Christopher Serkin, ‘What Property Does’, 75 Vanderbilt Law Review 891 (2022). Law sets the possibilities and reciprocal constraints within which human action can be incentivized, the benefits of exchange can be calculated, and conflicts can be resolved by a neutral arbiter in a predictable way. In these ways, law is operative on behavior. Law is not just a thing to be defined but instead can be defined by what it does. In ‘What Property Does’, Professor Christopher Serkin reveals this insight by studying the services property law provides us for managing our relationships with others and with things. His article shifts the traditional baseline question. As he states, ‘Instead of asking what property is’ – the question fielded in so much of property scholarship – his article ‘asks what property does’ (p 893) … (more)
[Donald Kochan, JOTWELL, 6 April 2023]
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