Person:

Singer, Joseph

How should we think about property and property law both descriptively and normatively? This article suggests we consider this question by focusing on justifications for the estates system which limits the bundles of property rights in land that are recognized by the legal system. Thomas Merrill and Henry Smith have usefully argued that what they call the "numerus clausus" principle is justified because it lowers the information costs of property. While there is a lot to this argument, I suggest that if we look, not only at the traditional rules governing future interests but at all the statutes that regulate property and market relationships, as well as the social customs embodied in our property institutions, we can see that our legal system regulates the bundles of property rights that can be created and enforced, not only to improve efficiency, but to shape the contours of social relationships so that they comply with the norms defining a free and democratic society.

Some of those regulations attempt to prevent the negative externalities that flow from unregulated property bundles, such as the current financial crisis which appears to have been caused by the marketing of subprime, variable rate mortgages that were securitized into incomprehensible packages whose real market value hidden from purchasers who took unreasonable risks in buying them. But other laws regulating property bundles are based on norms that define our way of life, such as those that outlaw property relations characterized by feudalism, slavery, indentured servitude, or racial and religious restrictions on land ownership. Still others protect consumers by setting minimum standards for property and other market transactions.

This approach to property differs from the traditional alienability approach, the legal realist bundle of rights approach, the efficiency approach, the libertarian and liberal egalitarian approaches, and the personality, human flourishing, and virtue ethics approaches by framing descriptive and normative inquiries about property and property law by reference to the quasi-constitutional, structural role that property law plays in defining the appropriate contours of human relationships in a free and democratic society.

It is common to view "the free market" and "government regulation" as opposites. This way of framing policy and legal questions suggests that regulation inevitably deprives us of freedom. But another word for "regulation" is "the rule of law." The opposition of markets and regulation makes it easy to forget that markets are defined by a legal framework that sets minimum standards for social and economic relationships.

We can better appreciate the legal framework of markets by remembering that regulation was needed to abolish feudal relationships, to prohibit relations of servitude, slavery, and racial inequality, and to spread access to property by redistributing property rights from lords to tenants and slave holders to slaves. Libertarian calls for deregulation fail to recognize the extent to which regulation was needed historically to create a society of free and equal persons with widely dispersed property ownership. Regulations are also needed to define property rights and to protect individuals from fraud and unfair or deceptive practices in market transactions. Libertarian ideals actually support a great deal of supposedly liberal legislation.

Further, Americans demand regulations that go far beyond those championed by libertarians, as evidenced by the consumer protection laws and myriad regulatory statutes in force in every state, as well as in federal law. Although Americans tend to talk like "small-government" libertarians, we legislate like liberals. Minimum standards regulations do not deprive us of freedom; rather, law promotes both freedom and democracy by outlawing social and economic relationships that are "subprime" because they fall below the minimum standards acceptable for human relationships in a free and democratic society. It is time we acknowledged the regulations we too often take for granted. If we do that, we can debate what those laws should be, rather than focusing on a false debate about whether they should exist at all.

What would a progressive theory of property look like? Although such a theory might take root within any number of specific normative frameworks, this Statement of Progressive Property outlines several features progressive theories of property should have in common. The Statement argues that we should understand property as both an idea and an institution, that property confers power and shapes community, both in its legal and social dimensions, and that property should be understood as serving plural and incommensurable values whose accommodation is possible through reasoned deliberation and practical judgment.

This comment responds to Professor Philip Frickey's excellent article, (Native) American Exceptionalism in Federal Public Law, - Harv. L. Rev. - (2005), in which Frickey reacts to the Supreme Court's increasing discomfort with the exceptional character of the federal rules governing Indian nations. He argues that the Court fails to recognize that the anomalous character of the rules governing the relations between Indian Nations and the United States arises out of the need to reconcile the irreconcilable premises of constitutionalism and colonialism. He argues that the Court must learn to live with ambiguity and appreciate that it is not possible to apply all the norms usually applied in federal public law to Indian nations without doing grave injustice.

Although Professor Frickey is correct to argue that the Court must learn to live with inconsistencies and to appreciate the need for special rules associated with the special status of native nations, this comment argues that the Supreme Court also needs to pay better attention to granting Indian nations the same rights as non-Indians when Indian nations are similarly situated to non-Indians. In many ways, the Supreme Court has been denying justice to Indian nations both by denying them the special rights that adhere to their special status and by denying them rights and powers they would be granted if they were non-Indian owners or sovereigns. It is important to recognize when the Court accepts a reason for denying rights to Indian nations that it would reject if the case involved a non-Indian owner; the Court should refrain from doing this unless there is a compelling reason for treating the tribe differently.

The article discusses the social responsibility of corporations in a democratic society in the U.S. It notes the potential of corporations to cut wages of employees and giving robust salary to executives as a moral obtuseness. It mentions the essentiality of property law to shape the contours of allowable ownership entitlements in an attentive manner to the systematic effects of property rights. It cites the need of corporations to support legal, economic, and political reforms infrastructures.