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Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal, Volume 12, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

The Importance of Property Rights

September 29-30, 2022

Panel 1: The Importance of Property Rights: A Tribute to James S. Burling

Panel 3: Roundtable: Emerging Issues in Takings and Property Rights Litigation

Featured Authors (Burling, Kanner, and Valois)

One Of The Safeguards Of The Constitution: The Direct Tax Clauses Revisted, James W. Ely Jr.

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

James Madison's insistence that the apportionment rule governing the imposition of direct taxes by Congress was a constitutional safeguard highlights a puzzle that has plagued constitutional law since the early days of the Republic. The Constitution does not bar Congress from imposing direct taxes, but twice provides that direct taxes "shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers." In times of crisis, notably during the War of 1812 and the Civil War, Congress levied direct taxes on real estate and slaves. It specified the aggregate amount to be collected …

The Future Of Natural Property Law: Comments On Eric Claeys's Natural Property Rights, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

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 …

Disaster Discordance: Local Court Implementation Of State And Federal Eviction Prevention Policies During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Lauren Sudeall, Elora Lee Raymond, Philip M.E. Garboden

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Eviction sits at the nexus of property rights and the basic human need for shelter—the former benefits from a strong framework of legal protection while the latter does not. In most eviction courts across the country, therefore, the right to housing is unrecognized, while landlords’ economic interests in property are consistently vindicated.

The public health crisis unleashed by COVID-19 temporarily upended that (im)balance. Emergency federal and state eviction prevention policies issued in response to COVID-19 prioritized public health—-and the need for shelter to prevent the spread of disease—-over typically dominant property rights. In doing so, they presented courts with an …

Blockchain Real Estate And Nfts, Juliet M. Moringiello, Christopher K. Odinet

William & Mary Law Review

Non-fungible tokens (popularly known as NFTs) and blockchains are frequently promoted as the solution to a multitude of property ownership problems. The promise of an immutable blockchain is often touted as a mechanism to resolve disputes over intangible rights, notably intellectual property rights, and even to facilitate quicker and easier real estate transactions.

In this Symposium Article, we question the use of distributed ledger technologies as a method of facilitating and verifying the transfer of physical assets. As our example of an existing transfer method, we use real property law, which is characterized by centuries-old common law rules regarding fractionalized …

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

Faculty Publications

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 …

The Wolf In Sheep's Clothing: How Historical And Blight Designations In The Absence Of Constitutional Safeguards Can Render Property Rights Illusory, Kyle B. Teal, Dane L. Stuhlsatz

St. Thomas Law Review

This article summarily analyzes those more subtle forms of property rights infringement, including historical designations and blight designations, and it critiques laws in place that purport to grant local government the authority to assert such designations. This article also provides a summary of the causes of action owners aggrieved by unjust designations could bring in response, and critiques the flaws in those elective safeguards, which are prevalent even in property rights friendly jurisdictions such as Florida. It then proposes high-level solutions to enact legislation to limit fee exposure for property owners who bring inverse condemnation actions and Bert J. Harris …

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal, Volume 11, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

The Role of Empirical Research

September 30-October 1, 2021

Panel 1: The Role of Empirical Research in Defining the Scope of Constitutionally Protected Property Rights: A Tribute to Been

Panel 2: The Relationship Between Eminent Domain and Social and Racial Injustice

Panel 3: The Interdependence of Property and First Amendment Rights

Panel 4: The Distributional Implications of Land Use Regulation

Property, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter discusses the nature and value of property rights. It will explain (1) what property rights are, (2) the relationship between private property and economic development, and (3) some objections to structuring societies around such rights. This discussion throughout focuses on the decentralizing nature of private property rights, asking what implications it has from a philosophical, but also social and political, point of view."

The Cost Of Unstable Property: Oil, Gas, And Other Confusing Mineral Interests, Chad J. Pomeroy

Faculty Articles

Most people think of property as a thing: a chunk of land or a piece of personal property. Most lawyers, hopefully, have a more sophisticated view and think of property as a set of rights that exists with respect to a thing and governs how one interacts with that thing vis-a-vis other people. But even that nuance is not refined enough for an oil and gas lawyer. Such a practitioner does, of course, view ownership as a set of rights, but the thing at hand is not just a piece of real property or the part of the land that …

Dead Men Tell No Tales: Arkansas’S Grave Failure To Honor Its Constituents’ Postmortem Quasi-Property Right, Mckenna Moore

Arkansas Law Review

It is doubtful that Hulon Rupert Austin woke up on the day of March 7, 1986 and expected it to be his last. March 7 was a typical day—a workday—that started with a simple drive to a job site with his co-worker. A day that began so unremarkably ended with his co-worker looking up from where he was working to see “Austin lying on the ground.”

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal, Volume 10, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

Where Theory Meets Practice

October 1-2, 2020

Panel 1: Where Theory Meets Practice: A Tribute to Henry E. Smith

Panel 2: The Housing Crisis

Lunch Roundtable: Emerging Issues in Takings and Eminent Domain Law

Panel 3: The Reach of Government's Confiscatory Powers Over Exigencies and Emergencies

Panel 4: The Risk of Unjust Compensation

Fee Simple Failures: Rural Landscapes And Race, Jessica A. Shoemaker

Michigan Law Review

Property law’s roots are rural. America pursued an early agrarian vision that understood real property rights as instrumental to achieving a country of free, engaged citizens who cared for their communities and stewarded their physical place in it. But we have drifted far from this ideal. Today, American agriculture is industrialized, and rural communities are in decline. The fee simple ownership form has failed every agrarian objective but one: the maintenance of white landownership. For it was also embedded in the original American experiment that land ownership would be racialized for the benefit of its white citizens, through acts of …

If You Don't Care, Who Will?, Chad J. Pomeroy

Faculty Articles

As a property law professor, I have lately found myself thinking a lot about privacy rights. Initially, the two topics (property and privacy) perhaps do not seem closely related, but I think they are—or, at least, I think the tie between the two is becoming much more pronounced and important, as modern life becomes ever more techno-centric. specifically, I think that privacy rights are, at this point, essentially an outgrowth of property rights. That is, one's right to privacy is dependent on what we traditionally view as one's property rights. At least, I think this is the current state of …

A Reign Of Error: Property Rights And Stare Decisis, Michael Allan Wolf

UF Law Faculty Publications

Mistakes matter in law, even the smallest ones. What would happen if a small but substantively meaningful typographical error appeared in the earliest published version of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion and remained uncorrected for several decades in versions of the decision published by the two leading commercial companies and in several online databases? And what would happen if judges, legal commentators, and practitioners wrote opinions, articles, and other legal materials that incorporated and built on that mistake? In answering these questions, this Article traces the widespread, exponential replication of an error (first appearing in 1928) in numerous subsequent cases …

Who Owns The Skies? Ad Coelum, Property Rights, And State Sovereignty, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In light of the history of the doctrine of ad coelum, as well as the states’ preeminent role (secured by the Tenth Amendment) in regulating property and airspace up to the 500-foot level, it is remarkable that the federal government has begun to claim that it controls everything above the blades of grass. This chapter challenges those statements, demonstrating that history and law establish that property owners, and the states, control the airspace adjacent to the land.

Le Deuxième Grand Dérangement: Expelling Louisiana’S Taking Of Private Property Through Article 450, Michael C. Schimpf

Louisiana Law Review

The article explains classification of things in Louisiana in relation to water bottom ownership and the state's protection of private property.

Towards Fairly Apportioning Sale Proceeds In A Collective Sale Of Strata Property, Edward S. W. Ti

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Cake-cutting is a longstanding metaphor for a wide range of real-world problems that involve the division of anything of value. Unsurprisingly, where owners of a strata scheme wish to end the strata scheme and collectively sell their development, one of the most contentious issues may be the apportionment of sale proceeds. In Singapore, this problem is compounded in mixed developments which have both commercial and residential elements as well as in developments with different sized units, often with disproportionate strata share values; even differing facings and the state of one’s unit may attract disenchantment when trying to apportion proceeds. This …

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal, Volume 9, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

The State of Regulatory Takings

October 3-4, 2019

Panel 1: The State of Regulatory Takings Jurisprudence: A Tribute to Eagle

Panel 2: Public Resources and Private Rights

Panel 3: Natural Gas and Other Energy Takings: Protecting Private Property Rights When the Public Interest is Promoted By a Non-Governmental Entity

Panel 4: Property and Poverty

Featured Author (Eagle)

A Defense Of The Regulatory Takings Doctrine: A Historical Analysis Of This Conflict Between Property Rights And Public Good And A Prediction For Its Future, Andrew Parslow

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Since man first left the state of nature and formed property rights, there have been issues when states desire to use the property of another for what they consider to be the greater good. In their wisdom, the Founding Fathers of the United States built on centuries of historical principles ranging from the Romans to the English and enshrined in the Fifth Amendment the common law notion that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The rise of environmentalism has brought a new frontier to the ancient struggle between the rights of individuals and the …

Property, Unbundled Water Entitlements, And Anticommons Tragedies: A Cautionary Tale From Australia, Paul Babie, Paul Leadbeter, Kyriaco Nikias

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

As water becomes an increasingly scarce resource, a lack of clarity in relation to its use can produce both conflict among and inefficient use by users. In order to encourage markets in water and to ensure the viability and functionality of those markets, governments in many jurisdictions have moved away from commons property as a means of water allocation, and towards systems of private property in water. In doing so, one policy and legal option is “unbundling”, which seeks carefully to define both the entitlement to water and its separation into constituent parts. Advocates claim that unbundling makes water rights …

Property Beyond Exclusion, Lee Anne Fennell

William & Mary Law Review

Property rights have long been associated with a simple and distinctive technology: exclusion. But technologies can become outdated as conditions change, and exclusion is no exception. Recent decades have featured profound changes that have made exclusion a less useful, less necessary, and more expensive way of regulating access to resources. This Article surveys the prospects for a post-exclusion understanding of real and personal property. It proceeds from the premise that property is built upon complementarities, the nature and scale of which have undergone seismic shifts. Physical boundaries and lengthy claims on resources are designed to group complementary elements together in …

Municipal Annexation Reform In Texas: How A Victory For Property Rights Jeopardizes The State’S Financial Health, Julie Polansky Bell

St. Mary's Law Journal

Municipal annexation is the expansion of city boundaries. The greatest motivator behind municipal annexation is maintaining and improving economic prosperity of the annexing authority. The issue of annexation involves a balance of rights between property owners and municipalities of the state. Historically, Texas cities had broad annexation authority under an involuntary annexation scheme. However, in recent years the power has shifted as lawmakers have given property owners greater control over the annexation process. This trend culminated in the passage of the Municipal Annexation Right to Vote Act (MARVA) by the 85th Texas Legislature, which severely limits annexation authority.

Texas municipalities …

Legislative Reform Or Legalized Theft?: Why Civil Asset Forfeiture Must Be Outlawed In Ohio, Alex Haller

Cleveland State Law Review

Civil asset forfeiture is a legal method for law enforcement to deprive United States citizens of their personal property with little hope for its return. With varying degrees of legal protection at the state level, Ohio legislators must encourage national policy reform by outlawing civil asset forfeiture in Ohio. Ohio Revised Code Section 2981.05 should be amended to outlaw civil asset forfeiture by requiring a criminal conviction prior to allowing the seizure of an individual’s property. This Note proposes two plans of action that will restore Ohio resident’s property rights back to those originally afforded in the United States Constitution.

Are Premarital Agreements Really Unfair?: An Empirical Study, Elizabeth Carter

Journal Articles

The article focuses on unfair treatment of premarital agreements and data of the people who entered into premarital agreements including age at marriage, race, and political affiliation. It mentions substance of the premarital agreements including how the agreements divide property and whether the agreements waive spousal support. It also mentions premarital agreements involve the waiver of property rights.

Bad Foundation: Washington's Lack Of Homeowner Rights, Brendan Williams

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Recreational Rights To The Dry Sand Beach In Florida: Property, Custom And Controversy, Alyson C. Flournoy, Thomas T. Ankersen, Sasha Alvarenga

UF Law Faculty Publications

At the close of the 2018 legislative session Florida Governor Rick Scott signed HB 631 into law. Included in the bill, which addressed a number of issues relating to actions for ejectment from real property, was an amendment to the Florida Community Planning Act entitled “Establishment of Recreational Customary Use.” The new statute immediately created a sandstorm of controversy as the media seized on what many in the public perceived to be a land grab over the public’s right to recreate on Florida’s sandy beaches. As it turns out, the story is considerably more nuanced, and neither the advocates on …

Maine Roads And Easements, Knud E. Hermansen, Donald R. Richards

Maine Law Review

Black's Law Dictionary defines an easement as a right of use over the property of another. An easement is a right in the owner of one parcel of land, by reason of such ownership, to use the land of another for a special purpose not inconsistent with a general property right in the owner. It is an interest that one person has in the land of another. A primary characteristic of an easement, that its burden falls upon the possessor of the land from which it issued, is expressed in the statement that the land constitutes a servient estate or …

The Law Of Taking Elsewhere And, One Suspects, In Maine, Orlando E. Delogu

Maine Law Review

The debate as to the meaning of the Taking Clause in the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution seems unending. This short, almost cryptic constitutional provision, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” has over the years given rise to both court challenges and philosophic debate aimed at parsing out the meaning and parameters of this language. As the need for regulatory controls (imposed by every level of government) has increased, the number of challenges and the stridency of the debate has also increased. Moreover, these challenges have increasingly found their way to the …

When Should Rights "Trump"? An Examination Of Speech And Property, Laura S. Underkuffler

Maine Law Review

In his well-known article, Property, Speech, and the Politics of Distrust, Professor Richard Epstein—a leading contemporary voice in the fields of property theory and constitutional law—makes a simple but compelling argument. There has been, he argues, a mistake in “the dominant mode of thinking about property rights during the past fifty years [that] has been ... of constitutional dimensions.” This mistake, in Professor Epstein's view, is the refusal of the federal courts to accord to individual property rights the same kind of protection from government regulation that is accorded to other constitutional rights. Using free speech as his example, Professor …