Harvard Law Review 

Abstract: Issues regarding race and racial identity as well as questions pertaining to property rights and ownership have been prominent in much public discourse in the United States. In this article, Professor Harris contributes to this discussion by positing that racial identity and property are deeply interrelated concepts. Professor Harris examines how whiteness, initially constructed as a form of racial identity, evolved into a form of property, historically and presently acknowledged and protected in American law. Professor Harris traces the origins of whiteness as property in the parallel systems of domination of Black and Native American peoples out of which were created racially contingent forms of property and property rights. Following the period of slavery and conquest, whiteness became the basis of racialized privilege - a type of status in which white racial identity provided the basis for allocating societal benefits both private and public in character. These arrangements were ratified and legitimated in law as a type of status property. Even as legal segregation was overturned, whiteness as property continued to serve as a barrier to effective change as the system of racial classification operated to protect entrenched power. Next, Professor Harris examines how the concept of whiteness as property persists in current perceptions of racial identity, in the law's misperception of group identity and in the Court's reasoning and decisions in the arena of affirmative action. Professor Harris concludes by arguing that distortions in affirmative action doctrine can only be addressed by confronting and exposing the property interest in whiteness and by acknowledging the distributive justification and function of affirmative action as central to that task.

Abstract: hat the individual shall have full protection in person and in property is a principle as old as the common law; but it has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the exact nature and extent of such protection Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the new demands of society Thus, in very early times, the law gave a remedy only for physical interference with life and property, for trespasses vi et armis Then the "right to life" served only to protect the subject from battery in its various forms; liberty meant freedom from actual restraint; and the right to property secured to the individual his lands and his cattle Later, there came a recognition of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and his intellect Gradually the scope of these legal rights broadened; and now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life, -the right to be let alone; the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges; and the term "property" has grown to comprise every form of possession -intangible, as well as tangible

Abstract: Professor Calabresi and Mr. Melamed develop a framework for legal analysis which they believe serves to integrate various legal relationships which are traditionally analyzed in separate subject areas such as Property and Torts. By using their model to suggest solutions to the pollution problem that have been overlooked by writers in the field, and by applying the model to the question of criminal sanctions, they demonstrate the utility of such an integrated approach.

Abstract: After Brown v. Board of Education was decided, Professor Herbert Wechsler questioned whether the Supreme Court’s decision could be justified on the basis of “neutral” principles. To him Brown arbitrarily traded the rights of whites not to associate with blacks in favor of the rights of blacks to associate with whites. In this Comment, Prof. Derrick Bell suggests that no conflict of interest actually existed; for a brief period, the interests of the races converged to make the Brown decision inevitable. More recent Supreme Court decisions, however, suggest to Professor Bell a growing divergence of interests that makes integration less feasible. He suggests the interest of blacks in quality education might now be better served by concentration on improving the quality of existing schools, whether desegregated or all-black.