The Right to Property Taking Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Seriously

The right to property is part of International Human Rights Law (IHRL). However, the right is conspicuously missing from some fundamental treaties, and there are important inconsistencies in its interpretation by regional and global human rights bodies. In light of the indeterminacy and polysemy of IHRL in relation to property, this paper articulates a proposal to rethink this right taking Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR) seriously. The proposal contains four propositions. Firstly, property is a human right. Secondly, it includes private property as one of its forms, but this is not the only one. Thirdly, property has a social function. And fourthly, as a matter of proportionality, fulfilling ESCR is one of the most important objectives that may justify the limitation of private property.

‘Creabimus!' Creatively re-thinking the corporation and the social contract

This article rethinks the corporation and ‘the social contract with business' for the post-pandemic era. It uses a double historical orientation centred on the turbulence of the 1930s in Europe and America to insist on the company's relationship with government, and to explore transformations in the social contract now needed to socialise and ecologise global business. One part of this history looks forward, from Adolf Berle's modern corporation to the neoliberal corporation and regulatory governance. The article criticises a transformation of regulatory priorities in this era, closely analysing the shift to procedural mandates and questioning the corporate law tactic of ‘enlightening' companies. The second part looks backwards to industrial modernism and Walter Rathenau in Germany in the interwar era, and also earlier (the late 1890s), to salvage a different understanding of the company and social contract, built around more constructivist visions of law, government and social consciousness. This part of the article is insistent about the metaphysical aspects of law and about developing law's equalising powers around corporate impactfulness and injustice. It promotes ‘thought' about collectivism (John Keynes) and the legal and regulatory recalibration that is needed to confront certain amassing challenges of the present. The article makes institutional transformation about shifting onto a different historical axis, whereby we might re-learn collectivist ambitions around the company that co-evolves with law and government, live to the public interest. It proposes a new social contract with business and a new regulatory modus involving law's ‘Creabimus' and ‘regulating dangerously' for situations of widely adverse corporate impactfulness.

The Sahel: Challenges and opportunities

Since 2015, over 2000 people have been killed and 1.5 million displaced due to violence attributed to extremist groups in Burkina Faso. In the first half of 2021 alone, over 540 conflict-related civilian casualties were reported in Niger.9 The armed conflict has had a devastating impact on children in Niger: of the 3.8 million people in need of humanitarian aid in Niger, 2.1 million are children and 1.6 million children suffer from malnutrition.10 More than eighty children between the ages of 15 and 17 years living in towns on the Niger–Burkina Faso border have reportedly been recruited as child soldiers.11 Over sixty children were killed in conflict-related violence in Niger in 2021 alone.12 Chad has also witnessed its fair share of violence and intercommunal tensions. In their efforts to coerce the Sahelian people and government decision-makers for ransom or political concessions, these groups have employed various terrorist activities, including launching deadly attacks against civilians and military targets alike, attacking public and private property, kidnapping individuals, and more.18 Weak State institutions around the inter-State borders have enabled such groups to flourish in the peripheries and border towns, targeting people in multiple countries at once. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger saw over 4000 casualties of terrorist attacks in 2019;19 these attacks led, in turn, to the displacement of over half a million people.20 The growing presence of “terrorist” groups in the Sahel has also intensified organized crime and criminal networks that have served as routes for lucrative criminal activities such as drugs, arms trade, human trafficking and the kidnapping of persons for ransom.

SOCIALISM VERSUS CAPITALISM: ACHIEVING A NEW BALANCE BETWEEN COMPETING STAKEHOLDERS

[...]the circumstances facing the worlds' nations and regions are so dire that many researchers predict the end of the neoliberal global world order that has created much wealth for many (though not all) through global free trade, and efficient global supply chains fueled by "capitalism" and "free markets" (e.g., Saad-Filho, 2020). [...]Americans are warned that if they became socialists, they would end up living in a country, which would become similar to Venezuela even though Venezuela's problems do not stem from the country's ambitions to provide social services to its citizens, but rather from the deficiencies in its governance system (e.g., Qiu, 2018). First dimension (x-axis) is a construct that we identify as the level of definition of property rights that is observed in the system, ranging from fully defined private ownership of property to no private ownership of property (i.e., communism). [...]in some regions of the "primordial soup" of economic-political options

ARBITRARY PROPERTY INTERFERENCE DURING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC AND BEYOND

To stymie COVID-19's spread, state and local governments imposed sweeping and burdensome lockdown measures that crushed American businesses and interfered with private property. Despite interfering with many Americans' property rights, state and local governments have consistently prevailed on pandemic-related regulatory takings claims in federal court. By forcing governments to pay for deprivations, the Takings Clause can thwart arbitrary interference with private property. However, the dispensation of regulatory takings claims arising out of pandemic-related regulations suggests that the Takings Clause may presently fail to adequately thwart arbitrary property interference in the partial regulatory takings context when the government claims that it is acting in the name of public health or safety. This Note expands on existing literature and details how substantive due process may presently only protect property from extremely arbitrary or despotic interference. This Note then argues that when substantive due process fails to thwart arbitrary interference, the regulatory takings doctrine will also fail to shield property when interference is substantial but is made pursuant to states' police powers. Because both doctrines may simultaneously fail to stymie arbitrariness, this Note contends that our Republic may constitutionally tolerate arbitrary property interference, a phenomenon highly detrimental to the rule of law. To incentivize legitimate and principled decision-making, and to protect private property from arbitrary interference, this Note urges states to pass laws that resemble the Texas Private Real Property Rights Preservation Act. These laws should, at a minimum: (1) require governments to compensate property owners for regulatory diminutions in property value that exceed a legislatively calibrated threshold;(2) excuse compensation when governments can satisfy a form of heightened scrutiny;and (3) permit governments to seek immunity from a law's requirements in exigent circumstances.

Pandemics, planning and property

Jacobs et al talks about pandemics, planning and property among others. The current pandemic brings concepts of property to the foreground. Stay-at-home orders, social distancing, commercial closures, draconian border control, the interruption of air travel (to use just a few examples) are about how space is to be used, about new mandates for (most commonly restrictions to commons, public and private property and often very intense social controversy over who gets to set the rules for property use. How property is understood and treated in the planning process will now be one of our key issues going forward. In April 2020 we started a conversation on how the planning community will struggle with the spreading of the new coronavirus and its mid- and long-term consequences. Above all. we were wondering;about the ways the pandemic would impact spatial planning, particularly with regard to its relationship with common and private property.

3D Underground Property Rights of Transportation Infrastructures: Case Study of Piraeus Metro Station, Greece

Underground development covers a wide range of underground uses, transportation and infrastructures networks;water and energy storage facilities;municipal spaces, housing, business and manufacturing facilities;and overall exploitation of Urban Underground Space (UUS). According to the Greek legal framework on properties underground, transportation networks, such as the metro, are developed deep enough that no compensation is due to surface parcel owners, which are usually a public entity. The current Greek cadastral system is two-dimensional and there are no records for underground transportation networks. As the need for the exploitation of UUS is arising, especially in densely populated Greek cities, such as Athens, the detailed documentation of transportation networks 3D underground property rights is essential. Herein is presented the technical and legal definition of the 3D underground property rights of the Piraeus Metro Station that is constructed in Piraeus Municipality UUS. Three-dimensional underground models for both Piraeus Station and official cadastral parcels are created so as to identify their 3D spatial intersection. For the identification of their legal and spatial status in 2D, the UUS was subdivided into layers in respect to the station’s vertical infrastructure and then correlated to the current cadastral 2D spatial data. The presented 3D underground property rights of Greece’s major urban underground transportation network facilitates its registration in the current 2D Greek cadastral system and contributes to the better understanding and the identification of legal and technical aspects of UUS rights in Greece.