In America, we are eager to claim ownership: our homes, our ideas, our organs, even our own celebrity. But beneath our nation’s proprietary longing looms a troublesome question: what does it mean to own something? More simply: what is property? The question is at the heart of many contemporary controversies, including disputes over who owns everything from genetic material to indigenous culture to music and film on the Internet. To decide if and when genes or culture or digits are a kind of property that can be possessed, we must grapple with the nature of property itself. How does it originate? What purposes does it serve? Is it a natural right or one created by law? Accessible and mercifully free of legal jargon, American Property reveals the perpetual challenge of answering these questions, as new forms of property have emerged in response to technological and cultural change, and as ideas about the appropriate scope of government regulation have shifted. This first comprehensive history of property in the United States is a masterly guided tour through a contested human institution that touches all aspects of our lives and desires. Stuart Banner shows that property exists to serve a broad set of purposes, constantly in flux, that render the idea of property itself inconstant. Despite our ideals of ownership, property has always been a means toward other ends. What property signifies and what property is, we come to see, has consistently changed to match the world we want to acquire.

Women and the Law of Property in Early America

As a part of our CasebookPlus offering, you'll receive the print book along with lifetime digital access to the eBook. Additionally you'll receive the Learning Library which includes quizzes tied specifically to your book, and outline starter and digital access to leading study aids in that subject and the Gilbert Law Dictionary. This casebook continues its traditional approach to the teaching of property law. The new edition features new cases inserted into almost every chapter of the book, with appropriately updated notes and comments. The opening chapter includes a section of cases designed to hone a student's skill in close case analysis. In its entirety, the book introduces students to a broad spectrum of material traditionally covered in a first-year property course. A voluminous teacher's manual accompanies the book, with briefs of every principal case and extensive notes designed to aid the teacher in advancing classroom discussion on nearly every note in the casebook. For the first time, the teacher's manual includes additional problems and other materials designed to develop professional skills.

Buy a new version of this textbook and receive access to the Connected eBook with Study Center on CasebookConnect, including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities; practice questions from your favorite study aids; an outline tool and other helpful resources. Connected eBooks provide what you need most to be successful in your law school classes. Learn more about Connected eBooks This hugely successful cases-and-problems book is acclaimed for its textual clarity, evenhanded perspective, and contemporary, up-to-date character. Easily distinguished from other property casebooks for its clear descriptions of legal doctrine and its variations; its explanations of the social ramifications of property law; its emphasis on both statutory and regulatory interpretation; its comprehensive treatment of public accommodations and fair housing law, current tribal property issues, and property in human bodies; and its use of the problem method to teach legal reasoning andlawyeringskills. Thoroughly updated to reflect significant changes in the law of property, the Seventh Edition incorporates multiple new Supreme Court cases, including:Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.,Obergefellv. Hodges, andReed v. Town of Gilbert, and 3 decided or pending cases with implications for regulatory takings,Horne v.Dep’tof Agriculture,Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, andMurrv. State. Key Features: Updated to reflect significant changes in the law of property to help professors keep current and be aware of emerging disputes. These include multiple new Supreme Court cases: Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2507 (2015), upholding disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act; Obergefellv. Hodges, 123 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage; Reed v. Town of Gilbert,135 S. Ct. 2218 (2015), broadly applying the First Amendment’s free speech clause to sign regulations; and three decided or pending cases with implications for regulatory takings,Horne v.Dep’tof Agriculture, 135 S. Ct. 2419 (2015),Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 1257 (2014), andMurrv. State, 359Wis.2d675 (Wis. Ct. App. 2014), cert. granted sub nom.Murrv. Wisconsin, 136 S.Ct. 890 (2016). New materials and problems have been included in several areas: Collisions between the sharing economy and servitude, zoning, and landlord-tenant law; Questions of the inheritance rights of children born through assisted reproductive technology; Continuing litigation over the Rails-to-Trails Act conversion of abandoned railroad tracks into recreational trails Invalidation of the copyright on the Happy Birthday song; Commonwealth v.Magadini, 52 N.E.3d 1041 (Mass. 2016), upholding a necessity defense to a trespass charge against a homeless man; and The Revised Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, adopted in 2015.

Most people understand property as something that is owned, a means of creating individual wealth. But in Commodity and Propriety, the first full-length history of the meaning of property, Gregory Alexander uncovers in American legal writing a competing vision of property that has existed alongside the traditional conception. Property, Alexander argues, has also been understood as proprietary, a mechanism for creating and maintaining a properly ordered society. This view of property has even operated in periods—such as the second half of the nineteenth century—when market forces seemed to dominate social and legal relationships. In demonstrating how the understanding of property as a private basis for the public good has competed with the better-known market-oriented conception, Alexander radically rewrites the history of property, with significant implications for current political debates and recent Supreme Court decisions.

Does a right to property exist under international law? The traditional answer to this question is no: a right to property can only arise under the domestic law of a particular nation. But the view that property rights are exclusively governed by national law is obsolete. Identifiable areas of property law have emerged at the international level, and the foundation is now arguably being laid for a comprehensive international regime. This book provides a detailed investigation into this developing international property law. It demonstrates how the evolution of international property law has been influenced by major economic, political, and technological changes: the embrace of private property by former socialist states after the end of the Cold War; the globalization of trade; the birth of new technologies capable of exploiting the global commons; the rise of digital property; and the increasing recognition of the human right to property. The first part of the book analyzes how international law impacts rights in specific types of property. In some situations, international law creates property rights, such as rights in aboriginal lands, deep seabed minerals, and satellite orbits. In other areas, it harmonizes property rights that arise at the national level, such as rights in intellectual property, rights in foreign investments, and security interests in personal property. Finally, it restricts property rights that may be recognized at the national level, such as rights in celestial bodies, contraband, and slaves. The second part of the book explores the thesis that a global right to property should be recognized as a general matter, not merely as a moral precept but rather as an entitlement that all nations must honour. It establishes the components of such a right, arguing that the right to property at the international level should be seen in the context of five key components of ownership: acquisition, use, destruction, exclusion, and transfer. This highly innovative book makes an important contribution to how we conceptualize the protection of property and to the understanding that much of this protection now takes place at the international level.