Legal Commentary

I'm so pleased to see that my old colleague Thomas Mitchell has won a MacArthur "genius" grant.

Thomas Wilson Mitchell is a property law scholar reforming longstanding legal doctrines that deprive Black and other disadvantaged American families of their property and real estate wealth. Heirs? property, a subset of tenancy-in-common property, tends to be created in the absence of a will or estate plan and results in ?undivided ownership,? which means each of the legally defined heirs own a fractional interest in the property (rather than a specific piece or portion of the property)....

"Individuals with stable property rights are better able to participate in meaningful ways in our society. Growing up in San Francisco, I witnessed with much sadness the dramatic displacement of African American residents and businesses that occurred in part because the people affected lacked secure property rights. As a lawyer, I realized that certain property laws needed to be changed and better policies needed to be developed to give urban and rural African Americans, and other vulnerable people, stronger property rights that could enable them to build wealth and preserve important aspects of their history and culture...."

Full post as published by Althouse on October 06, 2020 (boomark / email).