Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Fundamental Building Blocks Of Social Relations Regarding Resources: Hohfeld In Europe And Beyond, Anna Di Robilant, Talha Syed
The Fundamental Building Blocks Of Social Relations Regarding Resources: Hohfeld In Europe And Beyond, Anna Di Robilant, Talha Syed
Faculty Scholarship
In the hundred years since Hohfeld published his two “Fundamental Legal Conceptions” articles, the “bundle-of-rights” view of property associated with his work has come to enjoy the status of conventional wisdom in American legal scholarship. Seen as a corrective to lay conceptions and a predecessor “Blackstonian” view of property as the “sole and despotic dominion” of an “owner” over a thing, the central insight of Hohfeldian analysis is standardly taken to be that property is not a single “thing” but rather a “bundle of rights” with respect to things and persons. In recent years, however, this Hohfeldian view has come …
Against Endowment Theory: Experimental Economics And Legal Scholarship, Greg Klass, Kathryn Zeiler
Against Endowment Theory: Experimental Economics And Legal Scholarship, Greg Klass, Kathryn Zeiler
Faculty Scholarship
Endowment theory holds the mere ownership of a thing causes people to assign greater value to it than they otherwise would. The theory entered legal scholarship in the early 1990s and quickly eclipsed other accounts of how ownership affects valuation. Today, appeals to a generic “endowment effect” can be found throughout the legal literature. More recent experimental results, however, suggest that the empirical evidence for endowment theory is weak at best. When the procedures used in laboratory experiments are altered to rule out alternative explanations, the “endowment effect” disappears. This and other recent evidence suggest that mere ownership does not …
On Commodifying Intangibles, Wendy J. Gordon, Sam Postbrief
On Commodifying Intangibles, Wendy J. Gordon, Sam Postbrief
Faculty Scholarship
It was made clear long ago that property and value are different things. Value exists. It is a fact. It can arise from law, and much of law aims at creating more value in the world. But value can also arise in spite of law (consider, for example, the fortunes that bootleggers made during the Roaring Twenties), or in law's interstices. When a particular value arises despite a lack of explicit legal protection, its possessors often ask courts or legislatures to give them a legal entitlement to preserve and further exploit that value. Typically the holders demand (1) a liberty …
On Owning Information: Intellectual Property And The Restitutionary Impulse, Wendy J. Gordon
On Owning Information: Intellectual Property And The Restitutionary Impulse, Wendy J. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
Every day someone invests time, labor, or money in creating a valuable intangible. Someone collects information, creates an idea, designs a boat hull, writes a book, or comes up with a new way to market a product that someone else developed. Judicial treatment of these and other cognate occurrences has shifted dramatically in recent years.
Draft Of Reality As Artifact: From Feist To Fair Use - 1992, Wendy J. Gordon
Draft Of Reality As Artifact: From Feist To Fair Use - 1992, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
Lawyers more than most people should be aware that what language calls "facts" are not necessarily equivalent to things that exist in the world. After all, when in ordinary conversation someone says "It's a fact that this [ X ] happened," the speaker usually means, "I believe the thing I describe has happened in the world". But when a litigator says something is a "fact" she often means only that a good faith argument can be made on behalf of its existence. Two sets of fact finders can look at the same event and come to diametrically opposed conclusions-- each …
Notes Of Reference To The Common Law, Wendy J. Gordon
Notes Of Reference To The Common Law, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
Also, when one looks at the common law, one finds throughout an attempt to protect persons who change position in reliance on other's actions from being harmed by such persons' withdrawal; similarly, the common law gives a great deal of protection from harm even when the parties have had no prior dealings.
Draft Of Desert Theory - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Draft Of Desert Theory - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon
Scholarship Chronologically
The first condition of Lockean theory is that property applies only to labor which appropriates something out of the common. Similarly, possession theory in American law applies only to appropriations of things which are unclaimed. While an intellectual product might seem to be drawn out of the ether, it can in fact be a difficult question whether its producers have drawn on more than commonly-owned resources.