Public v. Private Property [Introduction to Common Law] [No. 86]

What is the relationship between public and private property? In this episode, the second in a series on the Common Law, Professor Richard Epstein of NYU School of Law describes how putting resources to their highest value use enables us to determine which resources should be held privately, as opposed to used by the public in common.

Professor Epstein provides an alternative to the conventional view that property rights are arbitrarily created by the state, and therefore can be changed at will by the state; a few simple rules, he argues, are universal principles of social organization, consistent across time and culture, which form the basis of social gains.

Professor Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

As always, the Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues; all expressions of opinion are those of the speaker.

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Related links:

Acton Institute: Private Property and Public Good
https://acton.org/pub/religion-libert...

Richard Epstein: Simple Rules for a Complex World
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.ph...

Khan Academy: Capital by Thomas Piketty
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics...