CPLC Private Law Seminar Series: 'A reappraisal of Murphy and Nagel: turning ownership into a myth'

Speaker: Professor Dominic de Cogan (University of Cambridge)

It is argued in this chapter that Murphy and Nagel are mistaken to describe pretax property and income in The Myth of Ownership as ‘logically impossible’. The example of warlordism is used to demonstrate that the pretax position not only has logical coherence at least in some cases, but also helps to explain a range of phenomena including statecraft, the pursuit of justice in non-ideal circumstances, the embedding of inequalities into positive law, state breakup and secession, and The Myth’s reliance on Humean conventionalist approaches to property. At the same time, abandoning the claim that pretax property and income are descriptively illogical leaves largely intact Murphy’s and Nagel’s more important normative claim that our pretax position offers an unsuitable guide to our property entitlements as a matter of justice. Reinterpreting The Myth in this way highlights the difficulty of achieving justice in the face of path dependencies created by real but often undeserved pretax property and income, whilst also drawing in other areas of tax literature that could help in this endeavour. Human rights are examined as a possible way to argue for the normative importance of pretax property and income, but they are ultimately found to complement rather than to contradict the central message of The Myth.

Sandwiches served in the Lower Ground Atrium between 12.30pm and 1pm; seminar to commence in S19 at 1pm.

This seminar is open to all LLM, MCL and PhD students, Faculty members and Faculty visitors but is not open to undergraduate students.

We hope that you can make it to these exciting events: Peter Candy, Poorna Mysoor, Eugene Shevchuk, Fleur Stolker (Convenors)

If you have questions or are interested in speaking at a future CPLC event, please email privatelaw@cam.ac.uk

The Cambridge Private Law Centre acknowledges with gratitude the generous financial support of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and of South Square.