Theoretical inquiries in La Vol.2:79 2001] 80 The Dynamic Analytics of Property Law Blackstone's image of private property as"sole despotic dominion", 2 analysis of ownership, and typologies of justificatory arguments Hardins metaphor of the "tragedy of the commons and, more generally Tinkering with these matters has become a sort of benign addiction the division of ownership into a trilogy of private, commons, and state forms Each of these concepts has a distinguished pedigree and certain present In Becker's view, an analytic addiction is at least"benign, rather usefulness, but each also imposes a cost when it renders new forms of property pemicious, because"we would lose a great deal of clarity and rigor if [t invisible. This essay argues that property theory scholarship would benefit onceptual apparatus] were ignored. "6 Still, for Becker, the conceptual front from a more dynamic approach to analytics, one better suited to supporting has been adequately covered- it is good enough -and the main work for property theory lies elsewhere innovations at the frontiers of property Similarly, Jeremy Waldron suggests in his jurisprudential work a good enough approach to property analytics. As he puts it, the standard analytic framework"respects both the technician's sensitiv SHOULD ANALYTICS BE DYNAMIC? legal detail ohilosopher's need for a set of well-understood"ideal types' to serve as the focus of justificatory debate. ""In this view, a dynamic approach to ptoperty indeed, challenge the premise of this essay that analytics can and should be approached more dynamically. If analytics are understood just to mean stable, transparent, and neutral-seeming ideal types that allow people to argue workable taxonomy, then little fundamental would be gained by a renewe productively with each other regarding more substantive issues focus on conceptual work; indeed, analytic property theory would have a marginal role, simply cutting and pruning the well-tended vineyard of e roperty theorists also challenge the raison d' etre of property analytics om the other end of the spectrum, deploying what I call the never property terms. Further work on property concepts would quickly translate good enough approach. This approach rejects not just the existing analytic into mind-numbing parsing of taxonomic detail in a high Germanic style framework, but also the possibility of an improved version. For example, I call this taxonomic view of property analytics the good enough approach Thomas Grey once suggested that private property is, in the end, indefinable According to this view, we just need a reasonably consistent and intelligible in any useful or determinate way and that the categories we use to talk with common language of property that is good enough to sustain the more one another collapse on themselves upon closer examination. In this view, important normative and practical debates that follow. To give an example, atic or dyn be understood to be ab note Lawrence Becker's plea for more work on pluralist justifications for mystifying real power relations that, in essence, resist categorization. Like property in an article where he bluntly summarizes the current state of the good enough approach, the never good enough criticism does not seem to leave much room for further work on property analytics So the challenge from existing property theory is substantial: to thread What has been left undone? What has been done to death?. [An etween, on the one hand, a view that the taxonomies we have already are inquiry that has] been done enough(perhaps even overdone).is the od enough and normatively empty so further work amounts to, at best, a extensive recapitulation and dissection of the now-standard conceptual analysis of property theory: Hohfeld,'s analysis of rights, Honore's 5 Lawrence C. Becker, Too Much Property, 21 Phil& Pub. Aff. 196, 197-98(1992) 6 d 2 2 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England"2 (Univ. of Chicago 7 Jeremy Waldron, Property Law, in A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal heory 3(Dennis Patterson ed, 1996). Press ed.1979)(176-1769) 3 Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, 162 Science 1243, 1244-45(1968). 8 See, e.g, Waldron, supra note 4, at 331-32("As categ of social, economic 4 See, e.g., Duncan Kennedy Frank I. Michelman, Are Property and Contract or political science, it is clear that these ideas of a private property system,a Eficient?, 8 Hofstra L. Rev. 711(1980); Frank I Michelman, Ethics, Economics collective property system, and a common property system are very much ideal and the Law of Property, in 24 NOMOS: Ethics, Economics and the Law 3, 5-6(J typic categories. It is also clear to quote Weber, 'none of these ideal types. is Roland Pennock& John W. Chapman eds, 1980); Jeremy Waldron, What is Private sually to be found in historical cases in pure'form. )(citing 1 Max Weber, Property 5 Oxford J Legal Stud. 313(1985) Economy and Society 216( Guenther Roth& Claus Wittich eds, 1968) 9 Thomas C Grey, The Disintegration of Property, 22 NOMOS 69, 69(1980)