Many modern-day Americans think about legal rights in a dualistic fashion. "Personal rights" fall on one side of the divide, while "property rights" fall on the other, and these categories of rights often are deemed to be separate and distinct. This essay, which introduces a symposium on...

Amendments to the Louisiana Civil Code revived the potential for a testament to utilize the fidei commissum de residuo, while maintaining that the distinct fidei commissum is still prohibited. However, the Civil Code is silent as to the composition of the residual interest resulting from...

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 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 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,...

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,...

Do “cultural factors” substantively influence the creation and evolution of property institutions? For the past several decades, few legal scholars have answered affirmatively. Those inclined towards a law and economics methodology tend to see property institutions as the outcome of...

This essay argues that the liberal conception of private property is not a solution to anthropogenic climate change but, rather, the source of the problem. The concept of private property facilitates the human activities that cause anthropogenic climate change, and the resulting human...

One of the most acute charges against private property begins with the observation that ownership generates a trespassory duty of exclusion that far exceeds what a commitment to values such as freedom and well-being could possibly require. According to this observation, there exits a mismatch...