Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives Hardcover – March 2, 2021

Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives (2021) by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman is an excellent book that examines the law of ownership. Heller teachers at Columbia and Salzman at UCLA. Just as we’ve had many popular science and popular economics books Mine is a popular law book. It’s a gem of a book that elucidates a concept we tend to take for granted through many varied examples.For anyone interested in the book there is an excellent episode of the Econtalk podcast with the authors.The book starts by looking at how people clash over the ownership of the space of a reclined chair on a plane and looks at other examples that they use to show how ownership is a concept that we have different rules over and how those rules are judged to work in different cases. Car spots that have been shoveled, treasure discovered, our DNA, copyright, patents, the airspace above people’s land and the mining rights below are just some of the examples that Heller and Salzman examine.The book states that there are six ownership principles that are used to adjudicate ownership, they are “first-in-time, possession, labor, attachment, self-ownership, and family”.Mine is a really an excellent book. The two authors know their subject deeply and by going through various examples make the reader think and provide really good explanations for what they are describing.

This book is a lot like learning the high-level themes of Professor Heller's 1L property class without having to read all of the cases (it even covers the Rule Against Perpetuities). That is to say, it's entertaining and eye-opening.Most of us think in binary terms about ownership: I own this or I don't, and there's a "right" answer; if I own it, that means I have all the rights of ownership and can do whatever I want with it. Well, this book explains the jarring reality that those beliefs are rarely true. The book goes through tons of timely and interesting examples showing that rather than binary concepts, the fact of ownership depends on what narrative justifying ownership we favor, and the rights of ownership operate along a gradient rather than an all-or-nothing approach.The last chapter sets out a short but really fascinating speculation as to what might happen as "ownership" digitizes and converges into fewer and fewer hands (think: what if Disney+ creates new versions of Star Wars every year and erases everything else from the historical record).Definitely a recommend---quick, easy, and fun read with lots to think about.

This book would have been a 5-star book if the authors didn't get so lost in each analogy/example. Don't get me wrong...there were some great ones...such as the one I flesh out in my own words below...“A 2020 USA today poll with 3,000 respondents ended up with half saying “if the chair can recline, I’m reclining” and the other half “no just don’t do it”.You hear examples all the time recently, thanks to airlines in recent years cutting down on space between chairs to make room for more seats, about these conflicts. Where A wants to decline their chair and B (a tall person) wants their legroom.So who’s right?Well A will claim that her armrest button reclines her seat…the edge of reclining space, therefore, belongs to the front seat. This claim of attachment it’s mine because it’s attached to something that’s mine is one of the oldest justifications of owning something dating back thousands of years.• It’s a maxim coined in medieval England that says “whoever owns the soil, owns up to heaven and down to hell” or as we put it in America….to space and down to the depths of the earth.This is what enables landowners here in Texas to extract underground oil and gas and people to fly drones in their airspace.But if we at (B) (B) will argue that hey I sat here and took ownership of my seat and space before you reclined…so it’s mine…first come first serve.Conclusion: So as you can see...the examples are in-depth and well thought out. But the issue is that, mainly in later chapters, the authors focus more on said example than the ultimate principle you're supposed to get out of the chapter. But yeah overall this was a great book that I would recommend if you're interested in getting a "primer" of sorts on Ownership law and the "hidden rules that encompass it. This book is informative, entertaining, and full of creative imagery. The only down-side is that you'll read a few chapters that get boring...and kinda go on and on to where you forget what the point of the chapter you're reading even is. The best part about this book is the 6 maximums it provides.

As a former student of Professor Heller, I would have thought I knew everything presented in the book. And only after finishing it did I realize that instant gratification had led me to purchase the book on Amazon, in a format where I don't actually 'own' the book. I paid a premium for this privilege and obtained fewer rights to the material than purchasing through minethebook.com, which would have aided both myself and the authors.My experience/laziness shows the importance of this book - where the hidden rules of ownership are constantly subtly influencing our lives. While Heller and Salzman do an excellent job detailing this everywhere, the most notable portions are when they layout the enormous sale of what should be "our" property rights/assets to Big Business/Big Tech and monied interests through copyright changes and spendthrift trusts.Aside from this, the book serves as an excellent primer to property law for anyone interested in law or law students. As one of my smarter classmates remarked, "property law is pretty much a bunch of judges trying to fix a leaking dam with scotch tape," and both authors do a great job of illustrating this.

”What's yours is mine and what's mine's my own” - I thought that was an old Scots saying, but it turns out to be James Joyce in Ulysses, and the thrust of this provocative book is to tell you that it's all a lie. Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law and finders aren't keepers. I call the book provocative because it provokes you to pass judgement on “yours or mine” debates.Who owns the space taken up when an airline seat reclines ? The passenger in the seat, who's paid for the recline function ? Or the passenger behind, who loses space when the seat in front reclines towards him ?Or, how about this one ? Eco-conscious A puts solar panels on his roof to cut energy bills and save the planet. His neighbour B plants redwood trees to capture carbon and save the planet.. Who's in the right when the trees start to block the sunlight from the panels ?Then there's Burr McDonald's old rocking chair, left in his will to his adult children Arthur and Mildred. Arthur at once collected the chair and took it home. Mildred sued to have it back, claiming equal rights of possession. The book suggests eight possible verdicts, from auctioning the chair, sawing it in half, impounding it until the brother and sister reached an agreement, through to ordering them to share it. That, in fact, was the court's decision – each one could have the chair for six months at a time, though the book doesn't say how the order could be policed.Policing is a central fact of ownership. When the Disney Corporation ordered a pre-school to take down their Mickey Mouse murals, they upset the toddlers but stuck to their rights even when the city council pleaded for mercy. Only when Universal Studios paid to paint over the murals with pictures of Yogi Bear and Scooby Doo was the court case resolved. Even Martin Luther King has been monetised – no sooner had he told an audience in 1963 “I have a dream...”, his lawyer registered copyright on the speech - “King's legacy became a brand” - “Without payment to King Inc, most of King's words cannot be used.” - “King Inc. keeps suing everyone who uses King's likeness, though he's been dead more than fifty years.”It doesn't end at that level. The authors suggest that we are moving away from ownership towards “a sort of techno-feudalism”. Why buy a car that spend most of its time on your drive ? Hire one instead. Why spend a fortune on a dress you'll only wear once ? Rent one. Why buy a house in one location, when renting lets you move when your work moves ? That sounds so reasonable – but what happens when we lose the connections and community that come with ownership ?Before you say that we're not in that world yet, consider this. When I checked this book up on Amazon before starting this review, two notices popped up – at the top of the page, “You purchased this item on 3rd December”, and, next to the “buy now” box, “You own this item”. Both claims are fiction. I haven't bought the book, I've only got “ a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to access and make personal and non-commercial use” of the book. Thank the Lord the Chesil isn't paying me for this review.(This review originally appeared in the Chesil magazine, Dorset.)

Besides some really interesting examples, the rest of the book is quite boring.

Not as ground breaking as the reviews suggested. Sets out the issues clearly for the neophyte. But as lawyers looks at how it is much more than how you might get to what it should be. Not a freakajurisprudence.