Property and Sovereignty: How to Tell the Difference

Arthur Ripstein

doi:10.1515/til-2017-0013

Article

Property and Sovereignty: How to Tell the Difference

Arthur Ripstein

Published/Copyright: July 26, 2017

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Theoretical Inquiries in Law Volume 18 Issue 2

Abstract

Property and sovereignty are often used as models for each other. Landowners are sometimes described as sovereign, the state’s territory sometimes described as its property. Both property and sovereignty involve authority relations: both an owner and a sovereign get to tell others what to do — at least within the scope of their ownership or sovereignty. My aim in this Article is to distinguish property and sovereignty from each other by focusing on what lies within the scope of each. I argue that much confusion and more than a little mischief occurs when they are assimilated to each other. The confusion can arise in both directions, either by supposing that property is a sort of stewardship, or that sovereignty is a large-scale form of ownership. One of the great achievements of modern (i.e., Kantian) political thought is recognizing the difference between them.

*University Professor and Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Toronto. I am grateful to David Dyzenhaus, Larissa Katz, and Douglas Sanderson for comments and discussion, to audience members at the Property and Sovereignty Conference at Columbia Law School, September 2015, and at the North American Workshop on Private Law Theory in Toronto, October 2015. I am especially grateful to my commentator, Daniel Markowitz and fellow panellist Jeremy Waldron, for their comments.

Published Online: 2017-7-26

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/til-2017-0013