Private Law Theory

INTRODUCTION
The individual’s sole dominion over a parcel of land – to the exclusion of others in the community or the public at large – is a myth, despite the prevalence of this view in conventional US property law. In practice, the rights and obligations in any one parcel of land is a mixture of individual, community, and public interests coexisting in that land. It is the proportion of those interests, not the outright exclusion of any one interest, that defines ownership. A revised view of property law, defined in this Article, recognizes the proportionality of individual, community, and public interests coexisting in property. That proportionality, not the mythical ‘individual rights’, governs the complex property regimes that have evolved in the United States. In Part I, the conventional view of property law fails when contrasted with real-world practice …

Kamaile A Turčan, US Property Law: A Revised View, 45 William and Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review 319 (2021).

First posted 2021-05-07 17:00:35