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The Judicial Invention Of Property Norms: Ellickson's Whalemen Revisited, Robert Deal
The Judicial Invention Of Property Norms: Ellickson's Whalemen Revisited, Robert Deal
Robert C. Deal
Robert C Ellickson argues that the close-knit community of American whalemen in the nineteenth century used norms of their own creation to settle arguments over contested whales without violence or frequent litigation. Ellickson also contends that these norms were largely adopted by courts as the property law of whaling. A close examination of trial transcripts and depositions from two litigated whaling disputes reveals, however, that whalemen settled contests not upon clear and widely accepted norms but rather upon the application of some rather general maxims that were often poorly understood even by experienced captains and crews. Whaling disputes were, in …