Legal Argument as a Social Force: Capitalism and the Deterioration of Lockean Justifications for Property

-- By AndrewHerink - 10 Feb 2008

Cohen argues that law is a social force. Extrapolating this thesis, I posit that legal arguments are social forces and, specifically, that courts’ legal reasoning changes in order to justify economic relations. In this paper, I apply my theory to caselaw, showing that the growth of capitalism mutated the Lockean justification of property rights.

Early Anglo-American Cases: A Lockean Theory of Property

In pre-industrial Anglo-American law, courts employed a Lockean notion of labor to justify property rights. In Keeble v. Hickering (1707), 11 East 574, defendant fired a gun, scattering ducks that had landed in plaintiff’s fowl trap. The court gave plaintiff title to these birds, for he had caught them using “his art” and “his skill.” Plaintiff’s labor created the property right.

The Lockean argument continued to hold weight in the early years of industrial capitalism. In Eads v. Brazelton (1861), 22 Ark. 499, plaintiff discovered a sunken ship and put a buoy above the wreckage to claim its lead. The court ruled that, even though “he had the intention of possessing,” plaintiff had not established a property right because he had not made “persistent efforts directed to raising the lead.” Again, individual labor created a property right. In Weatherbee v. Green (1871), 22 Mich. 311, plaintiff made barrel-hoops from wood that he had accidentally appropriated. The court stated that “when the right to the improved article is the point in issue, the question, how much the […] labor of each has contributed to make it what it is, must always be of first importance.” The court equated the extent of one’s labor with the strength of one’s property right.

Capitalism Rises, and Lockean Notions Fall

Capitalism is inconsistent with the Lockean view of labor. If individual effort produces property, then proletarians, not capitalists, should control the objects workers create. Thus, as capitalism grew, judges tweaked the Lockean argument to justify the status quo. In International News Service v. Associated Press (1918), 248 U.S. 215, the court held that AP deserved a property right in the news articles it published because AP “as the result of organization and the expenditure of labor, skill, and money” had discovered the news. The AP court converted the Lockean concept to a capitalist-friendly form; the justices still employed the word “labor” to justify the property right, but the term no longer represented individual effort. Instead, the court defined “labor” as a profit-gaining resource (like skill and money) utilized by the corporation.

AP emblematized a general trend towards corporatizing the Lockean theory. In Prest-O-Lite Co. v. Davis (1913), 209 F. 917, the court held that defendant wrongfully appropriated the gas-tank model of plaintiff business owner. The court stated: “The great value of [plaintiff’s] business lies in the interchangeability of its tanks. This quality the [plaintiff] has created. It is his, and no one has the right to appropriate it.” Thus the court deemed the business (or its owner) the principal creator of the object, giving the property right to the capitalist, not the proletarian.

Further Derivations from the Lockean View

By placing a utilitarian condition on the newfound rule that corporate effort created a property right, later cases strayed farther from the Lockean notion of property. Such a utilitarian condition, which protects only “productive” types of effort, reinforces capitalism. In Cable Vision, Inc. v. KUTV, Inc. (1964), 335 F.2d 348, the court reasoned that a corporation “reaping where it has not sown” should not be held to have violated a property right unless the right promotes “the public interest.” Similarly, in RCA Mfg. Co. v. Whiteman (1940), 114 F.2d 86, the court stated that AP “cannot be used as a cover to prevent competitors from ever appropriating the results of the industry, skill, and expense of others.” Instead, the court argued that only products of “labor and ingenuity” that “inure […] to the public benefit” should be deemed property. Fittingly, the opinion’s concept of the public benefit was strongly capitalistic: the court stated that commercial products were protected, but ideas were generally not. Thus, as the twentieth century elapsed, courts added a capitalistic utilitarian qualification to the pseudo-Lockean (i.e. corporate) property right.

Utility Yields Property?

The courts’ next step may be to abandon any form of Lockean justification for property. Such a purely utilitarian property theory would reinforce capitalism better than its predecessors, for it would eliminate the notion that productivity must, at times, take a back seat to individual rights. Although a wholly utilitarian theory of property has not yet taken over Anglo-American courts, such a theory has prevailed in academia. In 1967, Harold Demsetz published an article in the American Economic Review, arguing that “new property rights” arise “in response to the desires of the interacting persons for adjustment to new benefit-cost possibilities.” In other words, property rights only materialize when their social benefit outweighs their detriment.

Demsetz’s theory of property has begun to permeate Anglo-American courts. In a dissent in White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc. (1992), 989 F.2d 1512, Judge Kozinski argued that by giving plaintiff “an exclusive right to anything that reminds the [television] viewer of her” the court discouraged potential “future creators” of advertisements. Kozinski noted that he would have refused granting a property right to plaintiff wholly on the grounds that such a right was socially detrimental.

Conclusions

The above development not only conforms with Cohen’s legal hypotheses; it aligns with Marxist theory. For the Marxist, law is simply part of the superstructure that the capitalist base creates. Perhaps, another scholar could review law in communist countries to see if the base-superstructure theory applies as aptly there.

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