Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
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, material, and legal-political influences of property and race on each other, and several corresponding theoretical paradigms: (i) land (as understood through the so-called ‘Third World Approaches to International Law’ methodology and Indigenous Law), (ii) people/ labor (as understood through studies of ‘racial capitalism’), and (iii) the formulation of rights (as understood through Critical Race Theory and race-conscious property scholars). Throughout history, race and property have been indispensable to each other and have relied on each other’s supporting architecture. An appreciation of their interdependence reveals how racial hierarchy and separation have been normalized, how exercises of power including white supremacy have been invisibilized, and how racial disparities are still being perpetuated. In other words, it is through an examination of the original and recurring encounters between property and race that the power and inequity embedded in property itself can be revealed.

Gupta, Priya S, Property and Race (April 11, 2022) in Nicole Graham, Margaret Davies, and Professor Lee Godden (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Property, Law and Society (Routledge, forthcoming 2022), TLI Think! Paper 1/2022.

First posted 2022-04-18 09:00:36