Distributing the costs of change: property transitions and pacts

Abstract

In A Liberal Theory of Property (2021), Hanoch Dagan makes an important, thought-provoking contribution to property theory – one that unifies divergent, and at time apparently dichotomous, strands of thought in property theory and revives rich dormant ideas. Dagan persuasively centres property's justification and design on the value of autonomy and on the basic need for reciprocal recognition of the individual right to self-determination. He does so without excluding the relevance and significance of other property values, both public and private. The theory deepens existing debates within property scholarship about values such as freedom and personhood, and provides a wide-reaching analysis of how autonomy functions as property's telos. That telos is used to justify structural pluralism in property law and to delimit owners’ rights. In this way, for Dagan, property's justification determines the nature and ambit of private authority over resources.