‘Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral,’ by Guido Calabresi & A. Douglas Melamed

‘Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral,’ by Guido Calabresi & A. Douglas Melamed

Guido Calabresi and Doug Melamed’s 1972 classic “One View of the Cathedral” sets up a framework that is now standard fare for first-year law students. First-years spend their early months trying to figure out what they are doing and why they shuffle from property class to torts class. They hear terminology utterly new to them in those early weeks, including the idea of a “tort” itself. A potential “ah ha!” moment for a student is figuring out th…