Property Law and Real Estate Commons^™

Property Interests In Digital Assets: The Rise Of Digital Feudalism, Natalie M. Banta

Cardozo Law Review

The emergence of digital assets has created a host of new legal questions regarding their status as a property interest. Digital assets consist of intangible interests like e-mail accounts, social media accounts, reward points, and electronic media. These assets seem like a property interest, but because digital assets are a creature of contract, private contracts determine whether an owner can use, sell, transfer, exclude, donate, or dispose of the asset in a testamentary instrument. These digital asset contracts often take an unprecedented step of prohibiting or severely limiting the transfer of digital assets after death. By unilaterally eviscerating a long …

Complexity's Shadow: American Indian Property, Sovereignty, And The Future, Jessica A. Shoemaker

Michigan Law Review

This Article offers a new perspective on the challenges of the modern American Indian land tenure system. While some property theorists have renewed focus on isolated aspects of Indian land tenure, including the historic inequities of colonial takings of Indian lands, this Article argues that the complexity of today’s federally imposed reservation property system does much of the same colonizing work that historic Indian land policies—from allotment to removal to termination—did overtly. But now, these inequities are largely overshadowed by the daunting complexity of the whole land tenure structure. This Article introduces a new taxonomy of complexity in American Indian …

What Is At Stake With The Fha?, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

In Re Davis Family Heritage Trust, 133 Nev. Adv. Op. 4 (Jan. 26, 2017), Maegun Mooso

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that (1) NRS 155.190(1)(h) only grants the Court appellate jurisdiction over the portion of an appeal order instructing or appointing a trustee, and (2) persons accepting an appointment as an investment trust advisor for a trust with a situs in Nevada impliedly consent to personal jurisdiction in Nevada under 163.5555.

Village League V. State Bd. Of Equalization, 133 Nev., Adv. Op. 1 (January 26, 2017), Yolanda Carapia

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that (1) NRS 361.395 does not provide the State Board with authority to order reappraisals; and (2) the 2010 regulation purporting to provide the State Board with such authority does not apply retroactively to the tax years at issue in this case.

When Robots Trespass, Thomas Simmons

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Flying Under The Radar: Low-Altitude Local Drone Use And The Reentry Of Property Rights, Kenneth Maher

Duke Law & Technology Review

The characteristics and capabilities of civilian drones have proliferated in recent years, giving rise to a burgeoning industry. The popular media and academic literature have predominantly focused on privacy concerns, devoting considerably less attention to the regulatory challenges created by the new technology. Congress instructed the FAA to integrate drones into the National Airspace System in 2012, but rulemaking delays and a moratorium on commercial uses hampered the industry and withheld benefits from the public. Final regulations are now in place, but the new rules revive legal uncertainty over the constitutional limits of federal authority and the ambiguous vertical bounds …

The Meaning Of Dispossession, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

This Article critiques our focus on possession as the cornerstone of theories of property, examining the limitations of possession both as a theoretical concept and as a practical one. Second, the article examines how an investment-based labor approach has sharply shaped out understandings of possession. By examining the intertwining of possession and labor during colonization, the article describes how the labor approach to possession excluded more communal corollaries and instilled in American property law a consistent push toward grounding land claims at the labor-possession nexus.

Re-thinking the labor-possession nexus yields important shifts. First, labor matters for other reasons than investment-backed …

Understanding Property Law, John G. Sprankling

McGeorge School of Law Teaching Materials

No abstract provided.

Law And Policy Resource Guide: A Survey Of Eminent Domain Law In Texas And The Nation, Caitlyn Ashley, Elizabeth Spencer Berthiaume, Philip Berzin, Rikki Blassingame, Stephanie Bradley Fryer, John Cox, E. Samuel Crecelius, Taylor Dennington, Tave Doty, Stacie Dowell, Cameron Frysinger, Jordan Simmons Hayes, Alexandria Hutchison, Hillary Tidwell, Michael Vinson, George Wigington, Christopher Wilkes, Lola Wilson, Shane Wright

EENRS Program Reports & Publications

Eminent Domain is the power of the government or quasi-government entities to take private or public property interests through condemnation. Eminent Domain has been a significant issue since 1879 when, in the case of Boom Company v. Patterson, the Supreme Court first acknowledged that the power of eminent domain may be delegated by state legislatures to agencies and non-governmental entities. Thus, the era of legal takings began.

Though an important legal dispute then, more recently eminent domain has blossomed into an enduring contentious social and political problem throughout the United States. The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution states, …

Healthy Zoning, Matthew J. Parlow

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Illusion Of Fiscal Illusion In Regulatory Takings, Bethany R. Berger

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Ozark National Scenic Riverways And The Sagebrush Rebellion In Missouri, John W. Ragsdale Jr

Faculty Works

This article focuses on the back country-the Ozark National Scenic Riverways (ONSR) and the community around and with the rivers. It begins historically, tracing the origins and courses of stable-state, subsistence agricultural societies in the rugged hills overlooking the Current and Jacks Fork Rivers. It shows that such societies, though autonomous, are vulnerable to outside aggression. War, raiders, in­dustrial timbermen, and modern technology can shatter the environ­mental balance. Dam builders, government land managers, and tour­ism can erode internal sovereignty, custom, and self-esteem. These forces befell the Ozark highlands around the ONSR.

Out of the breakdown of land and economy, and …

A New History Of Waste Law: How A Misunderstood Doctrine Shaped Ideas About The Transformation Of Law, Jill M. Fraley

Marquette Law Review

In the traditional account, American courts transformed the law of waste, radically diverging from the British courts around the time of the American Revolution. Some of the most influential theorists of American legal history have used this account as evidence that American law is driven by economics. Due to its adoption by influential scholars, this traditional account of waste law has shaped not only our understanding of property law, but also how we view the process of transforming law.

That traditional account, however, came not from a history of the doctrine, but from an elaboration of the benefits of the …

Zoning’S Centennial: A Complete Account Of The Evolution Of Zoning Into A Robust System Of Land Use Law—1916-2016 (Part Iv), John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Fracking is happening and local governments are subjected to many of its associated risks. They either need to act, or know—clearly and convincingly—why they should not. The federal government has stopped far short of comprehensive regulation of fracking; the states’ regulations range from fair to poor, sometimes preempting local regulation but most often sharing regulatory authority over land use impacts.

Property As A Management Institution, Lynda L. Butler

Brooklyn Law Review

The institution of property serves an important management function for society, guiding the use of resources among its members by delegating to the owner the power to decde how and when to use a resource. Under the dominant American approach, this delegation involves recognizing broad decision-making powers in the individual property owner. Grounded in an exclusion-based view of property, the dominant approach recognizes each property owner as a gatekeeper, with important in rem rights that bind all others—even those not in a direct relationship with the owner. Over time, courts and other lawmakers have developed doctrines and rules of law …

What's Wrong With Partial Intestacy?, Richard F. Storrow

Marquette Law Review

This article questions whether wills law's disapproval of partial intestacy rests on defensible assumptions about testamentary intent. After examining the causes of and antidotes to partial intestacy, I make three primary points. First, the presumption against intestacy applies only to wills that contain an ambiguous bequest of the residue. Second, the law's disapproval of partial intestacy is due in part to its failure to make an important distinction between testamentary intention and dispositive intention. Third, a theory of passive intention, heretofore barely alluded to in the law of wills, supplies the necessary validation of partially intestate estates.

Three Cases In Point: A Comparison Of Legal Access To Housing For Low-Income And Homeless Populations In Cape Town, Marseille And Miami, Leila Lawlor

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Bringing Home The Right To Housing To Advance Urban Sustainability, Lisa Alexander

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

The title of my talk today is Bringing Home the Right to Housing to Advance Urban Sustainability. You may ask what is the right to housing? Why do we need to bring it home? And what does it have to do with the broader topic of today’s symposium, urban sustainability?

The human right to housing, although not a formal American federal or constitutional right, provides an important legal and normative framework that can help American cities and states better balance the needs of owners and non-owners in local housing and development struggles. If American cities and states want to create …