PropertyProf Blog

Peter Gerhart: Remembering a Scholar and a Friend to All

Peter Gerhart, a friend to all of us and a longtime professor and former dean at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, passed away on February 7, 2021. To honor his memory and the many contributions he made to property law, we highlight this 2015 symposium, hosted by the Texas A&M University Journal of Property Law, on his book Property Law and Social Morality (Cambridge University Press 2013):

Kristen Barnes, Recognition and Reflection

Eric R. Claeys, On Corrective Justice and Rights in Property: A Comment on Property Law and Social Morality

Dave Fagundes, Property, Morality, and Moral Psychology: Comments on Gerhart’s Property Law and Social Morality

Blake Hudson, Moral Obligation and Natural Capital Commons on Private Land: Perspectives on Peter Gerhart’s Property Law and Social Morality

Kali Murray, What is Owed: Obligation’s Relevance in Property and Intellectual Property Theory

Christopher Serkin, From Social Recognition of Property to Political Recognition by the State: Peter Gerhart’s Property Law and Social Morality and the Evolution of Positive Rights

Laura S. Underkuffler, A Moral Theory of Property

Response: Peter M. Gerhart, Reflections an Property as a Social Good

 

Symposium: Dagan and the Liberal Theory of Property

Blog readers will doubtlessly be interested in a recent symposium hosted by the Law and Political Economy Project and centered on the new book A Liberal Theory of Property by Hanoch Dagan (Tel-Aviv University).

The symposium features reviews by David Singh Grewal & Jedediah Britton-Purdy, Nestor Davidson, Rashmi Dyal-Chand, Katharina Pistor, Ezra Rosser, and Lua Yuille.

Hanoch's reply, which is now available on SSRN (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3779397),  recaps the book’s core thesis and then addresses the reviewers’ two main challenges: whether liberal property is potentially self-destructive, and whether it might be a distracting utopia.

Mandelker on Sign Ordinances and Free Speech

Daniel R. Mandelker (Washington University) has posted Billboards, Signs, Free Speech, and the First Amendment on SSRN. Here's the abstact:

This Article reviews the competing demands free speech law makes when applied to sign and billboard ordinances. It describes the free speech doctrines that apply, explains ambiguities and conflicts, and makes recommendations for sign regulations that can avoid constitutional problems. The Article first explains how state courts decided the constitutionality of billboard controls before free speech law applied. It then describes the litigation problems municipalities face in sign litigation, and considers the overbreadth and severability doctrines that litigants can use to strike sign ordinances down. Ordinances that regulate signs typically regulate commercial speech. The Article explains the criteria the Supreme Court adopted for laws that regulate commercial speech, and how the Court liberally applied these criteria in a case upholding an ordinance that prohibited billboards. Lower court cases that applied this case are discussed next. They followed the Supreme Court’s approach in billboard cases but sometimes added new requirements. The Article then describes the free speech time, place, and manner rules that are an alternative to commercial speech doctrine, and how courts apply these rules to sign ordinances. Regulations for digital billboards are discussed next. The Article concludes by discussing the constitutional protections courts provide for noncommercial speech, and the constitutional restrictions they require for signs that regulate content.