Most U.S. states passed married women's property and earnings acts between 1850 and 1920. These acts gave married women the right to own and control their separate property, and to own their market earnings. We examine the acts' effects on investment by families in girls' human capital. Standard...

This article explains the concepts applying to property transfer on death under the New Zealand Property (Relationships) Act 1976. The authors discuss the relevant provisions of the Act, along with the tensions underlying the Act, such as that between the desire of executors and administrators...

This article considers the New Zealand High Court decision of Re Russell: Public Trust v Whyman, which was concerned with the death provisions of the Property (Relationships) Act 1976 (PRA). The author analyses the decision in detail, and concludes that it reveals a disturbing level confusion...

This Article addresses the question of whether cultural property laws, which require archaeological artifacts to remain in countries of origin, have been a boon for nations with extensive archaeological records, as most archaeologists and lawmakers presume, or have hampered archaeological...

Indigenous governments in Canada are increasingly authorized to adopt laws that convert communally held lands to individual fee simple. They will convert title to fee simple in order to obtain the economic benefits commonly associated with private ownership and its securitization. However,...

There is a large body of research in economics and law suggesting that the legal origins of a country—that is, whether its legal regime is based on English common law or French, German, or Nordic civil law—profoundly impacts a range of outcomes. However, the exact relationship between legal...

Economists often envision commons and anticommons as occurring from either too few or too many rights-claimants over a good. While this perspective has an intuitive appeal, it obfuscates similarities between commons and anticommons, with significant impact on proposed policy solutions. This...

This Chapter, forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook on Property, Law and Society, the maps the intertwinement, mutual construction, and dependence of “property” and “race” with each other. The discussion examines three dimensions of property which demonstrate the socio-cultural,...

The central question of environmental law is "how much?" How much pollution should we emit into the air and water? How much resource exploitation should we engage in? While for other "how much" questions our society tends to rely (at least in theory) on the market, when it comes to environmental...

This article examines and questions the traditional justifications for intellectual property (I.P.) rights in America (focusing on copyright and patent law), and explores incentives necessary to induce the creation of these works of information. I conclude that changes are needed to I.P. law in...