Property Law and Real Estate Commons^™

Much Obliged? Moral Psychology And The Social Obligation Of Property: An Essay In Honor Of Gregory Alexander, Nestor M. Davidson

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

Few scholars have argued as eloquently as Gregory Alexander for the normative force of social obligation in American property law and for a broader understanding of property as inherently relational. The idea that mutual regard for the ability of each person to have meaningful life choices means that ownership entails duties to others has always seemed to me-perhaps not surprisingly given my own moral intuitive priors-deeply compelling. But it is clear that other moral intuitions lead people to value just as deeply and just as intuitively property's ability to establish individual sanctuary within strong, clear boundaries. I don't have the …

It's Not Personal: Social Obligations In The Office Of Ownership, Larissa Katz

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

In November 2016, the City of Vancouver passed its "Vacancy Tax By-law." The law requires homeowners to submit a property status declaration each year to the City, revealing the uses they are making of their property. An owner whose property is not rented or in use for at least 6 months a year is subject to a vacancy tax. The stated purpose of the law is to address the affordable housing crisis in Vancouver, a city where the official rental vacancy rate is less than 1%. By penalizing absentee owners, the law is intended to increase supply and to deter …

Liberalism And The Commons, Hanoch Dagan

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

It is a real privilege for me to participate in the celebration of Greg Alexander's enormous contribution to the scholarship and jurisprudence on property, which has enhanced our understanding of property in numerous ways. Alexander utilized almost every tool in a legal theorist's kit-notably: history, comparative law, and philosophical investigation-to study property and developed an innovative and nuanced theory of property. Property, for Alexander, has a core role in fostering human flourishing. A proper conception of property, he claims, must acknowledge that obligations and not just rights, and communities and not only individuals, take center stage.

Screened Out Of Housing: The Impact Of Misleading Tenant Screening Reports And The Potential For Criminal Expungement As A Model For Effectively Sealing Evictions, Katelyn Polk

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Having an eviction record “blacklists” tenants from finding future housing. Even renters with mere eviction filings—not eviction orders—on their records face the harsh collateral consequences of eviction. This Note argues that eviction records should be sealed at filing and only released into the public record if a landlord prevails in court. Juvenile record expungement mechanisms in Illinois serve as a model for one way to protect people with eviction records. Recent updates to the Illinois juvenile expungement process provided for the automatic expungement of certain records and strengthened the confidentiality protections of juvenile records. Illinois protects juvenile records because it …

What Is The Value Of Built Heritage? Assessing Spillover Effects Of Conserving Historic Sites In Singapore, Shin Bin Tan, Edward S. W. Ti

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Quantifying the economic benefits of built heritage facilitates the formulation and assessment of conservation policies and programs. There is however a lack of empirical research about the economic value of built heritage in Asian cities. This lack is problematic, given the rapid pace of demolition and redevelopment of historic landscapes in Asian cities. This study seeks to reduce the current gap in built heritage research by examining whether real estate premiums are generated by the designation of buildings as ‘conserved’ in Singapore, a city-state in South East Asia. Using 20 years of housing transaction data, and controlling for building, neighborhood …

Getting Past Possession: Subsurface Property Disputes As Nuisances, Joseph A. Schremmer

Faculty Scholarship

Property rights in the subsurface of land are adapting to accommodate modern activities like massive hydraulic fracturing (fracing). Property rights will need to continue adapting if they are to accommodate other developing activities like large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS). Courts and commentators rarely approach the nature of subsurface property directly. They tend instead to discuss appropriate standards for tort liability when disputes arise—for example when artificial fissures from a frac treatment extend into and drain oil or gas from a neighbor’s land. The case law and literature generally approach unauthorized subterranean invasions as trespasses. Because the tort of trespass …

Families Belong Together: The Path To Family Sanctity In Public Housing, Mckayla Stokes

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

In its 2015 landmark civil rights decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court finally held that the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the United States Constitution guarantee same-sex couples’ marital equality. The Court’s unprecedented declaration that the right to marry is a fundamental right under the Due Process Clause strengthened married couples’ right to privacy because it subjects government actions infringing on marital unions to heightened scrutiny. The Supreme Court has the option to minimize the impact of Obergefell by interpreting the right to marriage very narrowly—as only encompassing the right to enter into a state-recognized union …

For-Profit Managers As Public Fiduciaries: A Neo-Classical Republican Perspective, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

This Article examines the fiduciary duties of for-profit managers in modern liberal society. To arrive at the right "mix" of these duties, it compares the fiduciary duties implied by a standard descriptive model of our society with two competing normative models: Lockean libertarianism on the "right" and neo-classical republicanism on the "left." This comparison shows that all three versions of liberalism, even the one with a Lockean nightwatchman state, require far more extensive duties than we now expect, including a professionalization of management itself. And it shows that the version of liberalism with the most expansive state, neo-classical republicanism, requires …

Companies As Commodities, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

Like copper, corn, or crude oil, companies increasingly trade like commodities. Some investors — certain holders of debt, activist shareholders, and controlling shareholders, especially private equity funds — are focused solely on returns. In practice, this means that they care about the fate of the companies in which they invest no more than they care about the fate of any tonne of copper, bushel of corn, or oil barrel they happen to trade. These investors are so immune to reputational concerns that they will even prefer that the companies in which they invest fail if failure maximizes their return on …

Acts Of Meaning, Resource Diagrams, And Essential Learning Behaviors: The Design Evolution Of Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Articles

Lost & Found is a tabletop-to-mobile game series designed for teaching medieval religious legal systems. The long-term goals of the project are to change the discourse around religious laws, such as foregrounding the prosocial aspects of religious law such as collaboration, cooperation, and communal sustainability. This design case focuses on the evolution of the design of the mechanics and core systems in the first two tabletop games in the series, informed by over three and a half years’ worth of design notes, playable prototypes, outside design consultations, internal design reviews, playtests, and interviews.

Introduction To Charles A. Reich’S Keeping Up: Walking With Justice Douglas, Rodger D. Citron

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Completing The Portrait: Concluding Thoughts About Charles Reich, Rodger D. Citron

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Conference: Commemorating The Life And Legacy Of Charles A. Reich, Rodger D. Citron

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal And Regulatory Framework For The Mortgage Industry In Nigeria, Kehinde Ogundimu

Economic and Financial Review

This article examines the legal and regulatory framework for the mortgage industry in Nigeria. The article examines the concept of housing as a global need and provides an overview of the Nigerian Housing Market with a population of 183 million people and increasing rapidly, a huge housing deficit of around 17 million units. This is further compounded by a rapid rising need for housing by about 20 per cent a year in cities like Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, and Abuja. At least 700,000 housing units across different segments are needed annually to keep up with demand, whereas, production was around 100,000 …

The Land Use Act And The Nigerian Housing Sector, Yusuf Yahaya

Economic and Financial Review

The article discusses the Land Use Act and the and how it has affected developments in the Nigerian housing sector. Prior to the Land Use Act, all the existing tenure systems encouraged land holding without an obligation to develop them, fragmentation and uncoordinated alienation, hoarding speculatively for value appreciation and without precise documentation. Consequently, the Land Use Act was enacted to: make land easily accessible to all Nigerians; prevent speculative purchases of communal land; streamline and simplify the management and ownership of land; make land available to government at all levels for development; provide the system of government administration of …

Politics And Policy: Chinese Money And Its Impact On The Regulation Of Residential Property In The West, Edward Seng Wei Ti

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The narrative of Chinese real estate investors in some western jurisdictions reads like this: China has in recent decades, enjoyed burgeoning wealth creation across all strata in society. Chinese buyers are attracted to a ‘westernised’ education for their children, an agreeable and law-abiding civic society all whilst living in a clean and pleasant environment. Western real estate markets are seen as safe havens and bringing about portfolio diversification. This flood of Chinese wealth has impacted residential housing markets resulting in locals being outpriced. To combat unaffordability and housing shortages, governments have had no choice but to impose regulatory measures preventing …

Perpetual Affordability Covenants: Can These Land Use Tools Solve The Affordable Housing Crisis?, Elizabeth Elia

Faculty Scholarship

Approximately 3.8 million privately-owned residential housing units in America today contain affordability covenants recorded in their chains of title. State and local agencies and the District of Columbia use these covenants to ensure that publicly-subsidized properties are actually used to provide affordable housing. With rents at all-time highs and stagnant wages, the affordable housing crisis has reached a fever pitch. House Democrats are proposing billions more in housing subsidy. To the extent those funds subsidize privately-owned housing development they, too, will be secured by affordability covenants. In response to this crisis, a new trend in high cost markets is to …

Municipal Annexation Reform In Texas: How A Victory For Property Rights Jeopardizes The State’S Financial Health, Julie Polansky Bell

St. Mary's Law Journal

Municipal annexation is the expansion of city boundaries. The greatest motivator behind municipal annexation is maintaining and improving economic prosperity of the annexing authority. The issue of annexation involves a balance of rights between property owners and municipalities of the state. Historically, Texas cities had broad annexation authority under an involuntary annexation scheme. However, in recent years the power has shifted as lawmakers have given property owners greater control over the annexation process. This trend culminated in the passage of the Municipal Annexation Right to Vote Act (MARVA) by the 85th Texas Legislature, which severely limits annexation authority.

Texas municipalities …

How Two Sunken Ships Caused A War: The Legal And Cultural Battle Between Great Britain, Canada, And The Inuit Over The Franklin Expedition Shipwrecks, Christina Labarge

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Venezuela Undermines Gold Miner Crystallex's Attempts To Recover On Its Icsid Award, Sam Wesson

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law And Neighborhood Names, Nestor M. Davidson, David Fagundes

Faculty Articles

This Article provides a novel investigation of how law both enables and constrains the ability of city residents to claim, name, and often rename their neighborhoods. A rich interdisciplinary dialogue in fields such as geography and sociology has emerged on the significance of place names, but this literature has largely ignored the legal dimensions of the phenomenon and its implications for urban governance, belonging, and community conflict. This Article’s empirical exploration of the role of law in change and conflict regarding neighborhood identity thus advances the discourse both for legal scholars focused on urban dynamics and across disciplines.

From gentrification …

Empowering The Poor: Turning De Facto Rights Into Collateralized Credit, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

The shrinking middle class and the widening gap between the rich and the poor constitute significant threats to social and financial stability. One of the main impediments to upward mobility is the inability of economically disadvantaged people to use their property — in which they sometimes hold only de facto, not de jure, rights — as collateral to obtain credit. This Article argues that commercial law should recognize those de facto rights, enabling the poor to borrow to start businesses or otherwise create wealth. Recognition not only would provide benefits that exceed its costs; it also would be consistent with, …

Conditions Of Personhood And Property, Zachary James Acree

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper seeks to demonstrate that a more robust understanding of personhood both reveals flaws in the underlying assumptions of modern property law, and orients that law to a more just application. To do this, the law needs not only a better definition of what persons are, but also a better understanding of how persons function in their society. First, in order to provide some context to the issues at stake, there is a brief historical introduction to some of the problems that personhood inquiries have faced. After the introduction, this paper is divided into four sections. Part I summarizes …

Why Less Property Is More: Inclusion, Dispossession, & Subjective Well-Being, David Fagundes

Faculty Articles

The twin notions of exclusion and possession dominate our cultural and legal conceptions of property. This Article uses the lens of hedonics—the emergent science of happiness—to make a case for the less appreciated notions of inclusion and dispossession. Evidence from this new field shows that owners maximize their welfare, not when they amass land and chattels and keep others away from them, but when they pursue the polar-opposite strategies of inclusion and dispossession, such as sharing their property, donating it to charity, or giving it away. This Article begins its defense of inclusion and dispossession by providing background about the …

Exclusionary Megacities, Wendell Pritchett, Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

Human beings should live in places where they are most productive, and megacities, where information, innovation, and opportunities congregate, would be the optimal choice. Yet megacities in both China and the United States are excluding people by limiting the housing supply. Why, despite their many differences, is the same type of exclusion happening in both Chinese and U.S. megacities? Urban law and policy scholars argue that Not-In-My-Back-Yard (“NIMBY”) homeowners are taking over megacities in the U.S. and hindering housing development. They pin their hopes on an efficient growth machine that makes sure “above all, nothing gets in the way of …

Limited Liability Property, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article offers a theory of secured credit that aims to answer fundamental questions that have long percolated in the bankruptcy and secured transactions literatures. Are security interests property rights, contract rights, or something else? Why do secured creditors enjoy a priority right that, in bankruptcy, requires them to be paid in full before other debt holders recover anything? Should we care that secured credit creates distributional unfairness when companies cannot pay their debts?

This Article argues that security interests are best understood as a form of “limited liability property.” Limited liability—the privilege of being legally shielded from liability that …

Limited Liability Property, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article offers a theory of secured credit that aims to answer fundamental questions that have long percolated in the bankruptcy and secured transactions literatures. Are security interests property rights, contract rights, or something else? Why do secured creditors enjoy a priority right that, in bankruptcy, requires them to be paid in full before other debt holders recover anything? Should we care that secured credit creates distributional unfairness when companies cannot pay their debts?

This Article argues that security interests are best understood as a form of “limited liability property.” Limited liability—the privilege of being legally shielded from liability that …

An Overlooked Overriding Interest In Singapore's Torrens System?, Seng Wei, Edward Ti

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

"A landowner free to develop his land as he wishes before the imposition of public controls, finds himself prohibited fromdoing so as a consequence of the controls. The title to his ownership of an estate or interest in the land is not disturbed orcalled into question in any fundamental way—he owns what he had previously … Nevertheless, the powers of ownershipare not what they were in all their fullness. He cannot legally do now what before he was at law and at liberty to do. Hisrights have been curtailed. He has lost something. What is it?"

Finding Lost & Found: Designer’S Notes From The Process Of Creating A Jewish Game For Learning, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article provides context for and examines aspects of the design process of a game for learning. Lost & Found (2017a, 2017b) is a tabletop-to-mobile game series designed to teach medieval religious legal systems, beginning with Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (1180), a cornerstone work of Jewish legal rabbinic literature. Through design narratives, the article demonstrates the complex design decisions faced by the team as they balance the needs of player engagement with learning goals. In the process the designers confront challenges in developing winstates and in working with complex resource management. The article provides insight into the pathways the team …

A Cross-Sectional Exploration Of Household Financial Reactions And Homebuyer Awareness Of Registered Sex Offenders In A Rural, Suburban, And Urban County., John Charles Navarro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As stigmatized persons, registered sex offenders betoken instability in communities. Depressed home sale values are associated with the presence of registered sex offenders even though the public is largely unaware of the presence of registered sex offenders. Using a spatial multilevel approach, the current study examines the role registered sex offenders influence sale values of homes sold in 2015 for three U.S. counties (rural, suburban, and urban) located in Illinois and Kentucky within the social disorganization framework. Homebuyers were surveyed to examine whether awareness of local registered sex offenders and the homebuyer’s community type operate as moderators between home selling …