Cornell Law School is celebrating the publication of Prof. Eduardo Peñalver’s book Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates, and Protesters Improve the Law of Ownership, which he co-authored with Sonia K. Katyal, Professor at Fordham University School of Law. The library catalog information for the book is available here. You can see the Table of Contents and read selected pages from the book at amazon.com.
If you are intrigued by the concept of the role of the lawbreaker as a force in the evolution of property law, you can read an earlier treatment of the topic entitled “Property Outlaws,” co-authored by Professors Peñalver and Katyal in 155 U. PA. L. REV. 1095 (2007) and available in Scholarship@Cornell Law. The book expands the scope of the earlier article and also introduces the concept of “Altlaws.” Altlaws appear to violate the laws of intellectual property but “skirt the boundaries of property legality and can often make an objectively plausible argument that, although in a sense they are rebelling against the property status quo, their conduct actually falls within the boundaries of legal permissibility.” Altlaws push against the unclear boundaries of intellectual property law, as opposed to Outlaws who clearly operate outside the boundaries of property law.
For more of Professor Peñalver’s writings, see his faculty publications page and the Scholarship@Cornell Law online repository.
