I was reading Prigg v. Pennsylvania, the case in our Con Law class about the Fugitive Slave Act, and I couldn't help but think of this class. It seems to be almost a caricature of a legal outcome based on legal principles which prides itself on its logic but in no way approaches a moral conclusion. Here's Justice Story combining abstract legal axioms with those that he claims underlie the Constitution to reach a "logical" conclusion within the boundaries of our legal system. And what do we arrive at when we build off of these principles that are so important to our society? That people can be captured as "property" and enslaved?

It's a mockery of the claim that the principles our legal system operates on lead us to ethical outcomes.

In property law as well, the assumptions made to reach legal conclusions are pissing me off. Action in waste, adverse possession and dispelling conditions in a fee simple absolute based on a desire for alienability are all entirely built on what is economically most efficient. If a person has a life estate of a property and I'm the remainderman and that person destroys my favorite barn because the value of the property is projected to rise, I have no right to protect it because there's no assumed diminution of value. Is that all that property is worth? Its present market value? What if all my childhood memories were in that barn?

The law treats us like robots operating in a world where our entire objective is how to grow our bank accounts and rationalizes all decisions based on assumed values I and many others don't share.

-- KippMueller - 02 Feb 2012