The Social-Obligation Norm in American Property Law

This article seeks to provide in property legal theory an alternative to law-and-economics theory, the dominant mode of theorizing about property in contemporary legal scholarship. I call this alternative the social obligation theory. I argue that American property law, both on the private and public sides, includes a social-obligation norm but that this norm has never been explicitly recognized as such nor systemically developed. I argue that a proper understanding of the social obligation explains a remarkably wide array of existing legal doctrine in American property law, ranging from the power of eminent domain to the modern public trust doctrine. In some cases social obligation reaches the same result as law-and-economics, but in other cases it will not. Even where it reaches the same result as law and economics, social obligation theory provides a superior explanation. At a normative level I argue that the version of the social-obligation norm that I develop here is morally superior to other candidates for the social-obligation norm. It is so because it best promotes human flourishing, i.e., enabling individuals to live lives worthy of human dignity. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum\u27s capabilities approach (which itself is based on the Aristotelian notion that the human being is a social and political animal, not self-sufficient alone), the social obligation theory holds that all individuals have an obligation to others in their respective communities to promote the capabilities that are essential to human flourishing (e.g., freedom, practical reasoning). For property owners this has important consequences. if we accept the existence of an obligation to foster the capabilities necessary for human flourishing, and if we understand that obligation as extending to an obligation to share property, at least in surplus resources, in order to enhance the abilities of others to flourish, then it follows that, in the predictable absence of adequate voluntary transfers, the state should be empowered and may even be obligated to step in to compel the wealthy to share their surplus with the poor so that the latter can develop the necessary capabilities. None of this is meant to suggest that the state\u27s power, even as it touches on the facilitation of the capabilities we are discussing, is unbounded. But the limits to the state\u27s proper domain are supplied by the same principles that justify its action: the demands generated by the capabilities that facilitate human flourishing - freedom, practical rationality, and sociality, among others

A Process Model of Locational Change in Entrepreneurial Firms: An Evolutionary Perspective

How do changes in the spatial organization of entrepreneurial firms come about? This paper provides a conceptualisation of the process of locational change. A process model of locational change is constructed on the basis of an empirical study of 109 locational events during the life course of 25 young firms in knowledge intensive sectors (knowledge services and biomedicals). This process model of locational change maps both internal and external variation and selection processes. This model contributes to the development of a causal process theory of the spatial development of (new) firms

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Temporal Stability of Crime Hot Spots and the Criminology of Place

It is widely recognized that the distribution of crime in urban areas is not randomly distributed, but is highly concentrated in small pockets of space known as crime “hot spots”. While the empirical evidence supporting the law of crime concentration is strong, most studies that have examined the stability of crime hot spots over time have aggregated crime across years. This dissertation seeks to expand our understanding of the temporal stability of micro-geographic crime hot spots by addressing three research questions: (1) How are high-crime micro-places distributed at the monthly level? How much variation exists in the distribution of crime across micro-places when crimes are aggregated on a monthly rather than an annual basis?; (2) Do structural characteristics associated with micro-geographic crime hot spots differ compared to low-crime and crime-free places?; and (3) Are structural characteristics of micro-geographic hot spots associated with hot spot periodicity? Can the likelihood that a place will experience multiple high-crime months be determined by its structural characteristics? To address these questions, the dissertation examines data from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD), the American Communities Survey (ACS), the decennial Census of the United States, and the St. Louis Open Data Portal. In response to the first question, this dissertation explores monthly crime concentrations at the micro-geographic level using street segments in St. Louis, Missouri. Logistic and negative binomial regression models are estimated to address the second research question regarding the structural attributes of violent and property crime hot spots. Finally, the structural characteristics of temporary and violent crime hot spots are compared using a Cox regression model commonly used in survival analyses. Results from these analyses produced several substantively interesting findings, including: (1) there is significant within-year variation in the distribution of crime hot spots, including differences in the temporal stability of high-crime street segments depending on the type of crime studied; (2) violent and property crime hot spots can be distinguished based on their specific sets of structural attributes, with some characteristics of place exhibit inverse relationships between crime types; and (3) the attributes of micro-geographic places may influence the temporal stability of crime hot spots. Implications of these findings for criminal justice policy and directions for future research are discussed

Legal Obligation and the Natural Law

This Article will for the most part assume, however, that we currently have at least an arbitrary preference to avoid such a result, if possible. But again, no narrowly circumscribed solution to the problem of justifying legal obligation seems possible. Rather, the narrowest possible affirmative solution to the problem of the moral character of legal obligation involves recourse to what is recognizably a natural law approach. Not just any recognizably natural law approach will suffice, however. If we are to solve the problem of legal obligation in an affirmative way, we are led inevitably to a single possible solution involving a distinctively, unmistakably, theistic version of the natural law. It is something of an under- statement to suggest that proving such a solution works is a task beyond the scope of this Article. But some effort will be expended on showing not merely that the choice really is as stark as we have supposed, but that the theistic natural law approach is susceptible of progressive development and not without contemporary plausibility and intellectual appeal

Land Virtues

This article has two goals. First, I explore some of the descriptive and normative shortcomings of traditional law and economics discussions of the ownership and use of land. These market-centered approaches struggle in different ways with features of land that distinguish it from other commodities. The complexity of land - its intrinsic complexity, but even more importantly the complex ways in which human beings interact with it - undermines the notion that owners will focus on a single value, such as wealth, in making decisions about their land. Adding to the equation land\u27s memory, by which I mean the combined impact of the durability of land uses and the finite quantity of land, calls into question the normative assessment that owners whose behavior is guided by a unitary measure like market value are using their land wisely, or at least more wisely than other modes of decision-making might hope to accomplish. The shortcomings of traditional law and economics theories of land use point toward the benefits of a pluralist theory of property based on the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics. Setting forth the broad outlines of such a theory as it applies to the law of land use is the second goal of this article. Virtue theory, I will argue, is capable of incorporating the valuable insights that have made economic analysis so appealing to land use theorists without distorting our moral vision or treating economic consequences as the only considerations that ought to matter

Contributions from Neuroscience and Biology to the Philosophy of Law

This article discusses the possibility of dealing, from a scientific point of view, with ethical standards from which one can critically evaluate positive law. For a long time it was considered that such standards would be subjective, emotional, and that they would vary according to time and place. That is why it was considered impossible, especially from a positivist point of view, to examine them using a scientific approach, due to a lack of the necessary objectivity. The findings of contemporary biology and neuroscience, however, may cast new light on this debate. Although they would not resolve the debate, these findings significantly challenge the idea that moral sentiments cannot be able to be scientifically studied