Property... Finally!

First property class was today, and Prof. Volpp started it off with a slightly teary reminder to us to not let school and work take predence over our interpersonal relationships. Apparently it was her mom that recently died, and so she wanted to emphasize the fact that people aren't always going to be around forever.

I can tell that this class is going to have a significant social policy aspect to it. After all, what is the nature of property but the right to exclude others? And excluding others is usually the cause of injustice.

Take for example, the case we discussed today, Johnson v. M'Intosh. It was an early 1800's case revolving around the land rights of Native Americans, where the Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans had no ownership rights in the U.S. The rationale was that the U.S. government derived its rights from the Europeans, who derived their right to own the land from their "discovery" of the land and their "conquest" of the uncivilized indigenous people. Why did the White man get to "discover" the land when it was so obvious that it had already been discovered before? Justice Marshall's reasoning was that the Native Americans were too primitive to make "proper" use of the land.

Go ahead and let that sink in.

It looks like property will be an interesting class.