Commodity Propriety: Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thoug [Paperback]

Most people understand property as something that is owned, a means of creating individual wealth. But inCommodity 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 asproprietary, 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.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Pt. 1: The Civic Republican Culture, 1776-1800
Prologue: Legal Writing in the Civic Republican Era
1: Thomas Jefferson and the Civic Conception of Property
2: Time, History, and Property in the Republican Vision
3: Descent and Dissent from the Civic Meaning of Property
Pt. 2: The Commercial Republican Culture, 1800-1860
Prologue: Legal Writing in the Commercial Republican Era
4: Liberality vs. Technicality : Statutory Revision of Land Law in the Jacksonian Age
5: James Kent and the Ambivalent Romance of Commerce
6: Antebellum Statutory Law Reform Revisited: The Married Women's Property Laws
7: Am