Professor Jessica Shoemaker’s article Re-Placing Property has been published in the University of Chicago Law Review. This work reflects long-simmering ideas about the relationship between property and placemaking.
The article begins with the foundational assertion that property and land-tenure choice influence how people relate to physical space. The article also shows how claims about place and place attachment are pervasive across modern property conflicts but are not treated consistently, resulting in the privilege of some place relations over others without sufficient clarity or analytical rigor. By introducing a new taxonomy for better evaluating these place-based claims in property law, this work offers a clearer lens for addressing property’s role in important social, economic, and environmental challenges, including the increasing financialization of land and housing and growing wealth inequality.
Re-Placing Property combines rural and urban case studies as well as a bit of personal narrative from Professor Shoemaker. These case studies span from Indigenous-led pipeline protests in the West to the emergence of new build-to-rent suburban housing developments, and from Bill Gates’s farmland acquisitions to active land reform projects in the Arctic.
In Fall 2021, Professor Shoemaker was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to analyze how property law has shaped who owns agricultural land in America and why. Her research was enriched by numerous conversations with farmers, landowners, and land activists.
Re-Placing Property was reviewed by Ann E. Tweedy, Reorienting American Real Property to is Egalitarian Goals, in JOTWELL: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots).
