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Full-Text Articles in Law

Digital Property Cycles, Joshua Fairfield Jul 2023

Digital Property Cycles, Joshua Fairfield

Washington and Lee Law Review

The present downturn in non-fungible token (“NFT”) markets is no cause for immediate alarm. There have been multiple cycles in both the legal and media focus on digital intangible property, and these cycles will recur. The cycles are easily explainable: demand for intangible property is constant, even increasing. The legal regimes governing ownership of these assets are unstable and poorly suited to satisfying the preferences of buyers and sellers. The combination of demand and poor legal regulation gives rise to the climate of fraud that has come to characterize NFTs, but it has nothing to do with the value of …


Making Virtual Things, Joshua A.T. Fairfield Jan 2023

Making Virtual Things, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

People value virtual things—such as NFTs—because such assets trigger and satisfy deep-seated narratives of property and ownership. The cause of the recent series of failures to regulate virtual assets, and the resulting crashes, has been a failure to take seriously the ways people perceive and use the assets. Current legal frameworks fail to support buyers’ and users’ expectations of ownership in virtual things they purchase.

Making virtual things is a matter of social construction of value. Virtual things, like real-world things, have value because a community values them for a purpose. It therefore makes no sense to discount how and …


Law School News: The Dean Meets The Governor 01-26-2022, Michael M. Bowden Jan 2022

Law School News: The Dean Meets The Governor 01-26-2022, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


Appraising Problems, Not Stuff, Chad J. Pomeroy May 2021

Appraising Problems, Not Stuff, Chad J. Pomeroy

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.


Valuing Control, Peter Dicola Mar 2015

Valuing Control, Peter Dicola

Michigan Law Review

Control over property is valuable in and of itself. Scholars have not fully recognized or explored that straightforward premise, which has profound implications for the economic analysis of property rights. A party to a property dispute may actually prefer liability-rule protection for an entitlement resting with the other party to liability-rule protection for an entitlement resting with her. This Article presents a novel economic model that determines the conditions under which that is the case—by taking account of how parties value control. The model suggests new opportunities for policymakers to resolve conflicts and to develop better information about property disputes …


Belk V. Commissioner: Land Substitutions In Conservation Easements, Morgan Davis Jan 2015

Belk V. Commissioner: Land Substitutions In Conservation Easements, Morgan Davis

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.


Supreme Court, New York County, Uhlfelder V. Weinshall, David Schoenhaar Nov 2014

Supreme Court, New York County, Uhlfelder V. Weinshall, David Schoenhaar

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.


House Swaps: A Strategic Bankruptcy Solution To The Foreclosure Crisis, Lynn M. Lopucki Mar 2014

House Swaps: A Strategic Bankruptcy Solution To The Foreclosure Crisis, Lynn M. Lopucki

Michigan Law Review

Since the price peak in 2006, home values have fallen more than 30 percent, leaving millions of Americans with negative equity in their homes. Until the Supreme Court’s 1993 decision in Nobelman v. American Savings Bank, the bankruptcy system would have provided many such homeowners with a remedy. They could have filed bankruptcy, discharged the negative equity, committed to pay the mortgage holders the full values of their homes, and retained those homes. In Nobelman, however, the Court misinterpreted reasonably clear statutory language and invented legislative history to resolve a three-to-one split of circuits in favor of the minority view …


Property's Morale, Nestor M. Davidson Dec 2011

Property's Morale, Nestor M. Davidson

Michigan Law Review

A foundational argument long invoked to justify stable property rights is that property law must protect settled expectations. Respect for expectations unites otherwise disparate strands of property theory focused on ex ante incentives, individual identity, and community. It also privileges resistance to legal transitions that transgress reliance interests. When changes in law unsettle expectations, such changes are thought to generate disincentives that Frank Michelman famously labeled "demoralization costs." Although rarely approached in these terms, arguments for legal certainty reflect underlying psychological assumptions about how people contemplate property rights when choosing whether and how to work, invest, create, bolster identity, join …


Compensation For Porperty Under The European Convention On Human Rights, Tom Allen Jan 2007

Compensation For Porperty Under The European Convention On Human Rights, Tom Allen

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article asks whether the right to property, as a human right, serves the same general purpose as other human rights. The Article does so by examining the standards relating to compensation for deprivations of property under the European human rights system. If the system protects property for similar reasons as other fundamental rights, the interpretation of the right to property should draw upon the principles developed in relation to the interpretation of other rights. However, if the right to property is distinct from other human rights, then perhaps guidance on its interpretation should come from comparative law, specifically in …


Public Ruses, James E. Krier, Christopher Serkin Jan 2004

Public Ruses, James E. Krier, Christopher Serkin

Articles

The public use requirement of eminent domain law may be working its way back into the United States Constitution. To be sure, the words "public use" appear in the document-and in many state constitutions as well, but the federal provision applies to the states in any event-as one of the Fifth Amendment's limitations on the government's inherent power to take private property against the will of its owners. (The other limitation is that "just compensation" must be paid, of which more later.) Any taking of private property, the text suggests, must be for public use. Those words, however, have amounted …


Comparing The Concepts Of ‘Property’ And ‘Value’ In Real Estate Law And Real Property Taxation, Gerald Korngold Jan 1996

Comparing The Concepts Of ‘Property’ And ‘Value’ In Real Estate Law And Real Property Taxation, Gerald Korngold

Articles & Chapters

This article first explores property law 's model for addressing split ownership of land so that its relevance to real estate taxation can be examined. It then discusses the public policies and pragmatic concerns that influence the judicial definitions of "property" and "value" in real estate taxation. Finally, four areas, of property law are examined that raise questions of "property" and land "value" that are analogous to those in real estate taxation. Each of these four areas of property law teaches an important lesson about the comparative meanings of "property" and "value."


Priorities: Ii, Edgar N. Durfee Mar 1959

Priorities: Ii, Edgar N. Durfee

Michigan Law Review

This is the second part of "Priorities" (also known as "Little Nemo") which was taken from Professor Durfee's teaching materials. The first part was published in the February issue-which was dedicated to the memory of Professor Durfee.


Priorities, Edgar N. Durfee Feb 1959

Priorities, Edgar N. Durfee

Michigan Law Review

Among those of Edgar Durfee's colleagues who were familiar with this paper it came to be known as "Little Nemo," for a reason that will become apparent to the reader. It is taken from his mimeographed Cases on Security, third edition, published in 1938. Possibly it was published earlier but there is a gap in the evidence. It did not appear in the first edition published in 1934 but no copy of the second edition has been located. In a few places its age shows, for example in the reference to Walsh as the author of the most recent …


Eminent Domain--Obsolete Buildings--Proof Of Value, J. W. B. Feb 1948

Eminent Domain--Obsolete Buildings--Proof Of Value, J. W. B.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.


Constitutional Law - Due Process - Notice And Hearing - Validity Of Statute Authorizing Seizure Of Property Illegally In Possession Of Pawnbroker, Wilbur Jacobs May 1942

Constitutional Law - Due Process - Notice And Hearing - Validity Of Statute Authorizing Seizure Of Property Illegally In Possession Of Pawnbroker, Wilbur Jacobs

Michigan Law Review

Complainant, believing his property to be illegally in the possession of defendant pawnbroker, obtained a search warrant, authorized by statute to be issued, on complaint under oath, by any magistrate who is satisfied that there is reasonable cause for complainant's belief. Although the statute required the property to be seized and delivered to complainant on his posting a bond for double the value of the property, the property was not in fact seized. However, actual notice to appear and be heard on a certain date was given to the defendant, even though such notice was not expressly required by the …


Taxation - Income Tax - Improvements Made By Lessee As Income To Lessor, Benjamin W. Franklin Jun 1940

Taxation - Income Tax - Improvements Made By Lessee As Income To Lessor, Benjamin W. Franklin

Michigan Law Review

In 1915, defendant leased a tract of land to X for ninety-nine years. The lease provided that the lessee could remove the old building and replace it; and that on termination, the lessee should surrender the land, buildings and improvements. In 1929, the lessee razed the old structure and erected a new one. On default by the lessee in 1933, the lease was cancelled and defendant repossessed the premises. The commissioner of internal revenue determined that the difference between the fair market value of the new building in 1933 and the unamortized cost of the building razed in 1929 was …


Taxation - Income Tax - Improvements Made By Lessee As Income To Lessor, Ralph E. Helper May 1939

Taxation - Income Tax - Improvements Made By Lessee As Income To Lessor, Ralph E. Helper

Michigan Law Review

The recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in M. E. Blatt Co. v. United States has fairly settled the conflict that has ranged for over twenty years between the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and the Board of Tax Appeals on one side, and the courts on the other. The commissioner's contention that improvements made by a lessee should be taxed as income to the lessor was denied, and by dictum the Court approved the reasoning of Judge Learned Hand in Hewitt Realty Co. v. Commissioner, wherein he said that the judicial concept of "income" did …


Remedies Of Illegal Taxation, Thomas M. Cooley Dec 1880

Remedies Of Illegal Taxation, Thomas M. Cooley

Articles

Taxation is to a nation what the circulation of the blood is to he individual; absolutely essential to life. In ordinary times it is the chief burden which government imposes upon the people, and is likely, therefore, to be the greatest source of discontent. This renders it of the utmost importance that taxation should as nearly as possible be just, and also that it should appear to those who pay it to be just. Absolute justice, however, is unattainable.