Nichols On Eminent Domain

Drawing on Indigenous peoples' struggles against settler colonialism, Theft Is Property! reconstructs the concept of dispossession as a means of explaining how shifting configurations of law, property, race, and rights have functioned as modes of governance, both historically and in the present. Through close analysis of arguments by Indigenous scholars and activists from the nineteenth century to the present, Robert Nichols argues that dispossession has come to name a unique recursive process whereby systematic theft is the mechanism by which property relations are generated. In so doing, Nichols also brings long-standing debates in anarchist, Black radical, feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial thought into direct conversation with the frequently overlooked intellectual contributions of Indigenous peoples.

In a country built on the institution of private property, property-owner rights have been under attack. By arguing that private property is a fundamental liberty whose protection deserves the highest priority, Ellen Frankel Paul challenges one of the dominant trends of the past half century: the erosion of property rights via zoning and land use restrictions, carried on by government exercising its "police power" or promoting "the public interest." Paul begins by examining the arguments of environmentalists in support of land-use legislation, and explores a few particularly troubling examples of the exercise of eminent domain and police powers. She traces the philosophical arguments for the two powers as well as their tortuous judicial history, the meaning of property rights and investigates how previous thinkers have defended these rights is detailed, and Paul suggests a more adequate defense for them. In the concluding portion of the book, the very legitimacy of eminent domain is questioned and the author offers recommendations for its reform. This analysis is wide in scope and makes creative use of historical, legal, economic, and philosophic methodologies. It not only gives an account of the present power regulations on land, but also provides an exhaustive history of the development of the law in these two areas and of the philosophical ideas of the thinkers who helped shape this process. This book is distinctive because it places a theory of the just acquisition of property at the heart of the answer to the question of the extent to which governments can rightfully exercise the powers of eminent domain and police. "Amazingly, in a country built on the institution of private property, the right to property in land has been under increasing assault, and has seldom been defended. Paul's book--by arguing that private property is a fundamental liberty whose protection deserves the highest priority--is a major step toward filling the void."--Robert Hessen, Stanford University

One legacy of the Reagan and post-Reagan years has been a questioning by both liberals and conservatives of recent eminent domain and property rights decisions by the Supreme Court. This timely volume examines the changing political and constitutional status of these concepts, Schultz argues that we need to rethink the nature of property rights by asking what purpose they serve in American society and whether they deserve special legal and judicial protection against legislative interference. "Property, Power, and American Democracy "is founded on a searching reexamination of the role of property in early and contemporary American legal and political thought. From this perspective, Schultz shows that the meaning of property is currently in flux as a result of a failure to sustain those values that property was originally supposed to protect in our society: individual liberty, limited government, and minority rights. In keeping with the moral and political values associated with property in the writings of John Locke, James Harrington, and other classical theorists, the author contends that property should not be viewed merely as a thing we possess or an entity we may dispose of at will. Instead it is to be seen as an important social relationship to which the law gives special protection thereby furthering a sense of autonomy, self-identity, and community. This volume demonstrates that once we view property in this light, we can then ask which relations or values are so important in our society that they deserve to be called property. Drawing upon both liberal and conservative points of view, "Property, Power, and American Democracy "is a powerful argument for the reinvigoration of property rights. It will be of special interest to political scientists, urban planners, and specialists hi American constitutional history and political thought.