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The lecture note are here. The live chat is here.

This diagram illustrates the life estate.

Here is Jessica Lide’s will:

April 19, 1972

I, Jessie Lide, being in sound mind declare this to be my last will and testament. I appoint my niece Sandra White Perry to be the executrix of my estate.
I wish Evelyn White to have my home to live in and not to be sold.
I also leave my personal property to Sandra White Perry. My house is not to be sold.

Jessie Lide (Underscoring by testatrix)

Here is a picture of Jessica Lide’s home. Jessica Lide is on the right, Sandra White is in the middle.

 Here is the current life expectancy table. If you were born in 1984, your life expectancy is 74.56

Here is the will from the Weedon case:

Second; I give and bequeath to my beloved wife, Anna Plaxico Weedon all of my property both real, personal and mixed during her natural life and upon her death to her children, ifshe has any, and in the event she dies without issue then at the death ofmy wife Anna Plaxico Weedon I give, bequeath and devise all of my property to my grandchildren, each grandchild sharing equally with the other.

Third; In this will I have not provided for my daughters, Mrs. Florence Baker and Mrs. Delette WeedonJones, the reason is, I have given them their share ofmy property and they have not looked after and tared for me,in the latter part ofmy life.

The lecture notes are here. The live chat is here.

We will use this resource about the Coase Theorem in class (courtesy of Professor Frank Buckley at George Mason Law). Alas, Ronald Coase passed away in September 2013 at the age of 102.

To illustrate the Coase Theorem, we will utilize the classic example of the Fountainbleau Hotel in Miami.

 

Or this related case from Dallas:

The Nasher contends that the developers of the $200 million tower, completed in January, have been intransigent in refusing to modify its reflective glass skin; the Nasher has proposed louvers for the facade.

Museum officials say the garden has had to be resodded twice because of the higher temperatures created by sunlight bouncing off the glass; that some trees have burned; and that light-blocking panels were needed for the roof during a recent Ken Price sculpture retrospective.

 

And the owners have suggested building screens to block the sun!

Gizmodo has a great writeup of the case:

They also hired a group of designers to study the feasibility of installing a gigantic shading system to block the rays, rather than fixing the problem at the source.

This month, the architects behind the project—a New York firm called REX, which built the (fantastic) Wyly Theater near the Nasher—presented their final proposal, dubbed Surya.

It looks complex, but the concept is actually very simple: The team looked at the annual path of the “death ray” and, based on its coordinates, created a huge shading system to block it as it changes. To lessen the presence of the shade, they also devised a series of umbrella-like devices that only open up when needed. So, for most of the year, these devices look like thin tubes strung up on a massive metal frame—which is better than an opaque surface… I guess?

Coase!

This is like something Mr. Burns would design.

The “umbrellas” open up during different times of the day so as not to obstruct the views.

And they follow the sun’s path through the year.

Images courtesy of dukeminier-property.com, Wikipedia, and Professor Frank Buckley.

 

 

Here are the diagrams of the land from Del Webb.

In 1962:

In 1965:

In The Shooting Cycle, Shelby Baird and I explain how mass shootings at schools are rare, and are not happening more frequently. Shootings–a subset of mass shootings–are equally rare. At Cato@Liberty, Jason Bedrick highlights some new statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics. In short, you are three times more likely to get struck by lightning than to be killed in a K-12 school.

According to the National Center for Education Statstics’ 2013 “Indicators of School Crime and Safety” report, from the 1992-93 school year until the 2010-11 school year, there were between 11 and 34 homicides of youths ages 5-18 at schools each year (including attacks with weapons other than firearms), with an average of about 23 homicides per year. Comparing that to NCES’s enrollment statistics, about 0.000044% of public and private K-12 students were killed at school per year between 1992-93 and 2010-11. That’s about one out of every 2,273,000 students per year. By contrast, the odds of being hit by lightning in a given year is one out of 700,000 according to National Geographic.

I do not offer these numbers to make light, or trivialize the loss of life. Rather, policy decisions should be made on the basis of facts. And I’m not talking about gun policy. Today, more and more schools are becoming militarized, based on the rationale that we need to stop mass shootings. Students are more likely to get caught up with criminal matters when police officers are combing the grounds. We should not allow these rare tragedies to turn our schools into police states.

Update: Radley Balko states it well:

In the debate over police militarization, law enforcement officials and defenders of militarized cops frequently cite mass shooting incidents, particularly school shootings, as a big reason why cops need big guns, armored vehicles, and other battle gear. In truth, as University of Virginia sociologist and school violence scholar Dewey Cornell has pointed out, the average campus can expect to see a homicide about once every several thousand years. But it’s clear that much of the law enforcement community believes that it’s only a matter of time before a mass shooting incident comes to every community in America. And it seems reasonable to ask if those fears may be affecting the way police respond to incidents like those in Las Vegas and Beavercreek.

On Tuesday, September 23 at 12:10, I will be speaking at THE Ohio State University on the constitutional challenge to Obamacare. My good friend Chris Walker will be the discussant. If you are in area, come watch as I explain how this House of Cards almost tumbled.

The lecture note are here. The live chat is here.

This is Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who famously wrote “It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule than that it was laid down in time of Henry IV (1594-1610).It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from imitation of the past.”

 

This is Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who served on the New York Court of Appeals (the highest Court in New York) from 1927-1932. In 1932, Cardozo replaced Holmes on the United States Supreme Court, and would serve until 1938. Cardozo was replaced by another famous Justice, Justice Felix Frankfurter.

The feudal system began after the Norman Conquest of 1066.

(Note, in London, they do not refer to William as the Conqueror–he did not conquer London, after all!).

This diagram helps to explain the feudal structure.

This drawing represents a cleric, a knight, and a serf.

Serfs were all the way at the bottom of the pyramid.

Here are several diagrams of the feudal manor.

Here is Magna Carta–the great Charter. Forced upon King John by the Barrons at Runnymede in 1215, this document served as the basis for many of the oldest forms of constitutional freedom–including the due proces clause (then known as the law of the land clause). And there’s lots of other useless stuff. In particular, section 12 limits instances where lords can collect aid (or scutage) from tenants.

 (12) No `scutage’ or `aid’ may be levied in our kingdom without its general consent, unless it is for the ransom of our person, to make our eldest son a knight, and (once) to marry our eldest daughter. For these purposes ouly a reasonable `aid’ may be levied. `Aids’ from the city of London are to be treated similarly.

Here is a restored copy of it.

This diagram represents fee simple. Like Buzz Lightyear, this estate endures to infinity, and beyond.

This diagram represents the fee simple’s restrictive cousin, the fee tail.

This drawing illustrates the livery of seisin.

 

William Penn performed the livery of seisin on October 27, 1682 upon his arrival in what is now New Castle, Delaware, but became part of Penn’s Woodlands (also known as Pennsylvania). There is a historical marker commemorating the event.

Near here October 27, 1682, William Penn first stepped on American soil. He proceeded to the fort and performed Livery of Seisin. “He took the key, thereof,…we did deliver unto him 1 turf with a twig upon it, a porringer with river water and soyle, in part of all.”

Here is a  photo of a statue of Penn holding a twig and turf.

This video illustrates the Livery of Seisin.