It's Not Personal: Social Obligations in the Office of Ownership
24 Pages Posted: 12 Feb 2020
Date Written: January 17, 2020
Abstract
In this paper, I suggest that property has an institutional or political morality from which the social purposes of property—and the form appropriate to it—may be derived. An institutional or political morality identifies the norms that are required for an institution to play its part within a constitutional order that meets the requirements of justice and legality. I contrast this approach with a strand of progressive property theory, developed in Gregory Alexander's PROPERTY AND HUMAN FLOURISHING, that grounds a thick social-obligation norm in property law in interpersonal morality rather than institutional or political morality.
Keywords: Property, Progressive Property, Social Obligations, Duguit, Legal Philosophy, Jurisprudence, Private Law, Law and Society, Contract
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