Property Rights: Long and Skinny

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between private and common property. It starts with the state of nature, works its way through Roman law, and finishes with a discussion of the application of these principles in a modern context. It explains how the intensification of property use often leads to the need for a public trust doctrine for common pool assets, and explains why long and skinny assets have single dedicated uses, chiefly for communication and transportation which enable them to link together productive property sites used for residence, manufacture, and farming. These long and skinny assets have a large perimeter relative to area, which makes them difficult to defend on the one side, and often exposes them to multiple legal regimes with inconsistent commands. It deals with such specific issues as the distinction between alluvion and avulsion, and offers a detailed analysis of the difficulty of permitting oil and gas pipelines in the United States.1