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Review Essay, Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates, And Protesters Improve The Law Of Ownership By Eduardo Moisés Peñalver And Sonia K. Katyal, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "This book challenges the notion that rigidly fostering stability in the private ownership of property is the only appropriate goal of the legal system. The authors assert that dynamic sociopolitical responses to civil disobedience by lawbreakers sometimes propel beneficial legal reforms in a wide array of contexts. Property outlaws with clean hands and good hearts, they argue, can productively draw attention to the need to reform ossified property laws. In the words sometimes attributed to the historical rock star of successful civil disobedience Mohandas Ghandi: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then …