Private Law Theory

Introduction:
… The essential nature of the regulatory property bargain is that private parties are incentivized to advance the public interest through the award of use rights not generally available to other landowners. The underlying controlling metaphor, popularized by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler’s book Reinventing Government, is that public agencies will steer and private actors will row. Steer-and-row is dubious for two reasons. First, it is always a conceit for any organization to imagine that it could obtain all of the information needed for intelligent planning, much of which is highly localized or tacit. Beyond the assumption that government experts can plan the voyage, the execution of public policy inherently is improvisational and opportunistic … (more)

Steven J Eagle, ‘The Perils of Regulatory Property in Land Use Regulation’. Washburn Law Journal, Vol 54 (2014-2015) (Fall 2014).

First posted 2015-03-11 13:14:04