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I am delighted to contribute this Essay to this collection of works celebrating Michael Perry’s lifetime achievements. From my first acquaintance with his work in the late 1980s, I have both admired and been profoundly challenged by it. One of his greatest and most enduring contributions is his foundational idea that every human life is sacred and, therefore, all are entitled to basic human rights. In his words, it is this “fundamental conviction [that is] at the heart of the morality of human rights.” What is the ultimate source for this “sacredness view,” upon which so much of human law depends? Perry is inherently skeptical about the capacity of secular reasoning and convictions to offer a coherent account of both human rights and the innate worth of human beings upon which they are founded. Rather, the premise that every human being is “sacred” or “inviolable” is inescapably religious. In other words, religious beliefs and secular objectives work together to create legal regimes of human rights. As a matter of personal understanding and conviction, I do not doubt there are both great truth and power in what he says. For me, questions about human worth and destiny involve inquiries that can easily transcend the limits of the human mind. In this Essay, rather than engaging with his work in a theoretical vein, I have chosen to engage it in an immediate and very critical context. Religion can create, ground, and support human rights. But what if it does not? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the bedrock principles of American property law is that all property owners and all property are protected equally. We do not believe--when it comes to compensation for loss--that poor owners are compensated rigidly and rich owners are not, or that property in private homes is protected rigidly and property in commercial or industrial structures is not. When it comes to compensation due to public or private fault, we believe in absolute equality. Equal treatment of property is at the heart of the liberal state and is the promise of American property law. This Essay challenges that bedrock idea. The ultimate inadequacy of finite resources limits government decisions about their distribution, including compensation of private owners for their loss under takings law and other theories. In fact, the idea that public payment for private loss is "resource neutral," particularly in the context of government fault-based claims, has always been a mythical one. When it comes to legal protection and rights to public compensation, ideas of equal protection for all kinds of property loss are neither currently implemented by American law, nor should they be. When loss occurs, and the adequacy of public resources fails, all property is not equal. It is not equal in origin, societal value, or deserved compensation. If there has been plausible deniability of this truth in the past, it will be shattered by the looming demands of global-warming catastrophe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author talks about content of the book "Property Law and Social Morality" by professor Peter Gerhart in which he frames the issue as an apparent conflict between property and morality. It is noted that private-property objective that Gerhart chooses for focus is autonomy. Gerhart's theory would achieve link between property rights and duties to others that property theorists and other commentators have long sought.

The article critiques the book "Subversive Property: Law and the Production of Spaces of Belonging" by Sarah Keenan, and it mentions the feminist legal theory-related work of Keenan and the late American law professor Mary Joe Frug. Property rights are addressed, along with a British asylum claim involving Ugandan lesbian Prossy Kakooza. Legal decisions about inclusion and exclusion are examined, along with other refugee and immigration law cases involving lesbians in Australia and Canada.

An introduction to a constitutional protection of property is presented which includes Professor Joe Singer, problems of property, and condition of having no rules.

The article discusses property rights in America, threats of collective action, and the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as of June 2013. Several eminent domain-related litigation matters are addressed, including the U.S. Supreme Court case Kelo v. City of New London. Legal rights involving speech, religion, and liberty are mentioned, along with regulatory takings and changes in the administrative interpretation of laws.

The article discusses a court case wherein Stop the Beach Renourishment Inc. filed a lawsuit against Florida Department of Environmental Protection in violation of the U.S. Takings Clause. It details the history of the case, the problem of the definition of property, and the nature of judicial function. It is the author's view that the idea of judicial decision-making is a functional oxymoron.

An essay is presented on the significance of property rights and their protection in the early twenty-first-century in the U.S. It provides an overview of the purpose of the use of state power to enforce the allocation of materials and life-sustaining resources. The author observed that people can all enjoy the due process of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and other rights considered to be fundamental to the laws.

In this essay, the author focuses on an underlying theoretical issue which she believes seriously affects our collective response to the idea of group rights in the genetic-control context. That issue is to what extent are our responses to claims of group rights hampered by our bringing to the table (consciously or unconsciously) a model which is structured to acknowledge only individual concerns? Put another way, to what extent are our objections to group rights in this context a product of our inability (or refusal) to imagine the idea of group rights, rather than the product of truly substantive concerns? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contends that the U.S. Supreme Court in its ruling on the case Employment Division v. Smith has shifted from its previous course in dealing with cases reconciling the constitutional guarantee of religious free exercise with the collective interests of civil society. Discussion on the main argument used by the Supreme Court in its ruling; Contention that the Supreme Court's ruling in the case declares that religious exercises has no special rights or immunity from neutral and general applicable laws.

The article explores the death of the idea of property as a concrete, objectively knowable and immutable legal barrier which marks the boundary between individual interests and government power based on the views of U.S. Chief Justice Antonin Scalia. The role of the Supreme Court cases Palazzolo v. Rhode Island and Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency in the death fo the Scalian view of property is discussed.