Law Commons^™

The Unbargained-For-Exchange In Copyright, Justin Ponds

Mississippi College Law Review

Copyright law in the United States is more than the letter "C" in a circle. The visual impression of someone clutching a book prevails in many minds. The use of the phrase "it's copyrighted" has become common. Many people consider a "copyright" to be "property." The true story of copyright law is so steeped in history - a great deal from England - that it makes even Betty White seem middle aged. This Article examines some of that history and compares mistaken connotations about "property" within the realm of contract law - a better association.

Parks And Separation: How The Mississippi Legislature Decided Just Compensation In Bay Point Properties, Inc. V. Mississippi Transportation Commission, Kyle Usner

Mississippi College Law Review

At first glance, Bay Point comes across as the standard, run-of-the-mill eminent domain case: the government contracts with a citizen for an express easement over privately-owned land limited to a certain use; the government then exceeds the scope of that easement, resulting in a taking. Governmental taking is usually not anything outside of the norm. But with a potential seven billion dollars' worth of federally funded highway projects destined for Mississippi highway only a Presidential signature away from being approved, this decision is not one Mississippi landowners should ignore. Further, the crux of Bay Point lies with an issue of …

Redefining The Injury-In-Fact: Treating Personally Identifying Information As Bailed Property, Austin Headrick

Georgia Law Review

There is a long-existing circuit split among federal courts of appeals as to whether an individual has standing under Article III of the United States Constitution when their personally identifying information (PII) is stolen from an entity to which they entrusted it such as a hospital or bank. Federal courts disagree as to whether an individual whose PII has been stolen—without more—has suffered an injury-in-fact, a necessary element of standing. The disagreement between the courts centers on whether the injury-in-fact has already occurred at the time the PII is stolen or whether the injury occurs once the PII has been …

Title Theft, Stewart E. Sterk

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Real property owners across the country have been targeted by scammers who prepare deeds purporting to convey title to property the scammers do not own. Sometimes, the true owners are entirely unaware of these bogus transfers. In other instances, the scammers use misrepresentation to induce unsophisticated owners to sign documents they do not understand.

Property doctrine protects owners against forgery and fraud—the primary vehicles scammers use in their efforts to transfer title. Owners enjoy protection not only against the scammers themselves, but generally against unsuspecting purchasers to whom the scammers transfer purported title.

Recovery of title, however, involves costs and …

Credible Commitments, Adaptability, And Conservation Easements, Andrew P. Morriss

Natural Resources Journal

Conservation easements, a widely used tool to preserve land for conservation purposes, suffer from a fundamental flaw in lacking a means of adapting the permanent interests they create to changed conditions. This flaw is becoming more apparent as the early generation of these interests age and climate change threatens to bring more rapid demands for adaptation of existing conservation goals in light of changed conditions. Drawing on lessons from successes in international financial centers and U.S. states that are successful in jurisdictional competition, this article argues that the law should embrace measures that enable such competition in providing for shared …

Soil Governance And Private Property, Sarah J. Fox

Utah Law Review

This is an Article about soil. In consequence, it is also an Article about our relationship to land, and about how that relationship can and must change to confront the many environmental crises facing the United States. Questions about our relationship with the physical environment around us necessarily come to the fore in conversations about soil because of its several identities. It is one of Earth’s most precious resources—the substance responsible for allowing plants to grow, filtering pollutants out of water, providing habitat to countless organisms, sequestering carbon, and providing many other valuable functions. Soil also, however, makes up the …

Reshaping Government’S Fiduciary Role Under The 1992 Constitution Of Ghana, Rose Rameau, Abdul Baasit Aziz Bamba

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In Ghana and across many African States, the people—through the instrumentality of law or their respective Constitutions— have constituted their presidents trustees of the natural resources to be held in trust for the benefit of the people. With a few exceptions, mineral resource governance in Africa has been horrendous: Many African States have failed to leverage their natural resource endowments as a catalyst for much-needed socioeconomic development.

This Article analyzes the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana which provides that all public lands and natural resources in Ghana shall be vested in the President on behalf of, and in …

Wrong Or (Fundamental) Right?: Substantive Due Process And The Right To Exclude, Jack May

Washington Law Review

Substantive due process provides heightened protection from government interference with enumerated constitutional rights and unenumerated—but nevertheless “fundamental”—rights. To date, the United States Supreme Court has never recognized any property right as a fundamental right for substantive due process purposes. But in Yim v. City of Seattle, a case recently decided by the Ninth Circuit, landlords and tenant screening companies argued that the right to exclude from one’s property should be a fundamental right. Yim involved a challenge to Seattle’s Fair Chance Housing Ordinance, which, among other things, prohibits landlords and tenant screening companies from inquiring about or considering a …

What’S Your Damage?! The Supreme Court Has Wrecked Temporary Takings Jurisprudence, Timothy M. Harris

University of Miami Law Review

In Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, the U.S. Supreme Court unnecessarily expanded the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. In doing so, the Court veered away from established precedent and overturned prior case law—without expressly admitting to doing so.

In 2021, the Court held that a California law allowing union organizers to access private property under certain conditions took away a landowner’s right to exclude others and was (apparently) immediately compensable under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. Prior law had subjected temporary takings to an uncertain, unpopular, and ambiguous balancing test—but the Cedar Point holding turned temporary takings jurisprudence on its head …

Matter Of Will Of Ratcliff And The Not-So-Harmless Error: A Call To Change Mississippi’S Approach To Will Formalities, Kelsi Baldwin

Mississippi College Law Review

A will provides a mechanism to dispose of property at death. But costly litigation—or worse, a will’s invalidation—often thwart this purpose. The law of probate is state-specific, which leaves jurisdictions with the burden of ensuring that their laws promote rather than defeat the purpose of probate—to honor the testator’s intent. Mississippi attempts to recognize this purpose by requiring strict compliance with the statutory requirements for creating a will. This “better safe than sorry” approach errs on the side of invalidity with the hope that denying a non-compliant instrument for probate will prevent fraud and other wrongdoing.

Despite its intention, Mississippi’s …

Name Takings, Gregory S. Alexander

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Personal names are an integral part of our identity. Names belong to us; they are ours. Names are a form of personal property and should be treated as such. Nevertheless, the state, both historically and still today, has perpetrated various forms of abuse of personal names, ranging from outright takings of personal names to official denials of preferred names. This Article surveys the variety of ways in which the state has committed these name-takings, as I call them. It includes historical examples of name denials such as African slaves and Canadian Indigenous school children. It then considers various forms of …

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 …

Theft Of The American Dream: New York City's Third-Party Transfer Program, Joseph Mottola

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

On September 5, 2018, Paul Saunders discovered a notice on the front door of his mother’s home: it stated that the property, a Brooklyn brownstone owned by the family for over forty years, now belonged to a company called Bridge Street. His mother, seventy-four-year-old retired nurse Marlene Saunders, had been notified several months earlier that her home, valued at two million dollars, was in danger of being foreclosed because she owed New York City (the “City”) $3,792 in unpaid water charges. Her son had already paid the water bill, but when he contacted the water department, he discovered that …

Property And Prosperity, A Demythifying Story, Xiaoqian Hu

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Economic development is fundamentally a property law story. Prominent thinkers―from Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham, to Douglass North and Richard Posner―tell us that protection of private property rights is essential for economic growth and wealth accumulation. Clear and freely alienable property rights reduce transaction costs and allow private bargaining to produce efficient results. Property rights allow owners to internalize the costs and benefits of their own behavior, reduce production costs, and encourage innovation. Secure property rights protect owners from arbitrary confiscation by the government, foster owner expectations, and facilitate investment, trade, and the development of financial markets. The idea …

Adapting Private Law For Climate Change Adaptation, Jim Rossi, J. B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law Review

The private law of torts, property, and contracts will and should play an important role in resolving disputes regarding how private individuals and entities respond to and manage the harms of climate change that cannot be avoided through mitigation (known in climate change policy dialogue as “adaptation”). While adaptation is commonly presented as a problem needing legislative solutions, this Article presents a novel and overdue case for private law to take climate adaptation seriously.

To date, the role of private law is a significant blind spot in scholarly discussions of climate adaptation. Litigation invoking common-law doctrines in climate adaption disputes …

The Stewardship Model Of Necessity, Joseph Graziano

Notre Dame Law Review

The current understanding of the necessity defense to trespass to property in American law stems from a simple—or perhaps simplistic—balancing of rights. Based in the individualistic understanding of property as a right against the world that creates an obligation for others, necessity pits the interloper’s right to life, liberty, or property against the property owner’s right. Although feasible in the extremes, dueling rights leads to an unwieldy judicial task, discouraging advocates from alleging the privilege and discouraging judges from recognizing the privilege. Overall, the right to exclude has become more and more the libertarian vision of a right to be …

Is “Touch And Concern” Dead In Arkansas?: A Recent Case And Its Implications For Real Covenants, Bennett J. Waddell

Arkansas Law Review

Real covenants occupy a doctrinal abyss within property law. The subject perpetually frustrates first-year law students and legal scholars alike, as they confront concepts that appear esoteric and even anachronistic. Naturally, the criticism has been sharp, with commentators quipping that the field “is an unspeakable quagmire,” a “formidable wilderness,” and plainly “ridiculous.”

Religious Discrimination And Violation Of Property Rights In Turkey, Andre Taylor

Human Rights Brief

In 2022, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) provided a ruling in an application against Turkey by the Foundation of the Taksiarhis Greek Orthodox Church. The Turkish government was held to have committed religious discrimination against its Greek Orthodox community by rejecting an application to register a historic church without a valid explanation. The Turkish High Court decided to register the disputed property in the name of the Public Treasury rather than grant ownership of the property outright to the Church. The Istanbul Administrative Court had repeatedly dismissed the Church’s appeals on the basis that the conditions listed in …

On The Rightful Deprivation Of Rights, Frederick Schauer

Notre Dame Law Review

When people are deprived of their property rights so that the state can build a highway, a school, or a hospital, they are typically compensated through what is commonly referred to as “takings” doctrine. But when people are deprived of their free speech rights because of a clear and present danger, or deprived of their equal protection, due process, or free exercise rights because of a “compelling” governmental interest, they typically get nothing. Why this is so, and whether it should be so, is the puzzle that motivates this Article. Drawing on the philosophical literature on conflicts of rights and …

Let The Exceptions Do The Work: How Florida Should Approach Environmental Regulation After Cedar Point Nursery V. Hassid, Olivia Johnson

University of Miami Law Review

For nearly fifty years, courts distinguished between per se physical takings and regulatory takings. Yet, in 2021, the Supreme Court signaled a change of course with the monumental Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid decision. The ruling challenges the government’s ability to mandate anything that impacts private property. In the face of environmental catastrophe and increasing pressure to assuage our climate crisis, how can governments respond without triggering a takings challenge?
Chief Justice Roberts in his majority decision may have left the door cracked open for governments to work around the Cedar Point Nursery ruling. By looking at the legacy of …

Remedying The Immortal: The Doctrine Of Accession And Patented Human Cell Lines, Julia E. Fissore-O'Leary

Notre Dame Law Review

Importantly, though this Note employs Henrietta Lacks as the illustrative, paradigmatic case for the theory of accession it proposes, accession can be, and should be, broadly construed to apply to all like-situated patients. Part I of this Note briefly explains the timeless human-body-as-property debate. Next, Part II addresses the concept of accession—its theoretical underpinnings, definitions, and amenability to this and other lawsuits. Part III applies accession to HeLa and develops a methodology for calculating damages in this unique setting. This Note does not pretend to present a perfectly wrought formula. Instead, it offers several possibilities for determining compensation. Finally, …

Compulsory Terms In Property, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Northwestern University Law Review

The state’s imposition of compulsory terms in property relations—such as habitability warranties binding landlords and tenants and minimum wages binding employers and employees—has long been conceived by analysts generally situated on the political right as an affront to individual freedom and inevitably harmful to the terms’ intended beneficiaries. This critique, though, seems to have special purchase in public discourse today not only within its traditional circle of supporters on the right but, at least in some instances, for a sizable number on the left as well. The bipartisan acceptance of this critique is serving as a substantial roadblock to a …

Property Law And Inequality: Lessons From Racially Restrictive Covenants, Carol M. Rose

Northwestern University Law Review

A long-standing justification for the institution of property is that it encourages effort and planning, enabling not only individual wealth creation but, indirectly, wealth creation for an entire society. Equal opportunity is a precondition for this happy outcome, but some have argued that past inequalities of opportunity have distorted wealth distribution in contemporary America. This article explores the possible role of property law in such a distortion, using the historical example of racially restrictive covenants in the first half of the twentieth century. I will argue that the increasing professionalization and standardization of real estate practices in that era included …

Streaming Property, Lee Anne Fennell

Northwestern University Law Review

People acquire property rights in objects and real estate in order to capture the stream of services that these assets can provide over time. The thing or parcel itself is merely a delivery mechanism, a way of packaging and protecting rights to that value stream. And, significantly, these assets cannot stream services to anyone without a set of facilitating conditions and complementary goods, such as public infrastructure, that do not lie within the asset owner’s individual control. This Essay argues that we can gain fresh traction on inequality by recasting property as service streams rather than as owned things. Doing …

American Courts' Image Of A Tenant, Nadav Shoked

Northwestern University Law Review

What is the core of current American residential landlord–tenant law, and how was that core formed? This Essay argues that in the past few decades courts have settled on a two-pronged landlord–tenant law regime. The law provides tenants with assurances respecting the quality of the units they rent. It does not, conversely, provide them with any assurances respecting the price of the rental units—and, therefore, respecting their ability to remain in those units.

The first component of the regime was established through the well-known judicial creation and endorsement of the warranty of habitability. The second component’s entrenchment is often attributed …

Eviction Court Displacement Rates, Nicole Summers

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay introduces the concept of eviction court displacement rates, defined as the percentage of eviction filings that result in tenant displacement. The Essay argues that a jurisdiction’s eviction court displacement rate provides crucial insight into the role of its legal system in driving substantive eviction outcomes. The Essay then compiles existing data on court displacement rates and compares those rates across jurisdictions. This comparison reveals massive variation in court displacement rates nationwide. In some jurisdictions, a tenant’s likelihood of displacement upon receiving an eviction filing is approximately one in twenty. In other jurisdictions, it is higher than one in …

Challenging Equality: Property Loss, Government Fault, And The Global Warming Catastrophe, Laura S. Underkuffler

Northwestern University Law Review

One of the bedrock principles of American property law is that all property owners and all property are protected equally. We do not believe—when it comes to compensation for loss—that poor owners are compensated rigidly and rich owners are not, or that property in private homes is protected rigidly and property in commercial or industrial structures is not. When it comes to compensation due to public or private fault, we believe in absolute equality. Equal treatment of property is at the heart of the liberal state and is the promise of American property law.

This Essay challenges that bedrock idea. …

Ownership Concentration: Lessons From Natural Resources, Vanessa Casado Pérez

Northwestern University Law Review

Concentration of ownership over land or other resources is both a sign and a cause of inequality. Concentration of ownership makes access to such resources difficult for those less powerful, and it can have negative effects on local communities that benefit from a more distributed ownership pattern. Such concentration goes against the antimonopoly principles behind the homesteading land policies and the legal regimes that regulate many natural resources. This Essay suggests that where concentration is a concern, one might draw lessons for reform by looking to the field of natural resources law, which employs a range of deconcentration mechanisms affecting …

Climate Change Adaptation As A Problem Of Inequality And Possible Legal Reforms, David A. Dana

Northwestern University Law Review

Climate change will necessitate adaptation in all parts of the United States, but some individuals and localities will be better able to adapt than others. Wealth inequalities among individuals and localities already are translating—and will continue to translate—into inequalities between the rich and poor in their capacity to adapt. Current federal disaster aid programs and policies exacerbate these inequalities by favoring the wealthy, and future government resource management decisions and investments also may broaden the gap between rich and poor in terms of the economic and other costs they will bear from climate change. Some have suggested broadening Takings Clause …

Understanding Loss Of (Right To) Use Damages: Defining Fair And Reasonable Compensation For Loss Of Use In Light Of Historical Origins And Practical Considerations, Matthew J. Forrest

Pace Law Review

Loss of use is fundamentally about the denial of property rights regardless of its intended use. Property ownership vests the owner with certain intrinsic rights, including the right to use or not use. When they are deprived of that choice through the tortious conduct of another, that deprivation is compensable. This Article reviews the historical origins of loss of use law to determine that tort victims denied the right to use their property must be compensated regardless of how they would have chosen to use their property. Because these damages do not depend on the owner’s actual use, loss of …