I'm blogging this week about my new book Natural Property Rights, published with Cambridge University Press.

Today, I'll cover the right to use property. I'll illustrate with servitudes, and the common law use rights owners rely on when they create servitudes and assign them away. Since many professors associate nuisance law with law and economic analysis, I'll contrast rights-based and economic analyses of nuisance here.

Imagine that three neighbors own adjacent lots on a street in an unzoned residential neighborhood. Al's lot comes first, then Becky's, then Cassie's. Becky owns and lives in a residential house. Al's lot is vacant at first, but he builds a dry cleaning operation on the lot and starts running the store. Cassie lives in her own residential house, but she then lets the loc

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