Law Commons^™

Ownership Without Citizenship: The Creation Of Noncitizen Property Rights, Allison Brownell Tirres

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At the nation’s founding, the common law of property defined ownership as an incident of citizenship. Noncitizens were unable lawfully to hold, devise, or inherit property. This doctrine eroded during the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but few scholars have examined its demise or the concommittant rise of property rights for foreigners. This Article is the first sustained treatment of the creation of property rights for noncitizens in American law. It uncovers two key sources for the rights that emerged during the nineteenth century: federal territorial law, which allowed for alien property ownership and alien suffrage, and state …

The Resilience Of Property, Lynda L. Butler

Faculty Publications

Resilience is essential to the ability of property to face transforming social and environmental change. For centuries, property has responded to such change through a dialectical process that identifies emerging disciplinary perspectives and debates conflicting values and norms. This dialectic promotes the resilience of property, allowing it to adapt to changing conditions and needs. Today the mainstream economic theory dominating common law property is progressively being intertwined with constitutionally protected property, undermining its long-term resilience. The coupling of the economic vision of ordinary property with constitutional property embeds the assumptions, choices, and values of the economic theory into both realms …

Restricting Testamentary Freedom: Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Justifications, Daniel B. Kelly

Fordham Law Review

The organizing principle of American succession law—testamentary freedom—gives decedents a nearly unrestricted right to dispose of property. After surveying the justifications for testamentary freedom, I examine the circumstances in which it may be socially beneficial for courts to alter wills, trusts, and other gratuitous transfers at death: imperfect information, negative externalities, and intergenerational equity. These justifications correspond with many existing limitations on the freedom of testation. Yet, disregarding donor intent to maximize the donees’ ex post interests, an increasingly common justification for intervention, is socially undesirable. Doing so ignores important ex ante considerations, including a donor’s happiness, a donor’s incentive …

Partition Of Oil And Gas Interests And The Effect On Mineral Rights Of Surface Partition, Thomas L. Shaffer

Thomas L. Shaffer

No abstract provided.

Men And Things: The Liberal Bias Against Property, Thomas L. Shaffer

Thomas L. Shaffer

No abstract provided.

Property In-Laws, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Nicole Stelle Garnett

No abstract provided.

"No Taking Without A Touching?" Questions From An Armchair Originalist, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Nicole Stelle Garnett

This paper is an invited contribution to the Bernard Siegan Memorial Conference on Economic Liberties, Property Rights, and the Original Meaning of the Constitution at the University of San Diego School of Law. The paper poses three questions about the historical evidence used to support the dominant academic view that the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause, as originally understood, extended only to physical appropriations or invasions of private property. First, the paper questions the relevance of state and local regulatory practices to the pre-incorporation understanding of the Takings Clause. Second, the paper expresses concern about the use of state-court cases decided …

Wills, Trusts, And Estates, J. William Gray Jr., Katherine E. Ramsey

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

'Dred Scott V. Sandford' Analysis, Sarah E. Roessler

Student Publications

The Scott v. Sandford decision will forever be known as a dark moment in America's history. The Supreme Court chose to rule on a controversial issue, and they made the wrong decision. Scott v. Sandford is an example of what can happen when the Court chooses to side with personal opinion instead of what is right.

Property Distribution Physics: The Talisman Of Time And Middle Class Law, Margaret F. Brinig

Margaret F Brinig

No abstract provided.

The Commons, Capitalism, And The Constitution, George Skouras

George Skouras

Thesis Summary: the erosion of the Commons in the United States has contributed to the deterioration of community and uprooting of people in order to meet the dynamic demands of capitalism. This article suggests countervailing measures to help remedy the situation.

Town Of Nags Head V. Toloczko, Kevin Michael Emmerich

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Homeowners sought relief and damages in federal court for the condemnation of their ocean front cottage amid the vacillating doctrines of state and municipal law that shift as frequently as the sands that delineate the property’s status.

Unseating Privilege: Rawls, Equality Of Opportunity, And Wealth Transfer Taxation, Jennifer Bird-Pollan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article is the second in a series that examines the estate tax from a particular philosophical position in order to demonstrate the relevance and importance of the wealth transfer taxes to that position. In this Article, I explore Rawlsian equality of opportunity, a philosophical position that is at the heart of much American thought. Equality of opportunity requires not only ensuring that sufficient opportunities are available to the least well-off members of society but also that opportunities are not available to other members merely because of their wealth or other arbitrary advantages. Therefore, an income tax alone, even one …

Koontz V. St. Johns River Water Management District, Ross Keogh

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Koontz extends the application of Nollan and Dolan, which require exactions of real property for land-use permits to share a “nexus” and be “roughly proportional” to the regulation to be constitutional. A divided United States Supreme Court held that “monetary exactions,” potentially including building permit fees or impact fees, must satisfy the Nollan and Dolan requirements even if the government denies the permit.[1] The Court did not reach the merits of the petitioner’s appeal.

[1](Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., dissenting).

Corporate “Soul”: Legal Incorporation Of Catholic Ecclesiastical Property In The United States - A Historical Perspective, Vicenç Feliú

Vicenç Feliú

This work is a revision and update of a study carried out in 1933 by Monsignor Patrick J. Dignan. Dignan’s purpose in his study was to outline the history of how the Roman Catholic Church secured laws for the protection of church property in accordance with the hierarchical nature of the Church. The purpose of the present article is to bring up to date Dignan’s work and complete a survey of the law in its present state. The article analyzes the differences in the law since the original survey to determine if Dignan’s conclusion that the Church should operate to …

Article 9 And The Characterization And Treatment Of Tenant Security Deposits, R. Wilson Freyermuth, William H. Henning

Faculty Publications

Each day, thousands of lessees enter into contracts under which they lease either real or personal property. Under the majority of these contracts, the lessee agrees to pay (and does pay) a "security deposit" to the lessor. The lessor typically agrees to refund the deposit at the conclusion of the lease term if the lessee fully performs its obligations under the lease contract. Is Article 9 relevant to this transaction? Has the lessor taken a "security interest" in the lessee's property to secure the lessee's obligations under the lease contract?

In Part I, we highlight two opinions representative of the …

The Tragedy Of The Commons: A Hybrid Approach To Trade Secret Legal Theory, Jonathan R.K. Stroud

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Current theories governing trade secrets law incompletely and inadequately protect substantial investment in innovation, rendering them inefficient, reactionary, and largely illusory. Trade secret law exists to fill a gap between other forms of intellectual property and to encourage substantial investment in innovation and to recoup the time and money expended pursuing it, to the long-term benefit of the greater public good. Without strong trade secret protections, the “tragedy of the commons” would lead to the unfair destruction of the fruits of capital and labor and discourage investment in activities calculated to benefit the public, thus hurting our society. I propose …

Order, Technology And The Constitutional Meanings Of Criminal Procedure, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Enslavement In The Twentieth Century: The Right Of Parents To Retain Their Childrens' Earnings, Jules D. Barnett, Daniel K. Spradlin

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Competitive Patent Law, William Hubbard

All Faculty Scholarship

Can U.S. patent law help American businesses compete in global markets? In early 2011, President Barack Obama argued that, to obtain economic prosperity, the United States must "out-innovate . .. the rest of the world,"¹ and that patent reform is a "critical dimension[]" ² of this innovation agenda. Soon thereafter, Congress enacted the most sweeping reforms to U.S. patent law in more than half a century, contending that the changes will "give American inventors and innovators the 21st century patent system they need to compete."³ Surprisingly, no legal scholar has assessed whether patent reform is capable of making …

The Dark Side Of Town: The Social Capital Revolution In Residential Property, Stephanie M. Stern

All Faculty Scholarship

Social capital has pervaded property law, with scholars and policymakers advocating laws and property arrangements to promote social capital and relying on social capital to devolve property governance from legal institutions to resident groups. This Article challenges the prevailing view of social capital’s salutary effects with a more skeptical account that examines the dark side of residential social capital — its capacity to effectuate local factions and promote restraints and inegalitarianism that close off property. I introduce a set of claims about social capital’s dark side in residential property and explore these points through the examples of local racial purging, …

Remedies: A Guide For The Perplexed, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

Remedies is one of a law student’s most practical courses. Remedies students and their professors learn to work with their eyes on the question at the end of litigation: what can the court do for the successful plaintiff? Remedies develops students’ professional identities and broadens their professional horizons by reorganizing their analysis of procedure, torts, contracts, and property around choosing and measuring relief - compensatory damages, punitive damages, an injunction, specific performance, disgorgement, and restitution. This article discusses the law-school course in Remedies - the content of the Remedies course, the Remedies classroom experience, and Remedies outside the classroom through …

Order, Progress And Carioca Environments: A Preface To Study Space V, Colin Crawford

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brazilian Regularization Of Title In Light Of Moradia, Compared To The United States Understandings Of Homeownership And Homelessness, Marc R. Poirier

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Owning Property Without Privacy: How Lavan V. City Of Los Angeles Offers Increased Fourth Amendment Protection To Skid Row's Homeless, Benjamin G. Kassis

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Shifting Sands: A Meta-Theory For Public Access And Private Property Along The Coast, Melissa K. Scanlan

Melissa K. Scanlan

Over half the United States population currently lives near a coast. As shorelines are used by more people, developed by private owners, and altered by extreme weather, competition over access to water and beaches will intensify, as will the need for a clearer legal theory capable of accommodating competing private and public interests. One such public interest is to walk along the beach, which seems simple enough. However, beach walking often occurs on this ambulatory shoreline where public rights grounded in the public trust doctrine and private rights grounded in property ownership intersect. To varying degrees, each state has a …

Foreground Principles, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court has declared for decades that, for Takings Clause purposes, property interests are not created by the Constitution but rather are determined by “existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law.” However, the Court has exhibited a strong normative preference for a certain type of independent source — “background principles” of the common law — over others, namely state statutory and administrative law. This Article calls this preference into question.

The Article develops a model to demonstrate the four basic categories, or quadrants, of takings decisions that extensive reliance on the …

A Home With Dignity: Domestic Violence And Property Rights, Margaret Johnson

Margaret E Johnson

This Article argues that the legal system should do more to address intimate partner violence and each party’s need for a home for several reasons. First, domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness and family homelessness. Second, the struggle over rights to a shared home can increase the violence to which the woman is subjected. And third, a woman who decides that continuing to share a home with the person who abused her receives little or no system support, despite the evidence that this decision could most effectively reduce the violence. The legal system’s current failings result from its …

Killers Shouldn't Inherit From Their Victims . . . Or Should They?, Carla Spivack

Carla Spivack

The article offers a profound reassessment of so-called “Slayer Rules,” laws that, in all states, bar killers from inheriting from their victims. For the first time in the literature, this piece questions the underlying rationale for these rules by examining the context of family violence and mental illness in which these killing occur, and argues that, given that context, these rules are often neither legally nor morally justified. My argument is as follows: at first glance, the idea behind Slayer Rules seems reasonable, indeed, morally obvious: a killer should not be able to profit from his or her crime. This …

Do The Right Thing: Indirect Remedies In Private Law, Daphna Lewinsohn-Zamir

Daphna Lewinsohn-Zamir

Private law provides diverse remedies for right violations: compensatory and punitive, monetary and non-monetary, self-help and court-awarded. The literature has discussed these (and other) classifications of remedies, yet it overlooked the important distinction between direct and indirect remedies. Some remedies directly order right-infringers to realize the desired outcome, while others bring it about indirectly, by inducing them to self-comply. This classification cuts across the traditional ones.

This Article fills the gap in the literature by introducing the novel category of indirect remedies. It identifies how indirect remedies are used in current legal rules—with examples from property, contract, torts, intellectual property …