Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
Abstract
Though several others can rightly be said to have done as much, no one has done more to rehabilitate the idea of property as a meaningful normative concept than James Penner and Henry Smith. That the two of them have edited a collection together is a substantial reason to read it. That the collection contains contributions from many of the best property theorists is another. The introduction to the book sets the ambitious goal of identifying what needs explaining in the ‘broad space that lies between’ the philosophy of property and scholarship about particular legal doctrines. For anyone interested in property theory, or who wants better to understand property doctrines and institutions, this book repays a careful read. Close examination exposes to view not one broad space in the property literature but several. Indeed, perhaps the book’s most significant achievement is to reveal how bifurcated property scholarship is today, along not one but several fissures. The book contains so many rich and promising insights that it might seem ungrateful to point out the gaps that it leaves unfilled. Yet many of the gaps appear precisely because the insights open unexplored lines of inquiry more clearly to view.
Recommended Citation
Adam J. MacLeod, Bridging the Gaps in Property Theory, 77 Mod. L. Rev. 1009 (2014).
