This essay, written for a symposium commemorating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Charles Reich's famous article, quot;The New Propertyquot;, maintains that the 1964 article, which argued for procedural protection for government benefits like social security and unemployment compensation, was a harbinger of environmental rights that would be created in the following decade. Calling for quot;scrupulous observance of fair proceduresquot;, Professor Reich anticipated the procedural regularity that courts would insist from agencies under the National Environmental Policy Act and pollution control statutes.The essay claims that underlying the process rights accorded both those with quot;new propertyquot; and environmental concerns was a liberty concern, which helps explain the ensuing close judicial scrutiny. The similarities between new property rights and environmental rights is hardly accidental, since allocating rights to use the environmental commons is an archetypical case of dispensing governmental largess. The participatory rights recognized in both contexts assures access to decisionmakers which may produce informed dialogue, more democratic decisionmaking, and changed visions of the public interest.

The right to own and use private property is among the most essential human rights and the essential basis for economic growth. That’s why America’s Founders guaranteed it in the Constitution. Yet in today’s America, government tramples on this right in countless ways. Regulations forbid people to use their property as they wish, bureaucrats extort enormous fees from developers in exchange for building permits, and police departments snatch personal belongings on the suspicion that they were involved in crimes. In the case of Kelo v. New London, the Supreme Court even declared that government may seize homes and businesses and transfer the land to private developers to build stores, restaurants, or hotels. That decision was met with a firestorm of criticism across the nation. In this, the first book on property rights to be published since the Kelo decision, Timothy Sandefur surveys the landscape of private property in America’s third century. Beginning with the role property rights play in human nature, Sandefur describes how America’s Founders wrote a Constitution that would protect this right and details the gradual erosion that began with the Progressive Era’s abandonment of the principles of individual liberty. Sandefur tells the gripping stories of people who have found their property threatened: Frank Bugryn and his Connecticut Christmas-tree farm; Susette Kelo and the little dream house she renovated; Wilhelmina Dery and the house she was born in, 80 years before bureaucrats decided to take it; Dorothy English and the land she wanted to leave to her children; and Kenneth Healing and his 17-year legal battle for permission to build a home. Thanks to the abuse of eminent domain and asset forfeiture laws, federal, state, and local governments have now come to see property rights as mere permissions, which can be revoked at any time in the name of the “greater good.” In this book, Sandefur explains what citizens can do to restore the Constitution’s protections for this “cornerstone of liberty.”

This book exposes the dysfunction of environmental law and offers a transformative approach based on the public trust doctrine. An ancient and enduring principle, the public trust doctrine empowers citizens to protect their inalienable property rights to crucial resources. This book shows how a trust principle can apply from the local to global level to protect the planet.

This book not only offers in-depth analysis of federal environmental statutes having a bearing on land use, but also looks closely at rules imposed by state and local governments.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

Legal regulation of the environment is often construed as a collection of legislated responses to the problems of modern living. Treated as such,'environmental law' refers not to a body of distinctive juristic ideas (such as one might find in contract law or tort) but to a body of black-letter rules out of which a distinct jurisprudence might grow. This book challenges the accepted view by arguing that environmental law must be seen not as a mere instrument of social policy, but as a historical product of surprising antiquity and considerable sophistication. Environmental law, it is argued, is underpinned by a series of tenets concerning the relationship of human beings to the natural world, through the acquisition and use of property. By tracing these ideas to their roots in the political philosophy of the seventeenth century, and their reception into the early law of nuisance, this book seeks to overturn the perception that environmental law's philosophical significance is confined to questions about the extent to which a state should pursue collective well-being and public health through deliberate manipulation and restriction of private property rights. Through a close re-examination of both early and modern statutes and cases, this book concludes that, far from being intelligible in exclusively instrumental terms, environmental law must be understood as the product of sustained reflection upon fundamental moral questions concerning the relationship between property, rights and nature.

The environment has often been thought to consist of resources that are unowned, and hence subject to the well-known tragedy of the commons. But in recent years, property ideas have been increasingly recruited for environmental protection, in a manner that appears to vindicate the view that property rights evolve along with the needs for resource management. Nevertheless, property regimes have some pitfalls for environmental resources: the relevant parties may not be able to come to agreement; property regimes may be weak or ineffective; they may be aimed at purposes inconsistent with environmental protection; property rights definitions may not work well for environmental resources; modern property regimes may promote monoculture rather than diverse environments. This essay describes these problems and asks to what degree they apply to a new effort to use property rights approaches, namely cap-and-trade programs to control greenhouse gases. It concludes that property rights, while imperfect and something of a retreat from a regime of complete liberty, may offer gains for environmental protection. But success will depend on close attention to the accountability and effectiveness of the governmental institutions necessary to support environmental property regimes.

This book offers a unique and thought provoking exploration of how property concepts can be substantially reshaped to meet ecological challenges. It takes the discussion beyond its traditional parameters and offers new insights into conceptualizing and justifying property systems, in an age of ecological consequences.

First Published in 2000. The materials in this collection are drawn from many disciplines, including economics, law, philosophy and political science. Yet they are all directed to a topic that is worthy of examination from multiple perspectives: Liberty, Property and the Law. Stated in this general form, this topic is broad as law itself. The relationship of liberty and property to the law surfaces whenever and wherever people interact with each other under the command and control of the sovereign. This is Volume II of five and concerns the extent to which the state should enforce or override private contracts made by individuals to dispose of their labor or capital. These issues did not disappear by the onset of the twentieth century, where Volume II picks up. Generally speaking, however, the tools of analysis shifted as the advances in economic theory helped to flesh out the justifications offered for individual liberty and private property on the one hand, and their social control on the other. Although the nature of the discourse changed to some degree, the division of opinion on the proper role of liberty and property remained as sharply contested as it was in earlier times.

Buy a new version of this textbook and receive access to the Connected eBook with Study Center on CasebookConnect, including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities; practice questions from your favorite study aids; an outline tool and other helpful resources. Connected eBooks provide what you need most to be successful in your law school classes. Learn more about Connected eBooks This hugely successful cases-and-problems book is acclaimed for its textual clarity, evenhanded perspective, and contemporary, up-to-date character. Easily distinguished from other property casebooks for its clear descriptions of legal doctrine and its variations; its explanations of the social ramifications of property law; its emphasis on both statutory and regulatory interpretation; its comprehensive treatment of public accommodations and fair housing law, current tribal property issues, and property in human bodies; and its use of the problem method to teach legal reasoning andlawyeringskills. Thoroughly updated to reflect significant changes in the law of property, the Seventh Edition incorporates multiple new Supreme Court cases, including:Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.,Obergefellv. Hodges, andReed v. Town of Gilbert, and 3 decided or pending cases with implications for regulatory takings,Horne v.Dep’tof Agriculture,Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, andMurrv. State. Key Features: Updated to reflect significant changes in the law of property to help professors keep current and be aware of emerging disputes. These include multiple new Supreme Court cases: Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2507 (2015), upholding disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act; Obergefellv. Hodges, 123 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage; Reed v. Town of Gilbert,135 S. Ct. 2218 (2015), broadly applying the First Amendment’s free speech clause to sign regulations; and three decided or pending cases with implications for regulatory takings,Horne v.Dep’tof Agriculture, 135 S. Ct. 2419 (2015),Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 1257 (2014), andMurrv. State, 359Wis.2d675 (Wis. Ct. App. 2014), cert. granted sub nom.Murrv. Wisconsin, 136 S.Ct. 890 (2016). New materials and problems have been included in several areas: Collisions between the sharing economy and servitude, zoning, and landlord-tenant law; Questions of the inheritance rights of children born through assisted reproductive technology; Continuing litigation over the Rails-to-Trails Act conversion of abandoned railroad tracks into recreational trails Invalidation of the copyright on the Happy Birthday song; Commonwealth v.Magadini, 52 N.E.3d 1041 (Mass. 2016), upholding a necessity defense to a trespass charge against a homeless man; and The Revised Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, adopted in 2015.