Michael A. Heller

Who knows what we own?

The key thesis of this book is that our core ownership stories are wrong. They contend the each of us uses some version of six ownership stories:
1. First come, first served;
2. Possession is nine-tenths of the law;
3. You reap what you sow—we own the fruits of our labors;
4. My home is my castle—I own what is attached to me;
5. Our bodies, our selves, and
6. The meek shall inherit the earth—family property stays in the family.

The authors are law professors, and they use a series of engaging real-life legal disputes to demonstrate that each of these rules are open to broad and conflicting interpretations. One key flaw in our simplistic ownership stories is that they are based on a binary view of ownership—either my story is correct, and I deserve full ownership of the property, or yours is correct and you deserve full ownership. The authors advocate thinking in terms of gradations of ownership (which they model with a light dimmer) rather than full ownership models (which they model with an on/off switch).

They offer a few broad principles that can be used to reduce conflict and resolve ownership disputes. These include considering:
• What ownership decision serves to best advance the collective well-being,
• Reframing the problem using design tool alternatives including
o ex post or ex ante considerations,
o rules or standards,
o exclusion or governance,
o setting baselines, and
o liberal commons.

They end with the statement “If there is one lesson from this book, it’s that mine reflects a choice among competing stories.”

This is a well written, entertaining, informative, well researched, thought provoking, and important book.… (mere)

A really good popular book about property law; I’d recommend it for law students and for people who are just interested in learning more about property. It sets out various frameworks for establishing property rights (such as attachment to an existing right, first-in-time, and possession) and shows how they’re always contested and partial. The opening example, about the Knee Defender (a device that an airplane passenger can deploy to prevent the seat in front of them from reclining) depends on competing accounts of “whose” space that is, and on the airlines’ own strategic silence on this—they could make explicit rules, but they’d rather have passengers mad at each other. Other topics in this far-ranging book include water rights, kidney sales, Black land loss, South Dakota’s special role in protecting the assets of wealthy people against legitimate creditors, the “sharing” economy that might just be the oligopoly economy, and more.… (mere)