1. See Hanoch Dagan, A Liberal Theory of Property (Cambridge University Press, 2021). All parenthetical numbers are page references to this book.

2. See James Penner, “Property and Self-Determination” (2022) 35:2 Can JL & Jur 537.

3. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (University of Chicago Press, 1979) vol 2 at 2 [Blackstone, Commentaries].

4. JE Penner, “Taking Raz Seriously: On the Value of Autonomy and Its Relation to Private Law” in Paul Miller & John Oberdiek, eds, Oxford Studies in Private Law Theory, vol 2 (Oxford University Press) [forthcoming].

5. Penner, supra note 2 at 551.

6. Ibid .

7. Ibid at 558.

8. Ibid at 553.

9. Ibid .

10. Ibid .

11. Ibid at 556.

12. Ibid at 555.

13. Ibid .

14. Ibid at 557.

15. Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, “Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning” (1913) 23:1 Yale LJ 16 at 54, n 90.

16. HLA Hart, The Concept of Law, 3d ed by Paul Craig (Oxford University Press, 2012) at 27.

17. Ibid at 27-28 [emphasis in original].

18. Cf Arthur L Corbin, “Offer and Acceptance, and Some of the Resulting Relations” (1917) 26:3 Yale LJ 169 at 171.

19. See Hanoch Dagan & Michael Heller, “Autonomy for Contract, Refined” (2021) 40:2 Law & Phil 213 [Dagan & Heller, “Autonomy for Contract”]; Hanoch Dagan & Michael Heller, “Choice Theory: A Restatement” in Hanoch Dagan & Benjamin C Zipursky, eds, Research Handbook on Private Law Theory (Edward Elgar, 2020) 112. Penner is thus right to claim that my account of property’s legitimacy challenge also applies to other power-conferring legal institutions, such as contract; he just ignores the fact that I have indeed raised it. See Penner, supra note 2 at 556.

20. Penner, supra note 2 at 553.

21. See ibid at 557.

22. Frank I Michelman, “Ethics, Economics, and the Law of Property” (2004) 39:3 Tulsa L Rev 663 at 668 (discussing commons property).

23. Jeremy Waldron, “Property Law” in Dennis Patterson, ed, A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (Blackwell, 2010) 9 at 12. As the following text explains, the term “private authority”—as in the statement that “property systems assign private authority over resources in numerous ways” (3)—is supposed to capture this understanding of property. I hope that this clarification properly responds to Penner’s complaint that “Dagan’s concept of property is somewhat impressionistic.” Penner, supra note 2 at 538.

24. See e.g. David Owens, “Property and Authority” (2019) 27:3 J of Political Philosophy 271, whose account I criticize (264).

25. Notice that nothing in this paragraph implies that the private authority of owners takes the form of dominion. In other words, Penner is wrong to claim that “the concept of ‘non-owner’ … is meaningless outside the dominion conception of property rights.” Penner, supra note 2 at 554.

26. Notwithstanding my many disagreements with Kantian theorists, I think that on this fundamental point we actually think alike. See Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 2009) at 90 (“a purely unilateral act of acquisition can only restrict the choice of all other persons against the background of an omnilateral authorization, which is possible only in a condition of public right”).

27. Penner, supra note 2 at 542.

28. Ibid .

29. Ibid at 539, n 8.

30. Ibid at 542.

31. Ibid at 551.

32. Ibid .

33. Ibid at 552.

34. Ibid .

35. Ibid at 553.

36. Ibid .

37. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, sub verbo “share”, online: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/share. Indeed, this is the first meaning mentioned by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, even before “to grant or give a share in” ( ibid ).

38. See also Hanoch Dagan & Michael A Heller, “The Liberal Commons” (2001), 110:4 Yale LJ 549.

39. Hanoch Dagan, Property: Values and Institutions (Oxford University Press, 2011) at 41. Cf Yara Al Salman, Sharing in Common: A Republican Defence of Group Ownership (Doctoral Thesis, Utrecht University, 2022) at 65-67 [unpublished].

40. Thomas W Merrill & Henry E Smith, “The Morality of Property” (2007) 48:5 Wm & Mary L Rev 1849 at 1891.

41. Ibid .

42. Ibid .

43. Henry E Smith, “Mind the Gap: The Indirect Relation Between Ends and Means in American Property Law” (2009) 94:4 Cornell L Rev 959 at 965.

44. Ibid .

45. Merrill & Smith, supra note 40 at 1892.

46. Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid, 141 S Ct 2063 at 2072-73 (2021).

47. See Ben McFarlane & Simon Douglas, “Property, Analogy and Variety” (2022) 42:1 Oxford J Leg Stud 161.

48. Hanoch Dagan, “The Real Legacy of American Legal Realism” (2018) 38:1 Oxford J Leg Stud 123 at 128.

49. Ibid at 128-35.

50. Liam Murphy, “The Artificial Morality of Private Law: The Persistence of an Illusion” (2020) 70:4 UTLJ 453.

51. See World Bank Group, “Doing Business Report, 2020” (2020), online (pdf): World Bank Group www.worldbank.org/en/programs/business-enabling-environment/doing-business-legacy; Klaus Schwab, “The Global Competitiveness Report, 2019" (2019), online (pdf): World Economic Forum www.weforum.org/reports/how-to-end-a-decade-of-lost-productivity-growth; Sary Levy-Carciente, “International Property Rights Index, 2020” (2020), online (pdf): Property Rights Alliance www.internationalpropertyrightsindex.org/full-report.

52. Penner, supra note 2 at 550.

53. Ibid at 543.

54. Ibid at 546.

55. Ibid .

56. Ibid .

57. Ibid at 543-44.

58. Ibid at 547.

59. Ibid at 546.

60. Ibid at 548.

61. Ibid at 549.

62. Ibid at 541.

63. Ibid at 541, citing Arthur Ripstein, “Private Authority and the Role of Rights: A Reply” (2016) 14:1 Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies 64 at 85.

64. Penner, supra note 2 at 552.

65. Ibid at 549.

66. Ibid at 553.

67. Ibid .

68. Ibid at 554.

69. See Hanoch Dagan & Avihay Dorfman, “Poverty and Private Law: Beyond Distributive Justice” (2022), online (pdf): SSRN ssrn.com/abstract=3637034.

70. Penner is bothered by my use of the term “real selves” (64), implying that respect to self-determination would require the legally-impossible attention to people’s subjective inner-identity. See Penner, supra note 2 at 545-48. But as the text implies, the purported binarism of authentic selves and abstract selves, which leaves the latter (Kantian) alternative as the only plausible candidate for law, reflects neither the law nor the way people experience themselves in their social interactions. See Hanoch Dagan, “The Jurisprudence of Liberal Property” (2023) Jurisprudence (forthcoming).

71. Hanoch Dagan & Avihay Dorfman, “Just Relationships” (2016) 116:6 Colum L Rev 1395 at 1426 [emphasis added].

72. Ibid at 1427.

73. Ibid .

74. Ibid at 1423.

75. Ibid . See also e.g. Dagan & Heller, “Autonomy for Contract”, supra note 19 at 215-219; Hanoch Dagan & Avihay Dorfman, “Justice in Contracts” (2022) 67:1 Am J Juris 1; Hanoch Dagan & Avihay Dorfman, “Precontractual Justice” (2022) 28:2 Leg Theory 89.

76. In addition to the examples from contract law referred to in supra note 75, see Avihay Dorfman, “Relational Justice and Torts” in Dagan & Zipursky, supra note 19; Hanoch Dagan, “Autonomy, Relational Justice and the Law of Restitution” in Elise Bant, Kit Barker & Simone Degeling, eds, Research Handbook on Unjust Enrichment and Restitution (Edward Elgar, 2020) 219.

77. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised ed (Belknap Press, 1999) at 293-94.

78. See Cathy Sherry, “Book Review of A Liberal Theory of Property by Hanoch Dagan” (2022) 18:2 International Journal of Law in Context 241 at 243-44; Cathy Sherry, “Does Discrimination Law Apply to Residential Strata Schemes?” (2020) 43:1 UNSWLJ 307 at 338.

79. See Hanoch Dagan & Avihay Dorfman, “Interpersonal Human rights” (2018) 51:2 Cornell Intl LJ 361.

80. See Hanoch Dagan & Avihay Dorfman, “Justice in Private: Beyond the Rawlsian Framework” (2018) 37 Law & Phil 171. Penner is concerned that vindicating relational justice in cases of private discrimination that have no clear detrimental social consequences might “lead to more bigotry.” Penner, supra note 2 at 543, n 23. I do not share this conjecture, especially once relational justice is understood as a prerequisite to property’s ex ante authority. But even if it is valid, it suggests that we need to properly consider both dimensions of justice as well as the implications of favoring one or the other, a consideration which is blocked if we fail to appreciate relational justice’s freestanding significance.

81. See Dagan & Dorfman, supra note 69. As the brief discussion of poverty and discrimination implies, at times relational justice requires active accommodation, while in other cases it implies not considering certain characteristics when making decisions. (This clarification addresses, I hope, Penner’s critical observation that the café owner “is distinctly not remaining ‘aloof’ to these prospective customers’ real selves.” Penner, supra note 2 at 545).

82. For more on liberal property’s ‘radiating effects’, see Dagan, supra note 70.

83. Penner, supra note 2 at 549.

84. Cf Arthur Ripstein, “The Contracting Theory of Choices” (2021) 40 Law & Phil 185 at 211.

85. See also Dagan, supra note 39 at 41; Hanoch Dagan & Irit Samet, “The Beneficiary’s Ownership Rights in The Trust Res in a Liberal Property Regime” (2022), online (pdf): SSRN ssrn.com/abstract=4050514. Cf Sarah Worthington, “Revolutions in Personal Property: Redrawing the Common Law’s Conceptual Map” in Sarah Worthington, Andrew Robertson & Graham Virgo, eds, Revolution and Evolution in Private Law (Hart, 2018) 227 at 235-42, 245.

86. Blackstone, supra note 3 at 2.

87. David B Schorr, “How Blackstone Became a Blackstonian” (2009) 10:1 Theor Inq L 103 at 107 [emphasis in original].

88. Ibid .

89. Ibid at 105.

90. Ibid at 116.

91. Ibid at 114-17, 124.

92. Carol M Rose, “Canons of Property Talk, or, Blackstone’s Anxiety” (1998) 108:3 Yale LJ 601 at 604.

93. Blackstone, supra note 3 at 2.

94. Ibid .

95. Rose, supra note 92 at 606.

96. Ibid .

97. Ibid at 609.

98. Ibid at 610.

99. Ibid at 609.

100. Ibid at 613.

101. Ibid at 605-12.

102. Frederick G Whelan, “Property as Artifice: Hume and Blackstone” in J Roland Pennock & John W Chapman, eds, Property: Nomos XXII (New York University Press, 1980) 101 at 119.

103. Schorr, supra note 87 at 117.

104. Ibid at 124.

105. Ibid at 114.