Private Property and the Politics of Environmental Protection

Environmental Markets: A Property Rights Approach, by Terry L.Anderson and Gary D.Libecap. Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2014, pp. 240, ISBN: 978 0 5212 7965 9, AUD$ 37.59 (paperback) AUD$ 94.03 (hardcover).

Property rights in fishing: from state property towards private property?: A case study of three EU countries

Property rights and multipurpose mountain forest management

For decades the prevailing view in the United States and many Western countries has been that China does not appropriately respect intellectual property rights. These beliefs lie at the heart of President Donald Trump’s current trade war with China. Despite substantial geopolitical debate over differences between American and Chinese attitudes towards intellectual property rights, and despite the critical effects that such attitudes have on international economic markets and the function of the intellectual property system, empirical evidence of these attitudes is largely lacking. This Article presents original survey and experimental research that explores cross-cultural differences between American and Chinese attitudes towards intellectual property rights, personal property rights, and real property rights. The results of the studies are somewhat counter-intuitive. First, Chinese participants are found to have more consistent preferences towards different types of property rights than Americans. In a series of vignettes designed to test attitudes towards patented subject matter, copyrighted subject matter, tangible personal property, and real property, Chinese responses were more consistent and less context driven. Second, Americans do identify a preference for stronger intellectual property rights than Chinese, but only where infringement is committed by a private party for private benefit. Where infringement is conducted for public benefit, whether by a private or a governmental entity, Chinese and Americans tend to have the same attitudes towards intellectual property rights. Third, Americans display a lower regard for intellectual property rights than for tangible property rights in most contexts, a differential that is not echoed in Chinese responses. The distinctions that Americans draw based on the use to which property is put, and between intellectual property and tangible property, is not consistent with the law. Our experiments reveal that the ongoing debates over Chinese attitudes towards intellectual property rights miss the mark in certain regards. Chinese and American preferences for property rights are more similar than most have assumed, and the manners in which they differ are inconsistent with most proffered theories. These results provide important lessons for the future of international intellectual property rights relations, discourse, and enforcement.

The Evolution of Property Rights: A Study of the American West

Part 1 Interferences with private property: interferences with private property, 1938-1945 interferences with private property during the immediate post-war period interferences with private property during the communist era. Part 2 The abuse of certain rights other than property rights: the abuse of certain rights other than property rights, 1938-1945 the abuse of certain rights other than property rights during the intermediate postwar period the abuse of certain rights other than property rights during the communist era. Part 3 Righting wrongs in Eastern Europe: the restitution of property to natural persons and related schemes of compensation the restitution of property to the churches and related schemes of compensation compensation for injuries to rights other than property rights.

Market value is the most common compensation basis for expropriation of both private and customary property rights. Private property rights are generally exchangeable while customary property rights are conceptually not as exchangeable. It is hence critical to analyse the applicability of current compensation theories, which are founded on private property rights, to different property rights and in different social settings. By using existing literature and empirical evidence from Africa and other countries where customary property rights dominate, this paper undertakes a theoretical analysis of the applicability of existing compensation theories and the methodologies used to achieve the desired compensation goals. The analysis concludes that whilst current compensation theories are broadly applicable to customary property rights as they aim to protect property rights and prevent expropriatees from impoverishment, various ontological and methodological factors limit the realisation of these goals in settings dominated by customary properties. Such factors include ontology and dominance of customary property rights, use of market value as a compensation basis, and capacity of compensation assessors. Broadly, these factors lead to inadequate compensation and impoverishment of affected people.

Privacy, Private Property, and Collective Property

No abstract available.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze and clarify whether or not to obtain property rights over the natural resources of the Moon and other celestial bodies is allowed under the existing corpus juris spatialis. It deals with the topic of public and private property rights in outer space as such, comprising the Moon and other celestial bodies. The chapter focuses on the issue concerning property rights over outer space resources. Generally, a distinction should be made between two types of property rights in outer space: immovable and movable. The prohibition of private appropriation of outer space or any of its parts has been also confi rmed and made even more explicit by the provisions of the Moon Agreement. The dualistic theory basically assumes that international and municipal laws constitute two distinct categories of legal orders.Keywords: celestial bodies; dualistic theory; Moon agreement; natural resources; outer space; property rights

This Article models private property rights as a conflict resolution mechanism and shows that for the Coase Theorem to be consistent on its own terms, private property rights must generate the Pareto-optimal allocation of scarce resources among all feasible conflict resolution mechanisms. This conclusion is termed the Fearon Corollary. Equating the imposition of private property rights to conflict/war, the following question is considered: if pre-conflict common ownership is socially-optimal, under what conditions will disputing parties fail to bargain around the conflict? In addition to the explanations identified by Professor Fearon, the present article offers an additional behavioral explanation evidenced in the institution of private property rights itself, and, in particular, in state “Castle Doctrine” laws that permit the use of lethal force in defense of real property. To promote the socially-optimal shared use of contested scarce resources, a role for the courts is suggested where de facto common property rights are established by rendering private property rights random or unclear — judicial behavior that stands in sharp contrast to the commonly understood normative implications of the Coase Theorem. This uncertainty weakens private property rights, reducing the expected spoils of costly conflict, and, in turn, creates an incentive for disputing parties to cooperate in the form of negotiated settlement agreements. In this way, less secure claims to private property promote social cooperation.

This article argues that public property rights should be recognised as a separate category of property interest, different and distinct from private and common property interests and conferring distinctive rights and obligations on both “owners” and members of the public. It develops a taxonomy to differentiate private, public and common property rights. The article concludes that it is a mistake to think in terms of “private property”, “common property” or “public property”. The division and allocation of resource entitlements in land can result in private, common and public property rights subsisting over the same land simultaneously, in different combinations and at different times. The categorisation of property interests in land (as private, common or public) may also shift and change from time to time. The article considers the importance of distinguishing between private, common and public property interests for developing new strategies for environmental governance, and for implementing the effective protection of natural resources.

This article reviews research on the relationship between property rights and nationalism. A property rights perspective to the study of nationalism is relevant to understanding the origins and development of nationalism and nation states. Yet, key theorists of nationalism have mostly ignored the relationship between property rights and nationalism, or looked at it only indirectly. There are a variety of ways in which ownership or possession more generally can be related to nationalism, for instance through colonialism, racism, and dispossession (Bannerji et al. 2001; Bhandar 2016; Bhandar & Toscano 2015). This review, however, in order to build a consistent perspective on the historical emergence of nation states and nationalism, will have its main focus on property rights, property regimes and state-building. The literature on state-building and democratization bears important insights about this relationship which can be applied to the study of nationalism. This review will therefore draw on such literature, in addition to works on nationalism where the topic of property has been mentioned, to show how an integrated property rights perspective to the study of nationalism may yield important insights to our understanding of nations and nationalism. The article is structured as follows. First, it offers a brief discussion of what property rights are and why they are key to understanding the long-term historical development of nations and nationalism. After this, it outlines the links between property regimes and the formation of nation states, followed by a discussion of the conceptual links between nationalism and private property. The final section offers some brief reflections on Marxism, property and nationalism.

This paper, prepared for a Lincoln Institute conference on Evolution of Property Rights Related to Land and Natural Resources, and the forthcoming book Property in Land and Other Resources (D.H. Cole and E.Ostrom, eds, forthcoming 2011, Lincoln Institute), argues that, contrary to both the suppositions of some legal scholars and the theoretical underpinnings of Regulatory Takings doctrine, government regulations do not only impose on existing private property rights but also vindicate, and sometimes even create, public, private, and/or common property rights. After examining conflicting common law and Roman law rules relating to property rights in the atmosphere, the paper focuses on how assertions of state sovereignty and regulations combine to create Hohfeldian rights and duties respecting the atmosphere, where none previously existed or were unclear. An explicit (but hardly novel) claim is advanced that acts of sovereignty themselves amount to assertions of public property. The claim is supported by evidence from both civil aviation regulation and air pollution control. The paper also addresses how regulations have created private property rights to pollute in emissions trading programs (regardless of congressional assertions to the contrary). In some cases, assertions of public property via acts of sovereignty are a prerequisite to the allocation of private property rights, and not just in the atmosphere but in other natural resources, such as marine fisheries. The paper concludes with a discussion of normative implications for property theory generally and Regulatory Takings doctrine in particular. A more dignified treatment of public regulations that are designed to protect public rights would raise a serious question about which set of property rights should prevail in the several Regulatory Takings cases where privately-owned lands meet publicly-owned waters. That question cannot, however, be answered reasonably until a theory (or multiple theories) of public property are better developed to complement existing theories of private and common property. So, the paper ends with a call for more research into the theory and empirics of res publica (beyond equally naive public interest and public choice models).

The law of every jurisdiction defines a set of well-recognized forms that property rights can take, and burdens the creation of property rights that deviate from those conventional forms. In this respect, property law differs from contract law, which generally leaves parties free to craft contractual rights in any form they wish. The law's restrictions on the forms of property rights have recently been rationalized as establishing an optimal standardization of property rights into a limited number of discrete forms to facilitate communication of the content of those rights to third parties. We argue, in contrast, that the law's limitations on property rights take the form, not of standardization, but rather of regulation of the notice required to establish different types of property rights. These limitations serve, not to facilitate communication of the content of rights, but to facilitate verification of ownership of the rights offered for conveyance. Property law generally addresses this verification problem by presuming that all property rights in an asset are held by a single owner, subject to the exception that a division of rights is enforceable if there is adequate notice to subsequent owners. Because the benefits of divided property rights are often low and the costs of verifying those rights are often high, property law takes an unaccommodating approach to all but a few basic categories of partial property rights. In the course of developing our analysis, we offer a simple and clear characterization of the distinction between property rights and contract rights. We explore the varieties of verification rules by which the law establishes the forms of notice required to establish property rights, and illustrate the close relationship between verification rules and the forms of property rights that those rules support. We set out conditions for assessing the efficiency of alternative property rights regimes, and discuss the extent to which that efficiency calculus is actually reflected in property law. We survey some of the principal categories of partial property rights - including security interests, legal entities, coordinating rights in real and personal property, and intellectual property - showing how the structure of those rights reflects limits on the feasible verification rules. We also seek to clarify the relationship between property rights and contract rights, the connection between property rights and property rules, and the limits on specific performance as a remedy in contract.