How can an association that doesn’t own property make rules that govern it? Professor Richard Epstein of NYU School of Law discusses the principles governing complex property arrangements, giving an overview of the Neponsit case, which created a modern rule for how a property can be governed by an organization and not an individual owner.  This development makes condo associations and other more efficient uses of property possible.

Professor Epstein provides an alternative to the conventional view that property rights are arbitrarily created by the state, and therefore can be changed at will by the state; a few simple rules, he argues, are universal principles of social organization, consistent across time and culture, which form the basis of social gains.

Professor Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

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