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 …