Category Archives: Property
‘Less Freedom and More Equality’
Carla Spivack and Deborah Gordon, ‘Donative Freedom, Disrupted’, 91 Brooklyn Law Review (forthcoming, 2026), available at SSRN (5 February 2025). Donative freedom is the guiding principle of inheritance law. This is something that many of us who teach the subject tell students every semester, at the outset of a Wills and Trusts class. We keep […]
Lai, Yu and Lam, ‘Michael Heller’s theory of the “tragedy of the anti-commons”: A Coasian property rights interpretation and some applications to planning policies’
ABSTRACT This short analytical paper discusses Heller’s (2013) concept of the ‘tragedy of the anti-commons’ (TOAC) and his car-parking fable; and translates his analysis, in its best possible light, into a Coasian property rights-access framework. Within this framework, the paper proceeds to denominate TOAC as a special case of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (TOC) […]
Clinton Osemwengie, ‘The Role of the Courts in Shaping Proprietary Rights in Digital Asset Disputes in the UK’
ABSTRACT The United Kingdom in 2025 classified digital assets as property under the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025. This intervention followed a prolonged period of uncertainty regarding the legal nature of digital assets and the extent to which proprietary protections could be afforded to them. Prior to the enactment of the Act, the courts […]
Greg Baltz, ‘Landlord-Tenant Collective Bargaining’
ABSTRACT Amidst a growing affordability crisis, tenant unions organize to secure individual tenant protections, win collective control of housing, and build political power. Tenant unions harness rent strikes and organize across state lines to force landlords to come to the bargaining table absent any federal, state, or local legislative scheme compelling landlords to do so. […]
Kaden Pradhan, ‘Earth Jurisprudence and Land Law: A Critique of the Philosophical and Economic Foundations of the Modern Law of Real Property’
ABSTRACT This article explores the interaction between land law and the natural world through the critical lens of Earth Jurisprudence. Land law plays a critical role in either fostering environmental preservation or enabling its destruction, as it governs the private rights that can be exercised over land. At the heart of land law, however, are […]
John Linarelli, ‘The New American Private Law of Digital Assets’
ABSTRACT The 2022 Amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code represent the most significant revision to American commercial law in a generation, adding an entirely new Article 12 and revising other articles in significant ways. This article explores of the key changes. At the center of the 2022 Amendments is the creation of a new asset […]
Emma Laurie, ‘The Enduring Allure of Neoliberalism: Individualising Responsibility for Housing Costs in the English Private Rental Sector’
ABSTRACT This paper explores how the affordability of rents is addressed in the long-anticipated reform of the English private rental sector (PRS) by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. The PRS has doubled in size since 2010, acting as a social housing substitute for some households. Its tenants spend the highest proportion of income on housing […]
Odusanya and Mak, ‘Revolution or riddle? Decoding the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Act 2023’
ABSTRACT This article examines the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Act 2023 to assess whether it represents a genuine revolution in Scots property law or an interpretative riddle for commercial practice. In force from 1 April 2025, the Act replaces historic publicity mechanisms with a registration-based system centred on the Register of Assignations and the Register of […]
‘Interim injunctions and proprietary estoppel claims: Preston v Preston’
BACKGROUND The judgment in the recent Northern Irish case of Preston v Preston ([2026] NI Ch 3) is a useful example of how proprietary estoppel operates at the interlocutory stage. The background is a family dispute. Andrew Preston is one of twenty nephews and nieces of William Preston. Under William’s will he is just one […]
Geoffrey Forney, ‘The Status of Private Covenants in Gross in Maine’
ABSTRACT In State v Moosehead Mountain Resort, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court recently held that the State may enforce a restrictive covenant in gross. The decision appears to create new law by departing from the established rule in Maine, as laid down in an earlier decision in Brown v Heirs of Fuller, that restrictive covenants […]