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When John Locke Meets Lao Tzu: The Relationship Between Intellectual Property, Biodiversity And Indigenous Knowledge And The Implications For Food Security, Paolo Davide Farah, Marek Prityi

Articles

This article aims to examine the relationship between the concepts of intellectual property, biodiversity, and indigenous knowledge from the perspective of food security and farmers’ rights. Even though these concepts are interdependent and interrelated, they are in a state of conflict due to their inherently enshrined differences. Intellectual property is based on the need of protecting individual property rights in the context of creations of their minds. On the other hand, the concepts of biodiversity, indigenous knowledge and farmers’ rights accentuate the aspects of equity and community. This article aims to analyse and critically assess the respective legal framework and …

Nature’S Law: The Evolutionary Origin Of Property Rights, Kathryn Loncarich

Pace Law Review

This article contributes to the outline of the origin of property rights set forth by Professor Krier, by more fully analyzing the role of evolutionary biology in the development of property rights. This article focuses on the pre-political formation of property ownership and the initial formation of concepts of property and ownership. Expanding on Krier’s analysis, this article considers the implications of this evolutionary foundation on our modern property regime, particularly given the growing chasm between the wealthy on one side and the poor and middle-class on the other.

Part II discusses the growing disparity of wealth in America and …

The Possession Heuristic, James E. Krier, Christopher Serkin

Book Chapters

A heuristic, as Daniel Kahneman (2011: 98) observes, “is a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions.” Kahneman is a psychologist, one of a handful of scholars who have brought heuristics to the attention of a general audience, thanks in large part to several books (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982; Gilovich, Driffin, and Kahneman 2002). Just as Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 ideas about paradigms in the history of science are fodder for academics in all sorts of fields (this for better or worse), so too for Kahneman and company’s ideas about heuristics, and legal academics …

Economics-Based Environmentalism In The Fourth Generation Of Environmental Law, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Environmental protection and economic concerns are not mutually exclusive. This article explores some of the issues of economic analysis that might arise as we approach the fourth generation of environmental law. It explains ways that economic analysis can be employed to generate the best environmental rules, including measures under what this article terms as "economics-based environmentalism." Economics-based environmentalism contends that the advantages of using economic principles within a “polycentric toolbox” of environmental law come from the benefits available in private ordering, markets, property rights, liability regimes and incentives structures that will better protect the environment than alternatives like state-based interventionist, …

Keepings, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

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 …

Chix Nix Bundle-O-Stix: A Feminist Critique Of The Disaggregation Of Property, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Michigan Law Review

Property was dead, to begin with. The coroner, Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, revealed that the unity, tangibility, and objectivity of property perceived by our ancestors was a phantom. Property is, in fact, merely a "bundle of sticks." When conceptualized as a collection of rights, property loses its distinctive qualities and its essence. It therefore does not, or at least should not, exist. Without unity and physicality, property loses its objectivity and can only be a myth. The rabble might still believe in the old gods of property, but the educated "specialists" now know that this was vulgar superstition. Once the populace …

Inquiry Concerning Justice, Floyd R. Mechem

Michigan Law Review

Justice, said Daniel Webster, "is the greatest interest of man on earth." Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist, declared "Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It has ever been, and ever will be, pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit."