Property Law and Real Estate Commons^™

Intergalactic Property Law: A New Regime For A New Age, Alison Morris

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In November 2015, Congress passed the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship Act of 2015 ("the SPACE Act'), which allows private American companies to own any resources they collect from mining in space. This, however, conflicts with current international treaties to which the United States is a party, such as the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space ("the Outer Space Treaty'), which was adopted by the United Nations in 1967. Thus, without some changes, either the SPACE Act will be rendered useless or the United States will be in direct …

Augmenting Property Law: Applying The Right To Exclude In The Augmented Reality Universe, Samuel Mallick

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Note considers whether and to what extent the property right to exclude applies to virtual space in the augmented reality (AR) universe. It provides an overview of AR's development and uses, as well as a review of property law concerning the right to exclude. By considering the consequences of previously proposed regulatory schemes in light of four hypothetical AR applications, this Note demonstrates that these solutions do not adequately balance the societal benefit achievable through free development of AR applications with landowners' absolute rights to exclude others from their property. This Note proposes adoption of an adjusted "open-range" common …

Penn Central Take Two, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Penn Central v. New York City is the most important regulatory takings case of all time. There, the Supreme Court upheld the historic preservation of Grand Central Terminal in part because the City offset the burden of the landmarking with a valuable new property interest—a transferable development right (TDR)—that could be sold to neighboring property. Extraordinarily, 1.2 million square feet of those very same TDRs, still unused for over forty years, are the subject of newly resolved takings litigation. According to the complaint, the TDRs that saved Grand Central were themselves taken by the government, which allegedly wiped out their …

The Case For Gmos: Dealing With Clashes Between Property Rights And Health And Safety Concerns, Kline C. Moore

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

A comparative analysis of international decisions concerning genetically modified organism (GMO) controversies reveals the judicial inconsistency that is often applied to the property rights of GMO producers and researchers. Courts often find that there are strong property right interests in GMOs, but when these rights clash with health and safety concerns, they are often minimized or completely forgotten; therefore, future growth in biotechnology is inhibited. This Note proposes a solution to this issue that better takes into account all stakeholders and allows for future investment and research into GMOs. The solution draws upon the lessons learned from current regulatory and …

Globalizing Property Law: An Institutional Analysis, Amnon Lehavi

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article identifies the key role that institutions play in moving toward an effective cross-border regime in property law. Property is based on an in rem principle, which should provide a single system for ranking rights, powers, and priorities in assets that applies to all interested parties. In a global context, this feature of property law requires a cross-border legal ordering by an array of domestic and supranational institutions: legislative, administrative, and adjudicative.

The Article argues that the present fragmentation of property norms across national borders, and the incompleteness of supranational institutions that deal with property law, may place limits …

Of Fences And Definite Patent Boundaries, Deepa Varadarajan

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Patent claims are supposed to mark the boundaries of a patent clearly so that competitors and follow-on innovators can avoid infringement. But commentators routinely lament the failure of patent claims to adequately perform this notice function. In numerous calls for patent reform, courts and scholars have contrasted the indeterminacy of patent claims with the clarity of real property boundaries. The Supreme Court recently echoed this sentiment in "Nautilus v. Biosig Instruments." In "Nautilus," the Court heightened the patent requirement of claim definiteness and reversed Federal Circuit precedent, which had allowed many ambiguous claims to survive invalidity challenges. This Article analyzes …

Sharing And The City, Michele Finck, Sofia Ranchordas

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The sharing of public infrastructure, the exchange of small services, and the traditional "cup of sugar borrowed from the neighbor" are practices intrinsic to most urban agglomerations. In the digital age, these sharing initiatives are facilitated by online platforms such as Feastly, Peerby, and HomeExchange. These platforms allow city residents to share the idle capacity of some of their assets (e.g., clothing, tools, or a spare bedroom) with other residents living in close proximity to them, or with tourists looking for accommodation. While these practices can be justified by efficiency and sustainability concerns, some of them appear to be in …

Second Liens And The Leverage Option, Adam J. Levitin, Susan M. Wachter

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article demonstrates that the housing bubble was driven by second mortgages to a much greater extent than previously appreciated. A unique feature of American law allows homeowners to take out second mortgages, without the consent or even knowledge of the first mortgage lender. The result is an underpricing and overextension of credit as first mortgage lenders cannot control or properly price for the risks created by second mortgages. Homeowners' unilateral right to encumber their properties with additional mortgage loans creates what we term the "leverage option" that is embedded in American mortgages. The leverage option is an unintended consequence …

Passive Takings: State Inaction And The Duty To Protect Property, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As conventionally understood, regulatory takings doctrine protects property owners from the most significant costs of legal transitions. Legal change has therefore always been central to regulatory takings claims. This Article argues that it does not need to be, and that governments can violate the Takings Clause by failing to act in the face of a changing world. This is much more than a minor refinement of takings law because government liability for failing to act means that, in at least some circumstances, the Takings Clause imposes an affirmative obligation on the government to protect property. This liability runs counter to …

Symposium: The Role Of Federal Law In Private Wealth Transfer, Jeffrey Schoenblum

Vanderbilt Law Review

Property and inheritance are "quintessential state matters."' In fact, there is no federal intestacy law. There is no federal wills law. There is no federal trust law. And yet.... Increasingly, federal law impacts court decisions involving private wealth transfer. Increasingly, federal law is the central consideration in premortem and postmortem planning for private wealth transfer. Despite this, until recently, little scholarly attention has been paid to this phenomenon; the assumption regarding the centrality of state law, quoted above, having gone largely unquestioned. But now that the "sleeping giant" has awakened, the role that federal law plays in private wealth transfer …

Symposium: The Role Of Federal Law In Private Wealth Transfer, Jeffrey Schoenblum

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Increasingly, federal law impacts court decisions involving private wealth transfer. Increasingly, federal law is the central consideration in premortem and postmortem planning for private wealth transfer. Despite this, until recently, little scholarly attention has been paid to this phenomenon; the assumption regarding the centrality of state law, quoted above, having gone largely unquestioned. But now that the "sleeping giant" has awakened, the role that federal law plays in private wealth transfer requires serious and comprehensive academic consideration.

Governing The Anticommons In Aggregate Litigation, D. Theodore Rave

Vanderbilt Law Review

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, more than ten thousand rescue and cleanup workers brought individual lawsuits against New York City for respiratory and other illnesses they developed after working in the ruins of the World Trade Center. After years of litigation, the parties put together a comprehensive settlement in 2010. The defendant agreed to pay a total of $625 million so long as 95% of the plaintiffs accepted the terms of the settlement. If 100% of the plaintiffs signed on, however, the defendant was willing to increase the total settlement amount to be shared among all the plaintiffs …

Property: A Bundle Of Sticks Or A Tree?, Anna Di Robilant

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1973 John Henry Merryman noted that property law is a largely unexplored field of comparative study.' According to Merryman, common lawyers and civilians have long viewed their respective property systems as radically different and hardly comparable. In Merryman's words, the civil law is a law of "ownership," while the common law is a law of "estate." Civil law systems conceive of property as ownership, as holistic dominion: exclusive, single, indivisible, and different in nature from lesser property interests. By contrast, property in the common law is pluralistic and fragmented, having at its core the estates system and the many …

Restituting Nazi-Looted Art: Domestic, Legislative, And Binding Intervention To Balance The Interests Of Victims And Museums, Katharine N. Skinner

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The Nazis engaged in widespread art looting from Holocaust victims, either taking the artwork outright or using legal formalities to effect a transfer of title under duress. Years later, US museums acquired some of these pieces on a good-faith basis. Now, however, they face lawsuits by the heirs of Holocaust victims, who seek to have the museums return the artwork. Though good title cannot pass to the owner of stolen property under US law, unfavorable statutes of limitations, high financial hurdles, or discovery problems, among other obstacles, bar many of these claimants from seeking recovery. Though some museums have amicably …

The Reciprocity Of Search, Tun-Jen Chiang

Vanderbilt Law Review

The discussion of search in patent law always focuses on one particular model of search: producers of commercial products are supposed to identify the patents that their products might infringe and then negotiate a license from the owners of those patents. This one-sided view of search responsibility is most evident in doctrine. As a doctrinal matter, patent law imposes an absolute duty on the producer of a commercial product to find all relevant patents and obtain licenses from each of the owners before commencing manufacture. Failure to meet this duty is punished by liability for infringement, where ignorance of the …

Atrocity, Entitlement, And Personhood In Property, Daniel J. Sharfstein

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article proceeds in three parts. Part 1 examines the centrality and progressive valence of personhood as a conception of property and sketches out a case for why atrocity might foster beliefs of entitlement, gesturing towards Radin's own "intuitive account" of personhood. However, instead of rooting my discussion in Hegel as Radin did, I turn to social psychology and accounts of law and violence to show how bad acts committed in the course of acquiring and owning property can create a deep connection between owner and land. In Part II, I attempt to historicize personhood in the American property tradition. …

Public Entrenchment Through Private Law: Binding Local Governments, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Anti-entrenchment rules prevent governments from passing unrepealable legislation and ensure that subsequent governments are free to revisit the policy choices of the past. However, governments — and local governments in particular — have become increasingly adept at using private law mechanisms like contracts and property conveyances to make binding precommitments into the future. Simultaneously, courts and state legislatures in recent years have reduced the availability of core de-entrenching tools, like eminent domain, that have traditionally allowed governments to recapture policymaking authority from the past. These changes threaten to shift democratic power intertemporally. This Article develops a typology of mechanisms for …

Condemning The Decisions Of The Past, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This brief Essay, part of a Fordham Urban Law Journal Symposium on eminent domain in New York, argues that there is a seldom-recognized purpose to eminent domain: preserving the ability of elected representatives to respond to the will of the people. The essay proposes that eminent domain allows government to depart from the policy choices of administrations which came before and is therefore a tool for preserving "democratic legitimacy." It explores this theory by examining examples such as breaking up the adult use zones in Times Square and reclaiming New York's waterfront.

The Inauthentic Claim, Anthony J. Sebok

Vanderbilt Law Review

"It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past." -Oliver Wendell Holmes'

This Article takes a critical look at the persistence of legal doctrines that prohibit or limit property rights in litigation. The Article focuses on prohibitions on assignment and maintenance. Assignment of personal injury tort claims is prohibited throughout the United States, while …

Background Principles, Takings, And Libertarian Property: A Reply To Professor Huffman, J.B. Ruhl, Michael C. Blumm

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

One of the principal, if unexpected, results of the Supreme Court's 1992 decision in "Lucas v. South Carolina" Coastal Commission is the rise of background principles of property and nuisance law as a categorical defense to takings claims. Our writings on the background principles defense have provoked Professor Huffman, a devoted advocate for an expanded use of regulatory takings to protect landowner development rights, to mistakenly charge us with arguing for the use of common law principles to circumvent the rule of law, Supreme Court intent, and the takings clause. Actually, ours was not a normative brief at all, but …

Locating The International Interest In Intranational Cultural Property Disputes, Joseph P. Fishman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article considers the extent to which there may be an international interest in how intranational disputes over cultural property are settled. Drawing on the norms underlying recent global scrutiny of states’ destruction of cultural objects located within their own territory, I identify two factors that may justify internationalizing otherwise domestic conflicts over cultural property: discriminatory intent and harm to cultural diversity. I argue that where neither of these concerns is implicated, the international community should pursue a policy of non-intervention, both because local authorities are likely to be more competent adjudicators and because eliciting a global referendum on cultural …

Entrenching Environmentalism, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This piece for the University of Chicago Law Review Symposium: Reassessing the State and Local Government Toolkit, examines how local governments can use private law mechanisms to entrench policy in ways that circumvent typical legal limitations. The piece examines in detail a specific example of a town donating conservation easements over property it owns to a third-party not-for-profit conservation organization in order ensure that the property would not be developed in the future. This is nearly the functional equivalent of passing an unrepealable zoning ordinance restricting development, something existing anti-entrenchment rules would never permit. The piece examines the costs and …

Existing Uses And The Limits Of Land Use Regulations, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article identifies property law's special protection for existing uses, explores possible justifications for this protection, and argues that none can support the strong protection that existing uses currently enjoy. Various land use doctrines- from zoning to the vested rights doctrine to amortization rules for prior noncon- forming uses--assume that the government cannot eliminate existing uses without paying compensation. The Article asks whether this result is compelled either by constitutional rules or by normative considerations. Neither the Takings Clause nor the Due Process Clause requires this level of protection for existing uses. Norma- tively, many obvious-seeming justifications dissolve on closer …

Condemning Religion: Rluipa And The Politics Of Eminent Domain, Christopher Serkin, Nelson Tebbe

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Should religious landowners enjoy special protection from eminent domain? A recent federal statute, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), compels courts to apply a compelling interest test to zoning and landmarking regulations that substantially burden religiously owned property. That provision has been controversial in itself but today a new cutting-edge issue is emerging: whether the Act's extraordinary protection should extend to condemnation as well. The matter has taken on added significance in the wake of Kelo, where the Supreme Court reaffirmed its expansive view of the eminent domain power. In this Article, we argue that RLUIPA should …

Escaping The Takings Maze: Impact Fees And The Limits Of The Takings Clause, Charles T. Switzer

Vanderbilt Law Review

The cost of a new home in swanky Naples, Florida-home of charming shopping districts, lovely white-sand beaches, and more golf holes per capita than anywhere else in America-recently topped $450,000. Included in this cost is a staggering $33,000 impact fee bill from the county. Even amidst a meltdown in the housing industry and a severe economic slump, local politicians have refused to reconsider the high fees. Impact fees are levied by local governments on new developments to pay a share of the costs of providing public infrastructure for those developments. The money is used to improve sewers, roads, parks, and …

Law And The Emotive Avatar, Llewellyn J. Gibbons

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The barriers between fantasy and reality in virtual worlds are becoming increasingly permeable. There is a rhetorical need among some legal scholars to distinguish between a law of virtual worlds or concepts of net-sovereignty and the so-called real world. These metaphorical distinctions are unhelpful and confuse the issues as to exactly what is being regulated. A more productive line of analysis is to consider the avatar as an extension of the individual or an agent of the individual in virtual spaces and then to shift the focus of analysis away from the avatar and back to the individual because it …

Applying Old Theories To New Problems: How Adverse Possession Can Help Solve The Orphan Works Crisis, Megan L. Bibb

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Note focuses on orphan works--works whose copyright owners cannot be found--and the problems they create for libraries and archives that wish to preserve and facilitate access to them. After describing the legal basis for the orphan works problem, the Note analyzes and critiques proposed legislative and scholarly solutions. After concluding that prior solutions fail to adequately address the needs of libraries and archives, the Note offers a solution based on the policy rationales underlying the traditional property concept of adverse possession, since the justifications that supported the advent of the adverse possession doctrine can also be applied to the …

Standardization And Pluralism In Property Law, Nestor M. Davidson

Vanderbilt Law Review

At the heart of contemporary property theory stands an intriguing puzzle. Unlike the relatively unconstrained freedom that contract law provides for private ordering, property law recognizes only a limited and standard list of mandatory forms. This standardization-known as the numerus clausus from the civil law concept that the "number is closed"-poses a basic conundrum: what can explain a persistent feature of the law that seems, at first glance, so clearly to restrict the autonomy and efficiency gains conventionally associated with private property?

This puzzle has garnered significant scholarly attention in recent years. Some scholars have argued that standardization, although paternalistic, …

Overcoming Another Tragedy In New Orleans: Rebuilding In The Wake Of "Kelo" And Act No. 851, William C. Spaht

Vanderbilt Law Review

During Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, thousands of Gulf Coast residents lost their homes, their possessions, their savings, and some, their lives. Those states hit hardest by the hurricanes have struggled to recover. In places like New Orleans, where hundreds of thousands of residents evacuated and may never return, uncertainty regarding the future of private property has become a fact of life. As the excerpt from Senator McPherson's letter indicates, arguably the single most critical question facing local and state governments trying to rebuild the devastated coast is how to encourage use of abandoned properties to spark the economy.

Michael A. …

Local Property Law: Adjusting The Scale Of Property Protection, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article proposes that local governments should be able to decide for themselves how to protect private property, and then be held to that choice as if it were a local constitutional pre-commitment. Specifically, the Article proposes state enabling legislation to create a mechanism for local pre-commitments around the most contested takings and land use issues, like the meaning of public use, the extent of just compensation, the diminution of value that triggers compensation, and others. The resulting local variation in property regimes would allow consumers - homeowners, developers, and any other property owners - to select the property protection …