Property and Human Flourishing

A nuanced and entirely new theory of property that reconciles individual autonomy and community. Professor Alexander shows that property exists to promote human flourishing, and that is why - and how - property law places obligations on owners. Thrilling to read and an instant classic." Joseph William Singer, Bussey Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Auteur
Gregory S. Alexander is the A. Robert Noll Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He is a nationally renowned expert in property law, and he has taught at Cornell since 1985. Alexander has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, in Palo Alto, California, and at the Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative and International Law, in Hamburg and Heidelberg, Germany. Professor Alexander is a prolific and recognized writer, the winner of the American Publishers Association's 1997 Best Book of the Year in Law award for his work, Commodity and Propriety. His previous Oxford book is Property and Community (edited with Eduardo M. Peñalver) 2010.

Texte du rabat

Many people assume that what morally justifies private ownership of property is either individual freedom or social welfare, defined in terms of maximizing personal preference-satisfaction. This book offers an alternative way of understanding the moral underpinning of private ownership of property. Rather than identifying any single moral value, this book argues that human flourishing, understood as morally pluralistic and objective, is property's moral foundation.The book goes on to develop a theory that connects ownership and human flourishing with obligations. Owners have obligations to members of the communities that enabled the owners to live flourishing lives by cultivating in their community members certain capabilities that are essential to leading awell-lived life. These obligations are rooted in the interdependence that exists between owners and their community members, and inherent in the human condition. Obligations have always been inherent in ownership. Owners are not free to inflict nuisances upon their neighbors, for example, by operating piggeries in residential neighborhoods. The human flourishing theory explains why owners at times have obligations that enable their fellow community members to develop certain necessarycapabilities, such as health care and security. This is why, for example, farm owners may be required to allow providers of health care and legal assistance to enter their property to assist employees who are migrant workers. Moving from the abstract and theoretical to the practical, this book considersimplications for a wide variety of property issues of importance both in the literature and in modern society.

Contenu

• Preface

• Acknowledgments

• Part I: Human Flourishing

• Chapter One: Flourishing and Welfare

• Part II: Ownership

• Chapter Two: Ownership and Obligations

• Chapter Three: Community and Communities

• Part III: Obligations

• Chapter Four: Intergenerational Communities

• Chapter Five: The Complexities of Land Reparations

• Chapter Six: The Right to Exclude

• Chapter Seven: Expropriations and Eminent Domain

• Chapter Eight: Of Buildings, Art, and Sperm: The Right to Destroy and the Duty to Preserve

• Chapter Nine: Race and Property

• Chapter Ten: Homelessness and Other Systemic Housing Problems

• Bibliography

• Index