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110 Geo. L.J. 1021 (2021-2022)
Dispossession: An American Property Law Tradition

handle is hein.journals/glj110 and id is 1038 raw text is: Dispossession: An American Property Law Tradition SHERALLY MUNSHI* ABSTRACT Universities and law schools have begun to purge the symbols of conquest and slavery from their crests and campuses, but they have yet to come to terms with their role in reproducing the material and ideologi- cal conditions of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. This Article considers the role the property law tradition has played in shaping and legitimizing regimes of racialized dispossession past and present. It inter- venes in the traditional presentation of property law by arguing that dis- possession describes an ongoing but disavowed function of property law. As a counter-narrative and critique of property, dispossession is a useful concept for challenging existing property arrangements, often rational- ized within liberal and legal discourse. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. .......................................................... 1022 I. DISPOSSESSION: A USEFUL CONCEPT FOR LEGAL ANALYSIS ........... ..1027 A. THE USE OF LEGAL ANALYSIS .............................. . 1028 B. DISPOSSESSION AND THE NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS .............. 1031 C. ON THE ORIGINS OF DISPOSSESSION........................... ... 1034 D. DISPOSSESSION AND ITS DISCONTENTS ........................ . 1038 II. PROPERTY'S EMPIRE .......................................... . 1041 A. JOHNSON V. M'INTOSH, A STUDY IN RESIGNATION ................ ...1042 B. THE DOMESTICATION OF EMPIRE ............................. . 1047 * Sherally Munshi, Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center. C 2022, Sherally Munshi. I am indebted to friends and colleagues who offered feedback at various stages, especially Sheryll Cashin, Dan Ernst, Sheila Foster, Allegra McLeod, Naomi Mezey, Eloy Rodriguez LaBrada, Madhavi Sunder, David Super, Robin West, and my property law colleagues at Georgetown. And I am grateful to many students over the years, who have themselves asked for more from their legal education, and to incredible research assistants, Em Richardson, Victoria Sheber, and Tara Wendell, for their intellectual commitment and comradery. I am also enormously grateful to the editors of The Georgetown Law Journal for their great care and patience. Any and all errors are my own. Insofar as I have made a few departures from the usual Bluebook rules, it is to forgo some of the more defensive conventions of legal writing and to make room for references to texts that the interested readers might not otherwise encounter within their study of law. 1021

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