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Blood In, Buyout:

A Property & Economic Approach to Street Gangs

The modern American street gang is a capitalist social institutions creating traditional market-based property systems that operate in alternative markets. In the market, actors are paid to induce desired behavior. This article suggests that, therefore, local governments should compensate gang members for nonparticipation in otherwise legal (but undesirable) gang activity.

From Corpo Economicus to Corpo Sapiens

This article undoes the dominant image of the corporation. The mythological “corpo economicus” is an institution that exists to facilitate the pursuit of a reasonably simple objective—to maximize profits. The law reifies and perpetuates this fiction by creating strictures that facilitate its perceived advantages and mitigate its perceived dangers. The reality of “corpo sapiens” is driven by the same range of motivations that drive humans, from malice to altruism and morality.

Dignity Takings in Gangland’s Suburban Frontier

Even though they carefully (though transgressively) replicate the values and structures of traditional property systems, street gangs are uniquely vilified social organizations. To control them, aggressive policies are deployed with little regard to their human impact. Applying the dignity takings framework to one such measure—the gang injunction—this paper reports the findings of a qualitative empirical study: gang injunctions deprive injunctees of their fundamental right of dignity.

92 Chicago-Kent L. Rev. 793 (2018)

Corporations,

Property, & Personhood

This article’s institutional economic analysis suggests that the corporation is an important technology with which individuals develop “identity property.” This hypothesis can explain corporate behavior (e.g. malfeasance, altruism, and deontology) that is profit-indifferent. Understanding the dialogical and dialectical mutually constitutive relationship between the corporation and its constituents is necessary to effectively regulate corporations.

97 Denver L. Rev. 557 (2020)

55 U. Louisville L. Rev. 163 (2017)

2015 Wisconsin L. Rev. 1049 (2015)

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES

Property as Resilience  

(under review)

Manufacturing Resilience on the Margins:

Understanding Street Gangs Through Property & Vulnerability

123 Penn State L. Rev. 463 (2019)

INTERNATIONAL LAW & HUMAN RIGHTS

Creating a Babel Fish for Rights & Religion:

Defining ‘Rights’ Through Sacred Texts

26 Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems 309 (2016)

‘Nobody Gives a Damn About the Gypsies’: The Limits of Westphalian Models for Change

9 Oregon Rev. Int’l L. 389 (2007)

Nobody’s Perfect (Not Even Close): Reevaluating Access to Justice in the United States and Western Europe

42 Columbia J. Transnat’l L. 863 (2004)

Liberating Sexual Harassment Law

22 Michigan. J. Gender &

L. 345 (2015)

Sex and the Sexy Workplace

9 Northwestern. J. L. &

Poly. 88 (2013)

IDENTITY

Love as Justice

26 Langston Hughes Review 49 (2020) (co-authored with R. Yuille and J. Yuille)

A Black Haven: African-Americans and the Myth of a Colorblind France

4 Bologna Ctr. J. Int’l Aff. 1 (2001)

VULNERABILITY

DISCRIMINATION

SELECTED ESSAYS

Toward a Heterodox Property

Law & Economics

2 Texas A&M L. Rev. 489 (2015)

Individuals, Corporations &

the Pedagogy of Citizenship

63 U. Kansas L. Rev. 903 (2015)

Inequity as a

Legal Principle

66 U. Kansas L. Rev. 859 (2018)

Works in Progress

Property is a White Man.

If Property were a Black Woman.

Property & Money.

Toward a Black Feminist Economic Methodology.

Dialogic Methods for Law.

Identity Property and the Limits of the Sharing Economy.

What Law & Economics Ignored.

An Economic Approach to the Pedagogy of Corporate Identity.

Gang Injunctions as a Regulatory Takings Problem.

Token Economies as Street Gang Intervention.

The Corporation as a White Man

Property and Disenfranchisement

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