\u3cem\u3eMelms v. Pabst Brewing Co.\u3c/em\u3e and the Doctrine of Waste in American Property Law

Melms v. Pabst Brewing Co. may be the most important decision ever rendered by an American court concerning the law of waste. Unless your specialty is property law, that might not be enough to stir your interest. The doctrine of waste, after all, does not loom very large in public consciousness these days. Nevertheless, waste has held a peculiar fascination for property theorists. The reason, I think, is that it touches directly on an important line of division in how we think about property. Does property exist primarily to protect the subjective expectations that particular owners have in particular things? Or is the central function of property to maximize the value that society ascribes to particular things? To put it somewhat dramatically, but I think not inaccurately: Is property an individual right or a social institution? Melms was decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1899. It involved a mansion on the south side of Milwaukee that was demolished in the early 1890s by Captain Frederick Pabst, the brewer of Pabst Brewing Company fame. Pabst owned the surrounding property, and thought he owned the mansion, too. It turned out that Pabst did not own the mansion in fee simple. Rather, according to another decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court — handed down four years after the mansion was destroyed — he held it only for the life of an elderly widow named Marie Melms. After Marie’s death, her children would have inherited the mansion, if it still stood. The Melms children sued Pabst, claiming he had committed waste by destroying the home that was rightfully theirs. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s 1899 decision rejected the claim that Pabst had committed waste in leveling the mansion. The decision contained path-breaking language seeming to say that waste disputes should be resolved by comparing economic values. In other words, the court appeared to adopt the view that property is a social institution, not an individual right. My central objective here is to ask whether this is the correct understanding of the case, or of the lessons that it holds for property law more generally

Economy of LIfe: Charismatic Dynamics and the Spirit of Gift

The dominant mode of globalization has mostly reinforced the disembedding of states and markets from the social practices and civic virtues of civil society writ large. In this process, abstract economic values linked to instrumental reason and procedural fairness have supplanted civic virtues of courage, reasonableness and substantive justice. As such, the global ‘market-state’ reflects the centralization of power and the concentration of wealth that is undermining democratic politics and genuinely competitive economies. However, the growing economic interdependence around the world also offers new opportunities for reciprocity, mutuality and fraternity among communities and nations. To promote an ethos of responsible and virtuous action, what is required is the full breadth of political and economic reason. Christian social teaching offers conceptual and practical resources that are indispensable to the search for broader notions of rationality. Among these resources are non-instrumental conceptions of justice and the common good in the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and cognate traditions in Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Closely connected to this is the idea of ‘civil economy’. As Pope Benedict XVI has suggested in his encyclical Caritas in veritate, ‘civil economy’ embeds state-guaranteed rights and market contracts in the social bonds and civic virtues that bind together the intermediary institutions of civil society. In this manner, it binds the ‘logic of contract’ to the ‘logic of gratuitous gift exchange’. The spirit of gift exchange translates into concrete practices of reciprocal trust and mutual assistance that underpin virtues such as reciprocal fraternity and the pursuit of the universal common good in which all can share. As such, ‘civil economy’ reconnects activities that are primarily for state-administrative or economic-commercial purposes to practices that pursue social purposes

'A habitual disposition to the good': on reason, virtue and realism

Amidst the crisis of instrumental reason, a number of contemporary political philosophers including Jürgen Habermas have sought to rescue the project of a reasonable humanism from the twin threats of religious fundamentalism and secular naturalism. In his recent work, Habermas defends a post-metaphysical politics that aims to protect rationality against encroachment while also accommodating religious faith within the public sphere. This paper contends that Habermas’ post-metaphysical project fails to provide a robust alternative either to the double challenge of secular naturalism and religious fundamentalism or to the ruthless instrumentalism that underpins capitalism. By contrast with Habermas and also with the ‘new realism’ of contemporary political philosophers such as Raymond Geuss or Bernard Williams, realism in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle can defend reason against instrumental rationality and blind belief by integrating it with habit, feeling and even faith. Such metaphysical–political realism can help develop a politics of virtue that goes beyond communitarian thinking by emphasising plural modes of association (not merely ‘community’), substantive ties of sympathy and the importance of pursuing goodness and mutual flourishing

El Quijote sin canon: notas sobre Don Quichotte (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933)

El presente texto analiza la adaptación cinematográfica del Quijote realizada en Alemania por G.W. Pabst, examinando el trabajo de luces y sombras de la tradición germana expresionista

People seek \u27place\u27 in Pabst play [Review of Charles Gordone\u27s play No Place to Be Somebody at the Pabst Theater, Milwaukee]

None Provide

There Is Another Kingdom : On The Politics of Virtue

No abstract available for this article

Propulsion and control propellers with thruster nozzles primarily for aircraft applications

A propulsion and control propeller with thruster nozzles, primarily for aircraft application is described. Adjustability of rotor blades at the hub and pressurized gas expulsion combined with an air propeller increase power. Both characteristics are combined in one simple device, and, furthermore, incorporate overall aircraft control so that mechanisms which govern lateral and horizontal movement become superfluous