Property Rights: From Magna Carta to the Fourteenth Amendment breaks new ground in our understanding of the genesis of property rights in the United States. According to the standard interpretation, echoed by as lofty an authority as Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, the courts did little in the way of protecting property rights in the early years of our nation. Not only does Siegan find this accepted teaching erroneous, but he finds post-Colonial jurisprudence to be firmly rooted in English common law and the writings of its most revered interpreters.

Siegan conducts...