Plural Ownership, Funds, and the Aggregation of Wills
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Joshua Getzler
This Article suggests that common ownership — better described as "plural ownership" to distinguish the phenomenon from semicommons — may usefully be analyzed from a dual perspective. Plural ownership may simultaneously be seen on the one hand as an aggregation of individualized rights, duties and intentions, and on the other as giving rise to a real entity with a group mind and corporate rights and duties distinct from those of the individual owners. For the purposes of understanding this dualism, the most developed and interesting form of plural ownership is the trust fund with multiple controllers and beneficiaries, an ancient device that now serves as the bedrock of modern capitalism. The fund is here subjected to legal, historical and philosophical scrutiny to uncover how group personality is generated by plural ownership in the absence of formal legal incorporation.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Introduction
- Community and Custom in Property
- How Property Can Create, Maintain, or Destroy Community
- The Evolution of Private and Open Access Property
- How Blackstone Became a Blackstonian
- Properties of Community
- Community and Property -- For Those Who Have Neither
- "You'll Never Walk Alone": On Property, Community, and Football Fans
- Plural Ownership, Funds, and the Aggregation of Wills
- Commons, Anticommons, and Community in Biotechnological Assets
- Property, Community, and the Problem of Distributive Justice
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Introduction
- Community and Custom in Property
- How Property Can Create, Maintain, or Destroy Community
- The Evolution of Private and Open Access Property
- How Blackstone Became a Blackstonian
- Properties of Community
- Community and Property -- For Those Who Have Neither
- "You'll Never Walk Alone": On Property, Community, and Football Fans
- Plural Ownership, Funds, and the Aggregation of Wills
- Commons, Anticommons, and Community in Biotechnological Assets
- Property, Community, and the Problem of Distributive Justice
