Essay Property Outlaws, Rebel Mythologies, and Social Bandits

In Property Outlaws,1 Eduardo Peñalver and Sonia Katyal challenge our intuitions about individuals and groups who violate legal property entitlements. They argue that actions like intentional conversion, infringement, and trespass may be legal wrongs, but they are not always harmful to the society.2 Instead, the authors argue that violating property laws can be socially and legally productive in a variety of ways.3 For that reason, property outlaws deserve greater respect and solicitude from the legal establishment. To support this somewhat counterintuitive claim, the authors offer a range of stories from a variety of contexts, involving the intentional violation of legal property entitlements.4 In the vast majority of the cases they present, the so-called “outlaws” feel fully justified in their illegal actions.5 The outlaws we see depicted are not criminals but protesters, activists, and homeless squatters.6 Peñalver and Katyal hope to “rehabilitate, at least to a certain extent, the image of the intentional property outlaw”7 by offering a systemic account of laudable outlawry. More specifically, the authors seem interested in creating greater legal leeway for those who violate property laws.8 They also seek to increase legal theorists’ and policy makers’ general appreciation of the social benefits provided by outlaws.9