New Publication – Theoretical Inquiries in Law: Sovereignty and Property

This publication compiles the results of a conference on Sovereignty and Property held at Columbia Law School in September of 2015, which brought together an interdisciplinary group of experts on sovereignty, property rights theory, globalization, and political theory to revisit the analogy between property and sovereignty and explore competing frameworks for understanding sovereignty and analyzing the transformation of sovereignty in the age of globalization.

From the Introduction

“The articles collected in this issue offer an opportunity to rethink the concepts of sovereignty and property and their relation to one another. … The first four articles explore the complex relations between sovereignty and property by conducting conceptual philosophical discussions: they delve into and challenge prevailing perceptions of the relationships between sovereignty and property, and suggest new conceptualizations. The next four articles focus on more specific aspects and implications of the complex relations between sovereignty and property, such as the nature of the right to private property, the communicative role of property, the political processes through which property rights are set, and the use of private property for strengthening public sovereignty. The last four articles tackle sovereignty, property and the relations between them through concrete examples, namely immigration, same-sex marriage, monetary sovereignty, and the sovereignty of the corporate religious. Brought together, the articles in this issue complicate prevailing assumptions on the relations between property and sovereignty, and both offer innovative conceptual frameworks for those relations and address their practical implications.”