For some time now, commentators in and out of the scientific community have been expressing concern over the direction of scientific research. Cogent critics have labeled it excessively commercial, out of touch with its “pure,” public-spirited roots, and generally too much a creature of its entrepreneurial, self-interested times. In most if not all of this hand-wringing, the scientific community's growing reliance on intellectual property rights, especially patents, looms large. Indeed, for many the pursuit of patents is emblematic of just what (...) is rotten in the republic of science today. (shrink)

The historical antecedents of Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy ofthe commons” are generally understood to lie in the common grazing lands of medieval and post-medieval England. The concept of the commons current in medieval England is significantly different from the modem concept; the English common was not available to the general public but rather only to certain individuals who inherited or were granted the right to use it, and use of the common even by these people was not unregulated. The types and (...) in some cases the numbers of animals each tenant could pasture were limited, based at least partly on a recognition of the limited carrying capacity of the land. The decline of the commons system was the result of a variety of actors having little to do with the system’s inherent worth. Among these factors were widespread abuse of the rules governing the commons, land “reforms” chiefly designed to increase the holdings of a few landowners, improved agricultural techniques, and the effects of the industrial revolution. Thus, the traditional commons system is not an example of an inherently flawed land-use policy, as is widely supposed, but of a policy which succeeded admirably in its time. (shrink)

James E. Penner ponders with much insight both the notion of property and its place in the legal system, and his musings prove fascinating.