This seminar will explore fundamental questions concerning the nature and justification of private property. These questions include how to conceptualize the right to property and what it should be understood to encompass; whether property rights should be conceived as natural or conventional in character; how the recognition and enforcement of property rights can best be justified; how property rights may be legitimately acquired and transferred; the status of property rights relative to other considerations and the permissibility of interference with property by the state or other private actors; the kinds of things that it is appropriate or desirable to treat as property; and the merits of private ownership as compared to alternative systems of resource management. We will engage with both classic philosophical treatments of property and recent theoretical work on the law of property.
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Bero, Stephen L.