives his equity of redemption can hardly be interpreted as meaning that he does not waive it, yet all such stipulations …
Operation And Effect Of Recording, Ralph W. Aigler
Operation And Effect Of Recording, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
While the operation of the recording acts is not uncommonly said to result in a preference of the earlier recorded instrument on the ground that under the circumstances the later grantee takes "with notice," the true view in the normal case would seem to be that the earlier grantee is preferred because priority in time gives priority in right-and by recording, he has done all that is required to preserve that favored position. Recording does not ordinarily give preference, it merely safeguards priority. Reference is here made to the normal case because it is, of course, true that there are …
Joint Tenancy In Personal Property In Michigan, Ralph W. Aigler
Joint Tenancy In Personal Property In Michigan, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
In Lober v. Dorgan, 215 Mich. 62, decided July 19, 1921, the court again wrestled with the problem which has troubled the Michigan courts for many years, as to whether the law of the state recognizes any such thing as joint ownership in personal property with the common law incident of survivorship. The facts presented a controversy between the estates of husband and wife, the latter having survived the former. A real estate mortgage had been given to "George W. Bush and Sarah Bush, his wife, of Gobleville, Michigan, as joint tenants, with sole right to the survivor." After the …
Waters And Water Courses - The Effect Of The Desert Land Act Of 1877, Evans Holbrook
Waters And Water Courses - The Effect Of The Desert Land Act Of 1877, Evans Holbrook
Articles
The Act of March 3, 1877, generally known as the Desert Land Act, provides for the sale of desert lands to persons who agree to irrigate and cultivate such lands. The act defines desert lands as lands which will not, without some irrigation, produce crops, and provides that the Commissioner of the General Land Office shall determine what may be considered as such lands; it provides also that the right to the use of water on such lands shall depend upon appropriation, and continues as follows: "and all surplus water over and above such actual appropriation and use, together with …
Escheat - How State Acquires Title, Edwin C. Goddard
Escheat - How State Acquires Title, Edwin C. Goddard
Articles
Escheat is of feudal origin, and properly applied only to land which on failure of heirs or for certain other reasons, "fell in" to the lord under whom it had been held. Personal property without an owner, as bona vacantia, became the property of the crown. In re Bond [1901] 1 Ch. 15. In the United States escheat is used more broadly, but usually arises when the owner of property dies intestate without heirs. Our alienage laws have generally removed disabilities of aliens to take, but in some jurisdictions there may still be escheat because of alienage, see 5 MICH. …
Continuous Trespass And Repeated Wrong, Joseph H. Drake
Continuous Trespass And Repeated Wrong, Joseph H. Drake
Articles
In the recent case of Perkins v. Trueblood, (Cal., May, 1919), 191 Pac. 642, the facts were that, in March, 1912, the defendant, a surgeon, set the leg of the plaintiff, but as the fracture did not heal satisfactorily "the defendant separated the surfaces of the bone during the month of April, 1912, and again set the plaintiff's leg." In a suit for malpractice, begun on April 9, 1913, it was held, that the cause of action "was not barred by the CODE OF PROCEDURE, Article 340, subd. 3, prescribing a one year limitation period in such cases." It is …
Is A Contract Necessary To Create An Effective Escrow?, Ralph W. Aigler
Is A Contract Necessary To Create An Effective Escrow?, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
WHERE land has been sold and both parties are desirous of protecting themselves pending full payment of the purchase price, there are two common ways of accomplishing their purpose without any change in legal ownership. There may be (1) a contract of sale properly evidenced so as to be enforceable, and (2) a deed executed by the vendor and placed "in escrow." Sometimes one method is preferred, sometimes the other. If the former is adopted, it is, of course, vitally important that the contract comply with the formal requirements of the law; in the latter there has been some difference …
Acquirement Of Title By A Willful Trespasser And Compensation For The Trespassee, Joseph H. Drake
Acquirement Of Title By A Willful Trespasser And Compensation For The Trespassee, Joseph H. Drake
Articles
The interaction of the basic maxim of substantive law, that no man may be deprived of his property without his consent, and the correlative maxim of adjective law, that the courts will give exact compensation for property taken or destroyed, together with the more or less mechanical rules of damages depending upon the form of action used, have in their outcome gone far toward justifying the somewhat grandiloquent utterance of our legal forbears of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that the "Common Law is the perfection of human wisdom." The final stage in this development is shown in the late …
Rights In Percolating Waters, Ralph W. Aigler
Rights In Percolating Waters, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
Almost without exception the courts approve of Acton v. Blundell, 12 M. & W. 324, to the extent of its actual decision,-that where as a result of improvement or enjoyment of one's own land one conducts operations which draw off percolating waters from a neighbor's land, even to the extent of drying up a well or spring, such inconvenience is to be deemed damnum absque injuria. The doctrine of the court "that the person who owns the surface may dig therein, and apply all that is there found to his own purposes at his free will and pleasure," if intended …
What Words Create A Power?, John R. Rood
What Words Create A Power?, John R. Rood
Articles
As the right to sell may exist either as a result of ownership, or by virtue of a power without or independent of ownership, it is sometimes a question whether words indicating a right to sell, contained in an instrument granting an estate, are intended to give a power, or are merely descriptive of the rights incident to the estate given. When property is devised without any designation of the estate given, and the devise is followed by words indicating that the devisee is to have the right of absolute disposal in fee, or to sell in fee, it has …
Rights In Percolating Waters, Ralph W. Aigler
Rights In Percolating Waters, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
Almost without exception the courts approve of Acton v. Blundell, 12 M. & W. 324, to the extent of its actual decision,-that where as a result of improvement or enjoyment of one's own land one conducts operations which draw off percolating waters from a neighbor's land, even to the extent of drying up a well or spring, such inconvenience is to be deemed damnum absque injuria. The doctrine of the court "that the person who owns the surface may dig therein, and apply all that is there found to his own purposes at his free will and pleasure," if intended …
Marshaling Of Mortgaged Property In Favor Of Subsequent Mortgagees, Edgar N. Durfee
Marshaling Of Mortgaged Property In Favor Of Subsequent Mortgagees, Edgar N. Durfee
Articles
A holds a first mortgage covering two parcels of land, B holds a second mortgage covering one of these parcels, and C holds a second mortgage covering the other parcel, B's mortgage being prior in time to C's. B's mortgage contains the following clause--"The property described in the within indenture is subject to an existing blanket mortgage held by A, with release clause of $10 per front foot." Upon a bill to foreclose A's mortgage, how should the burden of that mortgage be distributed? In Savings Investment & Trust Co. v. United Realty & Mortgage Co., 94 Atl. 588, the …
Financial Details, Kent Memorial, Edwin C. Goddard
Financial Details, Kent Memorial, Edwin C. Goddard
Articles
The following is a statement, with such details as I should think would answer the purposes of other chapters, of the ways and means adopted for securing the present building just completed at Ann Arbor.
The Right To Divert Water To Non-Riparian Land, Ralph W. Aigler
The Right To Divert Water To Non-Riparian Land, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
Though at one time in England there may have been some doubt as to the character of a riparian owner's rights in the waters of the stream, it must be considered as definitely settled by a series of cases that the doctrine of reasonable use by all the proprietors on the stream is the rule of the common law, and that the matter of priority of use or appropriation is, under that system, immaterial, unless, of course, a question of prescriptive right is involved. Wright v. Howard, 1 Sim. & S. 190; Mason v. Hill, 3 B. & Ad. 304, …
The Registration Of Land Titles, John R. Rood
The Registration Of Land Titles, John R. Rood
Articles
It is proposed in this paper to consider some of the advantages and disadvantages of the older system of no registration, the later system of registering the instruments of conveyance, and the latest system of making the title depend entirely on a recorded adjudication that it is thus and so, which absolutely displaces all former titles, adjudicated or otherwise. It is also proposed to consider some of the reasons why the older systems persist.
Adverse Possession In The Case Of The Rights Of Way Of The Pacific Railroad Companies, Ralph W. Aigler
Adverse Possession In The Case Of The Rights Of Way Of The Pacific Railroad Companies, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
While the weight of authority is probably to the effect that railroad rights of way may be lost by adverse possession, the authorities are by no means agreed. See 12 MICH. L. REV. 144. The rights of way of certain of the Pacific Railroad Companies have been declared not to be subject to the ordinary rules as to adverse possession, on the ground that by the Congressional grants the four-hundred-foot-strips were conveyed only for railroad purposes with the ultimate possibility of reverter in the United States, which had the effect of making such lands inalienable by the railroad companies whether …
The Character Of User In Prescription, Ralph W. Aigler
The Character Of User In Prescription, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
As the possession of the claimant in a case of adverse possession must be shown to have been adverse in order to ripen into title, so also must the user in prescription be shown to have been adverse during the entire prescriptive period. As to the burden of proving the adverse character of the possession in the first case there seems to be doubt whether there is a presumption of adverseness by showing open possession and acts of ownership, or whether there is a burden upon the claimant to go further. See 2 AM. & ENG. ENCY. L. & P. …
The Running With The Land Of Agreements To Pay For A Portion Of The Cost Of Party Walls, Ralph W. Aigler
The Running With The Land Of Agreements To Pay For A Portion Of The Cost Of Party Walls, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
Owners of adjoining properties, especially in cities, frequently find it advisable and advantageous to enter into arrangements whereby their buildings shall be supported by a common wall. These arrangements are ordinarily evidenced by party-wall agreements or covenants, so-called, out of which have grown a number of interesting questions. It not infrequently happens that when one owner desires to build such a wall his neighbor, for one reason or another, is not ready to join in the undertaking, so an agreement is entered into between the two adjoining owners whereby one agrees to proceed with the erection of the wall at …
Possession Under Mistake As Adverse Possession, Ralph W. Aigler
Possession Under Mistake As Adverse Possession, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
In Wissinger v. Reed et al., 125 Pac. lO3O (Aug. 24, 1912) the Supreme Court of Washington held that actual possession of land for the statutory period would confer title upon the occupant, although the possession was under a mistaken belief of ownership. While the doctrine that title to real property may be acquired by adverse possession has been firmly established in English and American law for a great many years, no little difficulty and confusion have arisen in determining what possession is adverse, especially where the actual possession upon which the claim of title is based has been under …
Taxation Of Easements, Bradley M. Thompson
Taxation Of Easements, Bradley M. Thompson
Articles
In the case of Lever v. Grant,1 the supreme court passed incidentally upon the effect of a tax deed on an easement appurtenant to the estate on which the delinquent taxes had been levied. From the facts in that case it appears that in 1884 the owner of a parcel of land in the city of Detroit, bounded on the west by Woodward avenue, platted the same. The plat shows a street on the north side extending from Woodward avenue east thirty feet wide, one-half the width of an ordinary street. This street was named Custer Avenue. The next year, …
The Extent Of The Land To Which A Mechanics' Lien Attaches, Edson R. Sunderland
The Extent Of The Land To Which A Mechanics' Lien Attaches, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
The statutes of the various states which define the scope and extent of mechanics' liens differ somewhat in respect to the quantity of land subject to such lien. Some arbitrarily limit it to a specified number of city lots or acres, but many statutes provide that the lien shall attach to the lot or land upon which the building or other improvement is situated, or to so much contiguous land as is necessary for the convenient use of the building. In most cases no difficulty arises in applying these provisions, but the terms are evidently loose and general, and it …
Statute Of Uses And The Modern Deed, John R. Rood
Statute Of Uses And The Modern Deed, John R. Rood
Articles
To what extent does the modem conveyance of estates in land in the United States by deed derive its validity from the English Statute of Uses, 27 Hen. 8, c. IO? No doubt the student, and especially the teacher, is inclined to magnify the importance of mere matters of history, because it is so much easier to understand or explain many of the terms and doctrines of real property law by approaching them historically, and, indeed, many of them cannot otherwise be understood at all. And yet we all have this constant, serious, and often difficult task, of separating matter …
Torrens Acts': Some Comparisons, James H. Brewster
Torrens Acts': Some Comparisons, James H. Brewster
Articles
The widespread discussion during the last ten years of the general scheme of registration of title to land, popularly known as the "Torrens System," has served to satisfy most disinterested lawyers and laymen of the general merits of the system. Consideration of the matter has been confined to no one section of the country, but has extended from Maine to California, and from Oregon to Texas. The result has been that laws embodying the general principles of the system have been enacted in six states, and proposed laws are before the legislatures of several others. The fact, however, that some …
The Right Of A Bona Fide Occupant Of Land To Compensation For His Improvements, Henry W. Rogers
The Right Of A Bona Fide Occupant Of Land To Compensation For His Improvements, Henry W. Rogers
Articles
It may be observed, in the first place, that the civil law afforded protection to the bona fide occupant of land, who had made useful or permanent improvements on the land, believing himself to be the true owner. The civil law never permitted one who was in the possession of land in good faith, to be turned out of his possession by the rightful owner, without any compensation for the additional value he has given to the soil by the improvements he had made; but it allowed him to off-set the value of his improvements to the extent, at least, …