Property Law

SHARING THE CLIMATE

Rashmi Dyal-Chand*

Property law responds poorly to the lived reality of the climate crisis. In particular, it fails to address the uncontrollable negative externalities endemic to this crisis. Today, we need and share resources from which it would be ineffective and harmful to exclude our neighbors. Yet exclusion remains the cornerstone of much of American property law. In turn, the principle of autonomy—broadly defined to signify privacy, self-sufficiency, and...

Gregory Ablavsky’s Federal Ground explains how the national government and American law were transformed in the federal territories that compose modern Ohio and Tennessee. Ablavsky’s careful research and fresh perspective will make his work a vital reference for histo­rians, but this Book Review also highlights the book’s significance for le­gal ac­a­demics and lawyers. Ablavsky has collected extraordinary evidence about property...

A WORLD OF DISTRUST

Timothy M. Mulvaney*

In District of Columbia v. Wesby, the Supreme Court determined that a prudent officer had probable cause to arrest attendees at a festive house party for criminal trespass without a warrant. While reactions from scholars of criminal law have begun to emerge, this Piece is the first to conceive of the decision through the lens of property theory. In this regard, the Piece offers two principal claims. First, on interpretive grounds, it contends that,...

Partial Takings

Abraham Bell* & Gideon Parchomovsky**

Partial takings allow the government to expropriate the parts of an asset it needs, leaving the owner the remainder. Both vital and common, partial takings present unique challenges to the standard rules of eminent domain. Partial takings may result in the creation of suboptimal, and even unusable, parcels. Additionally, partial takings create assessment problems that do not arise when parcels are taken as a whole. Finally, partial takings engender...