Law Commons^™

The Shape Of Property, Chad J. Pomeroy

Faculty Articles

“Shape” means “a mode of existence or form of being having identifying features” or the “form or embodiment” of something. Form and feature, in turn, arise from pressure and time. Property law has a shape all its own: it exists as a unique body of law, with distinctive conventions and rules. And that shape, those conventions and rules, derive from a variety of pressures that have, over the centuries, molded property law into its present form. This paper seeks to understand and explain the shape of a particular area of property law – that of property forms.

Of course, this …

The Past As Prologue To The Present: Managing The Oregon And California Forest Lands, Michael Blumm, Tim Wigington

Faculty Articles

This article is a brief review of the convoluted history of what are known as the Oregon and California forest lands, federal lands that were once the subject of a 19th century federal railroad grant, then became the focus of widespread land fraud and official corruption, which led to the Supreme Court halting land sales and Congress taking back the lands, situated in eighteen Oregon counties. Federal management of the lands in the 20th century emphasized timber harvesting, and this dominant use of the lands led to environmental lawsuits and the Endangered Species Act listing of the northern spotted owl …

The Invention Of Murder: How The Victorians Revelled In Death And Detection And Created Modern Crime (Book Review), Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

The Invention of Murder, by Judith Flanders, is an extraordinary achievement—an exhaustively researched history of 19th-century Great Britain written with verve. Flanders uses the conceit of murder to immerse the reader in 19th-century legal, cultural, and social history. Her depth of knowledge appears to encompass everything related to every murder during this place and time. As a legal history, the book explains a number of developments in English law. As a cultural history, the book discusses the importance in the early 19th century of broadsides, penny-bloods, illegal penny-gaffs, licensed plays, and newspapers; all centered around murder and mayhem. As a …