The Sovereignty of Property Rights

Larissa M. Katz, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, is publishing Property's Sovereignty in Theoretical Inquiries in Law. Here is the abstract.

This paper shows how property rights might be fundamental to the very nature of our legal order while admitting that the modern realities of taxation, regulation, and expropriation are not attacks on property rights as such. By distinguishing between a principle of sovereignty, which I argue constitutes the core authority of owners, and a principle of accession, which I argue regulates the distribution of benefits and burdens attached to the position, we can see how this is so. Attacks on property rights as such would be, rather, acts by the state that deny the basic sovereign authority of owners, by subordinating owners to the private choices of others.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.