Law professor Richard Epstein was a featured speaker (and past Brigham-Kanner prize winner) at the recent B-K Property Rights Conference in Beijing. He’s summarized his thoughts and insights in “Going Red on Property Rights,” posted at the Hoover Institute’s site. He writes:

Earlier this month, I attended a Chinese-American Conference in Beijing on property rights co-sponsored by the William and Mary Law School and the Tsinghua University Law School.  One purpose of the conference was to award in absentia the Brigham-Kanner Prize to retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for her contributions to understanding the law of property. The intensive two-day discussions on property rights were open, animated, and cordial. They also revealed deep ironies in both the Chinese and American approaches to property rights.

The entire piece is well worth reading. All of our posts on the B-K Conference are collected here. I’m writing my wrap-up of the Conference and will post it shortly.

In the meantime, I offer this little story.

A few of us are walking the 15 minutes from the hotel to the moot courtroom at the Tsinghua Law School, through the university campus. We cross the lightly traveled road, and most of us step up onto the opposite sidewalk. Professor Epstein, engrossed in conversation with another lawprof, doesn’t notice they are walking down the middle of the road, blocking traffic.

A few seconds later, a car comes up behind them.

In Beijing, pedestrians decidedly do not have the right of way.

“Get out of the road!” we call out.

Epstein slowly turns around, looks at the car, looks at us, and says with a smile, “sidewalks are for mere mortals.”

(But he does get out of the road.)
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