Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Info About Property

November 22, 2011 8:45 PM

What are some resources to learn about property rights?

Reading debates about whose got a right to use Zuccotti Park and how has made me very interested in property rights and their history. Apparently it's way complicated! What are some good resources - websites, articles, books, podcasts, etc? Any length or perspective is good, ideally this would be aimed at an intelligent layperson.

posted by shaun uh to Education (7 answers total)

It is way complicated. You sort of have to understand the feudal system to understand modern property law. J.H. Baker's Introduction to English Legal History is a good book on this, though it isn't always an easy read. Property law is the most difficult class in law school, for many people. For more modern American property law, Stuart Banner's American Property is a good book. You can read that book and understand a lot, and you can speak competently on modern debates. But to really understand things, you need to understand the feudal system.
posted by smorange at 8:54 PM on November 22, 2011

You should read Jerold Kayden's book "Privately Owned Public Space" which deals directly with the odd sort of public-private partnership that created Zucotti Park and many of the other unusual such "POPS" in New York City.
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 9:01 PM on November 22, 2011

You could start with Capital, for one theoretical framework to look at commodities. Or for an alternative (anarchist) view, consider PJ Proudhon's What Is Property?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:48 PM on November 22, 2011

A slightly tangential suggestion, which might not be up your alley but is a possibility, is Charles Reich's "The New Property". It's old (1964-ish?) and short (50 pages or so, not all of which you'll care about). It focuses on an argument that public sector grants such as welfare, social security, etc, should become "property" as compared to something akin to a gift, with all the protections that that entails.

So it's pretty focused, but it might be a way to look at a single aspect of US property law, so that you don't get overwhelmed. It's incredibly well-known in the legal field (I re-downloaded it last night for a paper I'm working on - I noticed it has 1700 or so academic citations, which doesn't even count things like court citations), and the focus on entitlements is somewhat related to some of the OWS issues.

Future commenters, feel free to shoot me down - I'm currently in tunnel-vision mode and think everything I'm reading is universally helpful.
posted by Lemurrhea at 4:37 AM on November 23, 2011

Get a used Property casebook by Prof. Dukeminier.
posted by lockestockbarrel at 5:28 AM on November 23, 2011

I can't offer specific suggestions, but another way to approach it would be what constitutes "reasonable use", because I think that's the crux of the OWS Zuccotti argument.

A couple of basic concepts that might help you on your search:

- adverse possession. The idea that if you, the property owner, allow someone to use your property in a way that is against your rules for long enough, you end up giving tacit approval for them to have more rights to use that property. It is similar to trademark law, where if a trademark owner allows someone to breach their trademark, they in effect give up their claim to that trademark.

- public space. Versus public property. Zuccotti is privately owned, but it is a public space. This limits the rights of the owners and gives rights to the public, but nothing is absolute. The idea of public space is that it is free for anyone to use, but also NOT free for anyone to monopolize. Your horse can graze in the public square while you are in town on business, but your horse can't live there permanently. You can park your car on the street, but you can't build a garage there. The concept there isn't so much your rights versus those of the property owner, but your rights versus the rights of other citizens.

This is where law and sociology collide, I think. Even in an ideal world with perfect laws, there will always come a time where one's own self-interest collides with laws they normally agree with.
posted by gjc at 7:35 AM on November 23, 2011

For IP, I would recommend Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates by Adrian Johns and Benkler's The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.
posted by mfoight at 8:19 AM on November 23, 2011