Law Commons^™

A Freedom-Promoting Approach To Property: A Renewed Tradition For New Debates, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

This should be a heady time for theorists and practitioners of property law. Some of the most important recent proposals to improve human wellbeing rest on the expansion or reform of property rights. From Peru, the political economist Hernando de Soto recently captured the world's attention by contending that a lack of property rights stands between the slum dwellers of the world's poor countries and new horizons of prosperity. Nearer home, Yale economist Robert Shiller has proposed a new market in risk, essentially propertizing present expectations of good fortune, which would represent one of the most dramatic expansions in the …

Property, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that despite its seeming disintegration, property is more vibrant than ever — it is a field that has focused on understanding the formal and informal institutions by which society channels decision-making for scarce resources. Many exciting recent innovations in property theory have arisen through dialogue between US and Commonwealth scholars and legislatures. The article is organized as follows. The first part explains the focus on analytic property theory, which is posed in distinction to a jurisprudential approach. The second part introduces the familiar division of ownership into a trilogy of ideal types: private, commons, and state. The …

Connecticut: Ace Equip. Sales, Inc. V. Buccino, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

Ace Equip. Sales, Inc. v. Buccino, 869 A.2d 626 (Conn. 2005) (reversing adoption of the civil law rule that afforded an inherent riparian right by virtue of abutting property ownership).

Conflicts In Property, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

Property concerns conflicts – both conflicts between individuals and conflicts of interest. Conflicts between individuals have long been the paradigmatic property focus. According to this view, property debates circle around issues of autonomy and productive competition. But this is an impoverished view. In this Article, we shift attention to conflicts of interest. By helping people manage conflicts of interest, a well-governed property system balances interdependence with autonomy and productive cooperation with productive competition. We identify three mechanisms woven throughout property law that help manage conflicts of interest: (1) internalization of externalities; (2) democratization of management; and (3) de-escalation of transactions. …

Common Interest Developments At The Crossroads Of Legal Theory, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

What makes common interest developments (CIDs) interesting for legal theory? In my view, CIDs should provoke our interest because they operate at the intersection of two axes of contemporary legal scholarship. The first axis concerns rights allocation, what I have called the spectrum from commons to anticommons property. The second axis concerns governance institutions, which can occupy the space between private and public. These two dimensions define the theoretical field within which we create new forms of group property, and through which we solve emerging collective action dilemmas. CIDs are located at this crossroads, delicately poised between extremes on both …

The Misplaced Flight To Substance, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Courts and commentators have struggled for years to come up with a substantive test for what kinds of condemnations are for a "public use." Does public use mean government ownership and control of property after it is taken? This would preclude delegation of eminent domain to common carriers and utilities. Does public use mean public access to the property after it is taken? This would preclude using eminent domain to acquire facilities off-limits to the public, like prisons.

Faced with these problems of under-inclusion, courts have gravitated to the idea that public use means public purpose. The U.S. Supreme Court …

Policing L.A.'S Skid Row: Crime And Real Estate Redevelopment In Downtown Los Angeles [An Experiment In Real Time], Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, I document the present. I make a record, with photographs, interviews, maps, and observations of L.A.'s Skid Row as it is today. Drawing on the tradition and methods of critical socio-legal studies, I also explore the constitutive dimensions of deviance. I investigate the possible attraction that disorderliness and criminality may have to today's urban pioneers. I explore the idea that deviance and disorder may become, in some corners, a consumable good to urban dwellers. And I do this by drawing on numerous hours of personal observation on the streets of L.A.'s Skid Row, on interviews of service …