Major land reform programs have reallocated property in more than one-third of the world's countries in the last century and impacted over one billion people. But only rarely have these programs granted beneficiaries complete property rights. Why is this the case, and what are the consequences? This book draws on wide-ranging original data and charts new conceptual terrain to reveal the political origins of the property rights gap. It shows that land reform programs are most often implemented by authoritarian governments who deliberately withhold property rights from beneficiaries. In so doing, governments generate coercive leverage over rural populations and exert social control. This is politically advantageous to ruling governments but it has negative development consequences: it slows economic growth, productivity, and urbanization and it exacerbates inequality. The book also examines the conditions under which subsequent governments close property rights gaps, usually as a result of democratization or foreign pressure.

Property Law in a Globalizing World identifies the paramount challenges that contemporary processes of globalization pose for the study and practice of property law. It offers a straightforward analysis of legal scenarios implicating cross-border property rights, covering a broad range of resources, from land, goods, and intangible financial assets to intellectual property, data, and digital assets. This is the first scholarly book offering a detailed study of legal strategies that can decrease the gap between the domestic tenets of property law and the cross-border nature of markets, interpersonal networks, and technology. It shows how strategies of soft law, conflict of laws, approximation, and supranationalism rely to various degrees on cross-border property norms and institutions, and studies the proprietary features of security interests and priorities to assets in insolvency in a global setting. It also shows how digital technology such as blockchain can revolutionize the system of cross-border property rights.

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.

Unlike existing textbooks written for law students on specific subjects impacting real estate transactions, Real Estate Law: Fundamentals for The Development Process uses "The Development Process" as a framework for understanding how the U.S. legal system regulates, facilitates, and generally impacts real estate transactions and their outcomes. This book not only addresses the nature of specific legal issues directly relating to real estate transactions but also how those issues may best be identified and addressed in advance. This book breaks down the myriad of laws influencing the selection, acquisition, development, financing, ownership, and management of real estate, and presents them in context. Readers of Real Estate Law will gain a practical understanding, from the perspective of a real property developer or real estate executive, investor, or lender, of: how to identify potential legal issues before they arise; when to involve a real estate attorney; how to select an attorney with the appropriate, relevant experience; and how to efficiently and economically engage and manage legal counsel in addressing real estate issues. Written as a graduate-level text book, Real Estate Law comes with numerous useful features including a glossary of terms, chapter summaries, discussion questions, further reading, and a companion website with instructor resources. It is a resource of great value to real estate and finance professionals, both with and without law degrees, engaged in one aspect or another of real estate development and finance, who want to become more conversant in the legal issues impacting these transactions.

Giulia Barbanente investigates the impact of large-scale foreign land acquisitions (LSLAs) on rural households in Ethiopia and Tanzania. Given the scale of LSLAs happening in developing countries, there is urgent need to objectively assess whether risks for smallholders are balanced by positive economic outcomes. The author considers four key pathways of influence of LSLAs on rural households: access to land, returns to land, returns to labor and price of agricultural goods. The four pathways are tested on the background of Ethiopia's and Tanzania's land tenure systems, which are strikingly different. The evidence shows several elements of similarity in the reported effect of LSLAs on the defined indicators of households' welfare in the two countries.

This book presents an international comparison of legal responses to the issue of vacant housing in Japan, the USA, France and Germany. While vacant housing is a shared problem in these four countries, the origin and context of the problem, as well as the focus of legal responses, differ considerably. Presenting the outcomes of an international symposium, this book explores different legal approaches (private/public law, federal/national/municipal governments, demolition/expropriation/requisition/planning) taken in the respective jurisdictions. It is highly recommended to readers whose work involves practical issues concerning vacant housing and who are interested in theoretical aspects of property law, building law and administrative law. The book also includes a chapter exploring the implications of the "tragedy of the commons/anticommons" for contemporary land use issues in Japan such as landscape protection, area management and unclaimed land.

Under the New Jersey State Constitution as interpreted by the State Supreme Court in 1975 and 1983, municipalities are required to use their zoning authority to create realistic opportunities for a fair share of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households. Mount Laurel was the town at the center of the court decisions. As a result, Mount Laurel has become synonymous with the debate over affordable housing policy designed to create economically integrated communities. What was the impact of the Mount Laurel decision on those most affected by it? What does the case tell us about economic inequality?

"Climbing Mount Laurel" undertakes a systematic evaluation of the Ethel Lawrence Homes--a housing development produced as a result of the Mount Laurel decision. Douglas Massey and his colleagues assess the consequences for the surrounding neighborhoods and their inhabitants, the township of Mount Laurel, and the residents of the Ethel Lawrence Homes. Their analysis reveals what social scientists call neighborhood effects--the notion that neighborhoods can shape the life trajectories of their inhabitants. "Climbing Mount Laurel" proves that the building of affordable housing projects is an efficacious, cost-effective approach to integration and improving the lives of the poor, with reasonable cost and no drawbacks for the community at large.

Are some things so personal that they should not really be considered property at all? Reinterpreting Property makes a major contribution toward redefining and humanizing the way our society conceives of property and, ultimately, itself. This collection of essays by one of the country's leading property theorists revitalizes the liberal personality theory of property. Departing from traditional libertarian and economic theories of property. Margaret Jane Radin argues that the law should take into account non-monetary personal value attached to property - and that some things, such as bodily integrity, are so personal they should not be considered property at all. Gathered here are pieces ranging from Radin's classic early essay on property and personhood to her recent works on governmental "taking" of private property.

The United States Constitution was designed to secure the rights of individuals and minorities from the tyranny of the majority2;or was it? Jennifer Nedelsky's provocative study places this claim in an utterly new light, tracing its origins to the Framers' preoccupation with the protection of private property. She argues that this formative focus on property has shaped our institutions, our political system, and our very understanding of limited government.

To Share, Not Surrender offers an entirely new approach to assessing Indigenous-settler conflict over land, opening scholarship to the public and augmenting it with First Nations community expertise. Informed by cel'an'en - "our culture, the way of our people" - this multivocal work of essays traces the transition from treaty-making in the colony of Vancouver Island to reserve formation in the colony of British Columbia. The collection also publishes translations/interpretations of the treaties into the SENCOTEN and Lekwungen languages. An all-embracing exploration of the struggle over land, To Share, Not Surrender advances the urgent task of reconciliation in Canada.

From the seemingly insignificant theft of some bread and a dozen apples in nineteenth century rural Germany, to the high courts and modern-day property laws, this English-language translation of Habermas' Diebe vor Gericht explores how everyday incidents of petty stealing and the ordinary people involved in these cases came to shape the current legal system. Habermas draws from an unusual cache of archival documents of theft cases, tracing the evolution and practice of the legal system of Germany through the nineteenth century. This close reading, relying on approaches of legal anthropology, challenges long-standing narratives of legal development, state building, and modern notions of the rule of law. Ideal for legal historians and scholars of modern German and nineteenth-century European history, this innovative volume steps outside the classic narratives of legal history and gives an insight into the interconnectedness of social, legal and criminal history.

The Amazon, the world's largest rain forest, is the last frontier in Brazil. The settlement of large and small farmers, squatters, miners, and loggers in this frontier during the past thirty years has given rise to violent conflicts over land as well as environmental duress. "Titles, Conflict, and Land Use" examines the institutional development involved in the process of land use and ownership in the Amazon and shows how this phenomenon affects the behavior of the economic actors. It explores the way in which the absence of well-defined property rights in the Amazon has led to both economic and social problems, including lost investment opportunities, high costs in protecting claims, and violence. The relationship between land reform and violence is given special attention.
The book offers an important application of the New Institutional Economics by examining a rare instance where institutional change can be empirically observed. This allows the authors to study property rights as they emerge and evolve and to analyze the effects of Amazon development on the economy. In doing so they illustrate well the point that often the evolution of economic institutions will not lead to efficient outcomes.
This book will be important not only to economists but also to Latin Americanists, political scientists, anthropologists, and scholars in disciplines concerned with the environment.
Lee Alston is Professor of Economics, University of Illinois, and Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Gary Libecap is Professor of Economics and Law, University of Arizona, and Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Bernardo Mueller is AssistantProfessor, Universidade de Brasilia.

The ways that social advocates organize to fight unaffordable housing and homelessness in Los Angeles, illuminated by a new conceptual framework for studying collective action How Civic Action Works renews the tradition of inquiry into collective, social problem solving. Paul Lichterman follows grassroots activists, nonprofit organization staff, and community service volunteers in three coalitions and twelve organizations in Los Angeles as they campaign for affordable housing, develop new housing, or address homelessness. Lichterman shows that to understand how social advocates build their campaigns, craft claims, and choose goals, we need to move beyond well-established thinking about what is strategic. Lichterman presents a pragmatist-inspired sociological framework that illuminates core tasks of social problem solving, both contentious and noncontentious, by grassroots and professional advocates alike. He reveals that advocates' distinct styles of collective action produce different understandings of what is strategic, and generate different dilemmas for advocates because each style accommodates varying social and institutional pressures. We see, too, how patterns of interaction create a cultural filter that welcomes some claims about housing problems while subordinating or delegitimating others. These cultural patterns help solve conceptual and practical puzzles, such as why coalitions fragment when members agree on many things, and what makes advocacy campaigns separate housing from homelessness or affordability from environmental sustainability. Lichterman concludes by turning this action-centered framework toward improving dialogue between social advocates and researchers. Using extensive ethnography enriched by archival evidence, How Civic Action Works explains how advocates meet the relational and rhetorical challenges of collective action.

The 1805 New York foxhunting case Pierson v. Post has long been used in American property law classrooms to introduce law students to the concept of first possession by asking how one establishes possession of a wild animal. In this book, Angela Fernandez retells the history of the famous fox case, from its origins as a squabble between two wealthy young men on the South Fork of Long Island through its appeal to the New York Supreme Court and entry into legal treatises, law school casebooks, and law journal articles, where it still occupies a central place. Fernandez argues that the dissent is best understood as an example of legal solemn foolery. Yet it has been treated by legal professionals, the lawyers of its day, and subsequent legal academics in such a serious way, demonstrating how the solemn and the silly can occupy two sides of the same coin in American legal history.

Whale oil lit the cities and greased the machines of the Industrial Revolution. In light of its importance, competition between whalers was high. Far from courts and law enforcement, competing crews of American whalers not known for their gentility and armed with harpoons tended to resolve disputes at sea over ownership of whales. Left to settle arguments on their own, whalemen created norms and customs to decide ownership of whales pursued by multiple crews. The Law of the Whale Hunt provides an innovative examination of how property law was created in the absence of formal legal institutions regulating the American whaling industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Using depositions, court testimony, logbooks, and other previously unused primary sources, Robert Deal tells an exciting story of American whalers hunting in waters from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific and the Sea of Okhotsk.

Im Jahr 1516 erschien das "Goldene Buch" von Thomas Morus: "Utopia". Er ging in die Geschichte als Vater der Gesellschaftsutopie ein. Der Band geht den Ursprungen von Utopia nach, diskutiert die Aktualitat von Utopien und gibt einen Ausblick: Klimatopia. Das Buch ruckt die raumliche Dimension der Utopie in den Mittelpunkt und zeigt, dass Morus' "Utopia" auch nach 500 Jahren in Zukunftsdebatten ausstrahlt. Dies erfolgt durch eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem "Utopie"-Begriff aus raumplanerischer Perspektive, die Analyse der Versuche, Utopien baulich umzusetzen und die Kritik am - oft missbrauchten - Utopie-Begriff. Mit dem Buch wird ein Beitrag zur Diskussion um die Richtungsorientierung fur eine nachhaltige Entwicklung - im Zeitalter eines neuen Klimamodus der Menschheit geleistet.

One of the most pressing issues in contemporary China is the massive rural land takings that have taken place at a scale unprecedented in human history. Expropriation of land has dispossessed and displaced millions for several decades, despite the protection of property rights in the Chinese constitution. Combining meticulous doctrinal analysis with in-depth historical investigation, Chun Peng tracks the origin and evolution of China's rural land takings law over the twentieth century and demonstrates an enduring tradition of land takings for state-led social transformation, under which the takings law is designed to be power-confirming. With changed socio-political circumstances and a new rights-respecting constitutional agenda, a rebalance of the law is now underway, but only within existing parameters. Peng provides a piercing analysis of how land has been used by the largest developing country in the world to develop itself, at what costs and where the future might be.

What is property, and why does our species have it? In The Property Species, Bart J. Wilson explores how humans acquire, perceive, and know the custom of property, and why this might be relevant to understanding how property works in the twenty-first century. Arguing that neither the sciences nor the humanities synthesizes a full account of property, the book offers a cross-disciplinary compromise that is sure to be controversial: Property is a universal and uniquely human custom. Integrating cognitive linguistics with philosophy of property and a fresh look at property disputes in the common law, the book makes the case that symbolic-thinking humans locate the meaning of property within a thing. That is, all human beings and only human beings have property in things, and at its core, property rests on custom, not rights. Such an alternative to conventional thinking contends that the origins of property lie not in food, mates, territory, or land, but in the very human act of creating, with symbolic thought, something new that did not previously exist. Written by an economist who marvels at the natural history of humankind, the book is essential reading for experts and any reader who has wondered why people claim things as "Mine!", and what that means for our humanity.

Possession is a key concept in both the common and civil law, but it has hitherto received little scrutiny. Law and Economics of Possession uses insights from economics, psychology and history to analyse possession in law, compare and contrast possession with ownership, break down the elements of possession as a fact and as a right, challenge the adage that 'possession is 9/10 of the law', examine possession as notice, explain the heuristics of possession, debunk the behavioural studies which confuse possession with ownership, explore the LightSquared dispute from the perspective of 'possession' of spectrum frequency and provide new insights to old questions such as first possession, adverse possession and property jurisdiction. The authors include leading property scholars, who examine possession laws in, among others, the USA, UK, China, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, France, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Austria.

Disputes and dispossession of property rights in the mining sector are causes of injustice, violence, and forced resettlement around the world. This comprehensive volume examines mining, particularly what is often called 'Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining', from a perspective of governance and rights. It focuses on rights to land, natural resources, and other forms of material 'property'. Many projects, policies, and laws targeting artisanal and small-scale mining are embedded in problematic conceptual and institutional frameworks that implicitly stigmatise and discipline artisanal and small-scale miners. This collection takes a critical look at notions of property to destabilise some of these frameworks. The chapters in this book are notable for their recognition of the agency of artisanal miners and 'local communities' within the uneven hierarchies in which they are embedded, and their acknowledgement of the difficulties of state regulation of such a complex set of issues. The authors use a variety of theoretical tools, engaging with political economy, political ecology, classical economic theory, and socio-cultural concepts derived from ethnographic methods. This book includes insightful case studies from Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Mongolia, South Africa, and Zambia, and is an important resource for academics, development practitioners, and policy-makers. It was originally published online as a special issue of Third World Thematics.