Commodity & propriety : competing visions of property in American legal thought, 1776-1970 / Gregory S. Alexander.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 387-470) and index.

INTRODUCTION -- PART ONE-- THE CIVIC REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1776-1800: Prologue-- Legal Writing in the Civic Republican Era -- Thomas Jefferson and the Civic Conception of Property -- Time, History, and Property in the Republican Vision -- Descent and Dissent from the Civic Meaning of Property -- PART TWO-- THE COMMERCIAL REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1800-1860: Prologue-- Legal Writing in the Commercial Republican Era -- "Liberality" vs. "Technicality": Statutory Revision of Land Law in the Jacksonian Age -- James Kent and the Ambivalent Romance of Commerce -- Antebellum Statutory Law Reform Revisited: The Married Women's Property Laws -- Ambiguous Entrepreneurialism: The Rise and Fall of Vested Rights in the Antebellum Era -- Commodifying Humans: Property in the Antebellum Legal Discourse of Slavery -- PART THREE-- THE INDUSTRIAL CULTURE, 1870-1917: Prologue-- Legal Writing in the Age of Enterprise -- The Dilemma of Property in Public Law during the Age of Enterprise: Power and Democracy -- The Dilemma of Property in the Private Sphere: Alienability and Paternalism -- PART FOUR-- THE LATE MODERN CULTURE, 1917-1970: Prologue Legal Writing in the Twentieth Century--The Demise of Legal Autonomy -- Socializing Property: The Influence of Progressive-Realist Legal Thought -- Property in the Welfare State: Postwar Legal Thought, 1945-1970 -- EPILOGUE

Most people understand property as something that is owned, a means of creating individual wealth. But in Commodity and Propriety, the first full-length history of the meaning of property, Gregory Alexander uncovers in American legal writing a competing vision of property that has existed alongside the traditional conception. Property, Alexander argues, has also been understood as proprietary, a mechanism for creating and maintaining a properly ordered society. This view of property has even operated in periods--such as the second half of the nineteenth century--when market forces seemed to dominate social and legal relationships. In demonstrating how the understanding of property as a private basis for the public good has competed with the better-known market-oriented conception, Alexander radically rewrites the history of property, with significant implications for current political debates and recent Supreme Court decisions. -- Provided by publisher

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