As we’ve done every year lately, we’re soon headed to the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference at the William and Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia.
This year, the B-K Property Rights Prize will be awarded to Harvard lawprof Joseph Singer, who is, shall we say, an interesting choice, given his theory that a “robust regulatory structure” goes hand-in-hand with property rights, liberty, and the free market. Robust regulation isn’t exactly what you might think of when you think “property rights,” is it? So it should make for an interesting conference.
Professor Singer publishes a blog that is worth following, “Property Law Developments.” It is not one of those blogs that are heavy on the analysis, but its a good place to keep up on recent developments in all things property law.
The plaque pictured above is a list of prior prize winners.
Here are the conference details:
- Prize dinner: Thursday, October 1, 2015, Wren Building, William and Mary College. Join your colleagues and past awardees for a candlelit dinner and awarding of the B-K Prize to Professor Singer in the building where several of the founding fathers read law. Pretty neat, and the reception and dinner are a highlight of the conference.
- Conference: Friday, October 2, 2015, Law School. Panels include “Property as a Form of Governance,” “Civil Forfeiture of Property,” “Of Pipelines, Drilling, & the Use of Eminent Domain,” and “Property Rights in the Digital Age.” The usual stellar faculty will present.
Here’s the complete schedule of events.
I’ll be moderating the Civil Forfeiture panel, which features Sara Sun Beale of Duke Law, Scott Bullock of the Institute for Justice, and Sandra Guerra Thompson of the University of Houston Law School. Here’s the description of what we’re going to discuss:
Civil forfeiture laws allow government to seize private property without convicting or even charging the property owner of a crime. Used by a wide variety of state, local, and federal officials, the laws have resulted in the seizure of homes, cash, cars and other personal property of people never charged with a crime. This practice highlights the disparities in the protection of fundamental rights, suggesting that property rights remain a “poor relation” of other fundamental constitutional rights protected in civil and criminal settings. The panel will evaluate the impact of civil forfeiture laws on property rights and consider what, if any, reforms are needed.
Neat stuff.
Register here or download the form below and send it in. The $50 registration fee is darn good, and the $100 extra for the dinner and prize ceremony is also well worth it. Hope to see you there in a few weeks.
Registration, 2015 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference, Oct 2-3, 2015