Commodity & Propriety: Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thought - Hardcover

Alexander, Gregory S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226013537 ISBN 13: 9780226013534

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1998

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Gregory S. Alexander is the A. Robert Noll Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Global Debate over Constitutional Property: The Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thought, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0226013537
• ISBN 13: 9780226013534
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496