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83 Minn. L. Rev. 129 (1998-1999)
The Several Futures of Property: Of Cyberspace and Folk Tales, Emission Trades and Ecosystems

handle is hein.journals/mnlr83 and id is 141 raw text is: The Several Futures of Property: Of Cyberspace and Folk Tales, Emission Trades and Ecosystems Carol M. Roset INTRODUCTION Private property has long been associated with gloomy images-the rapaciousness of various Robber Barons on the one hand, the musty casuistry of future interests and the Rule Against Perpetuities on the other. But in the late twentieth century, property seems blessed with a bright, perhaps even glamorous future. This article is an essay to predict that future-that is, to predict at least some of the directions that the institution of property is likely to take over the next generation. Property has always been one of the chief ways through which human beings have avoided what is alleged to be the tragedy of the commons. That is the situation in which unowned and unmanaged common resources are available to all, with the consequence that entrants crowd onto these resources, overusing them and underinvesting in their maintenance and improvement.I One chief rival to property in allaying the tragedy has been a system of directives from above: command and control governmental regimes avoid the t For helpful comments, I would like to thank especially Jamie Boyle, Hanoch Dagan, Robert Ellickson, Daniel Esty, Daniel Farber, Katherine Franke, Richard Lazarus, Alison Rieser, John Setear, Sylvia Tesh, Michael Treanor, Laura Underkuffler-Freund, and the participants at the AALS Washington workshop on property law (June 1997) and law faculty workshops at Fordham, Georgetown, the University of Virginia, and Yale. For able research assistance, I thank Shelley White. Special thanks to the University of Minnesota Law School for inviting me to give the Lockhart Lecture on which this article is based. L See Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, 162 SCI. 1243, 1244 (1968); see also H. Scott Gordon, The Economic Theory of a Common- Property Resource: The Fishery, 62 J. POL. ECON. 124, 134 (1954) (giving an earlier version of the theory of the tragedy of the commons).

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