What kind of rules provide stable property possession within the complex system of property ownership and leasing? In the fifth installment of a series on the Common Law, Professor Richard Epstein of NYU School of Law gives an overview of property arrangements rooted in the English Common Law system, explaining how these arrangements started with William the Conqueror in 1066 and continue in modern lending.
 
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.

As always, the Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues; all expressions of opinion are those of the speaker.