Keywords
Private property
Abstract
One of Professor Greg Alexander's central contributions to property scholarship is his emphasis on the multiple understandings of private property in the American legal tradition. Private property, he underscored in Commodity & Propriety: Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thought 1776-1970, has never been understood by American legal elites solely as a commodity providing owners with a robust right to pursue their private preferences and accumulate wealth unfettered by government regulation. For hundreds of years, private property also has been regarded as a tool of "propriety" through which governments promote social purposes, the specifics of which have been contested and varied over time.
Although there are clear differences between the present and the past, there arguably also are continuities. There remain multiple visions of property in land in the United States and debates about land policy continue to be hard-fought in our own time. I am immensely grateful to Professor Alexander for the historical context that he provides in Commodity & Propriety for better understanding these contemporary debates.
Recommended Citation
Wyman, Katrina M.
(2020)
"Commodity & Propriety in Contemporary New York City: Essay,"
Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy: Vol. 29:
Iss.
3, Article 12.
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cjlpp/vol29/iss3/12