Elizabeth Elia, ‘Servitudes Done “Proper”ly: Propriety, Not Contract Law’, Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law (forthcoming), available at SSRN. One of my favorite souvenirs from studying and working in Russia is a many-layered matryoshka, or ‘Russian Doll’. The unpretentious red, yellow, and blue painted wooden doll opens to reveal a smaller, nearly identical doll, which in turn opens to reveal another and another. This particular matryoshka has eleven dolls nested within one another – the smallest barely larger than a grain of rice. How delightful it was to read Elizabeth Elia’s article, ‘Servitudes Done “Proper”ly: Propriety, Not Contract Law’, which frames community servitudes as one of the many nested governing layers within our legal system. Elia’s ‘Russian Doll’ metaphor is compelling, and her broader point – that a governance (‘propriety’) frame is the appropriate one for property law – provides gratifying and unexpected analytical clarity to the law of servitudes … (more)
[Andrea Boyack, JOTWELL, 3 February]
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