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Property Rules or the Rule of Property? Carol Rose on the History, Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2018
Abstract
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References
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2 Rose, , Property and Persuasion at 3; for a slightly different take on her debts to Bentham, see her “Property as a Keystone Right?” 71 Notre Dame Law Rev. 330 (1996); Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legishtion (New York: Macmillan, 1948, orig. 1780 & 1789).Google Scholar
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18 This fits, as Rose shows, Thomas Merrill's argument that as transaction costs mount, law becomes more discretionary, or “judgmental,” and conversely, as transaction costs fall, law becomes more “mechanical,” yielding to all-or-nothing solutions. See Merrill, , “Trespass, Nuisance and the Costs of Determining Property Rights,” 14 J. Legal Stud. 13–48 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 It is worth underscoring the complexity with which she treats exchange–but it is exchange nonetheless. See her article in 44 Fla. U. L. Rev., esp. at 315.Google Scholar
20 In this sense, Rose also offers something of an alternative reading the evolution of discourses about rights from Mary Ann Glendon's counter-“hyperindividualist” Jeremiad. See Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impovershment of Political Discoure (New York: Free Press, 1991).Google Scholar
21 This itself, as Rose acknowledges, is a classical formulation, explored by Hirschman in Passions.Google Scholar
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