Mine! summary

In Washington, DC, attending a Supreme Court hearing is free, as long as you’re there early enough to get a seat. In other words, it’s first come, first served, otherwise known as first in time. So people arrive days in advance. They camp out in front of the courtroom to save their spots. But just before the entrance opens, something unexpected happens: bedraggled people at the top of the line swap places with new arrivals – smartly dressed men and women who hadn’t gone anywhere near that line.

This exchange is thanks to the line-standing business. Companies pay line standers the minimum wage to save spots for wealthy clients. And then firms sell these spots for as much as $6,000 each. That might sound deeply unfair. But consider that the business creates jobs for the poor and the homeless. Ban line standing and these people would be out of work.

Every day we encounter subtle, sometimes almost invisible possession claims. We see them in cafeterias, playgrounds, even garages. Perhaps a jacket is reserving a seat at the movie theater, or a badge lays claim to a disabled space in a parking lot. We respond to these signals because possession is an instinct hardwired in our brains.

Conflicts over the possession of land have fueled countless wars, conquests, and even genocides. Have you ever wondered why Native Americans can’t legally reclaim land that was unjustly taken from them during the Indian Removal Act of 1830? The discouraging answer is that after over 170 years of occupancy, American law recognizes the US government as the rightful owner. It’s the result of what’s known as the law of adverse possession, or the process in which physical possession turns into ownership.

As children, many of us learn that “you reap what you sow.” In the past, the notion that labor justifies ownership wasn’t just common sense, it was also an integral part of the laws about land ownership in the United States.

Soon after the US was founded, it passed the Homestead Act, which afforded 160 acres of land to any American citizen. There was one catch: you had to live on the land for at least five years and actively improve it. In 1823, the Supreme Court clarified that this didn’t apply to Native Americans: for them, hunting, gathering, and farming on the land didn’t justify ownership. In the colonization of America, ownership was limited to specific types of labor.

If you own a house, you’ll know how many square feet your property includes. But have you ever considered how much of the air inside the house you own? According to a maxim dating to medieval England, “whoever owns the soil, owns up to Heaven and down to Hell.” It’s a sentiment that echoes the claim of attachment, or the instinct that if you own something, then whatever’s attached to it, is also yours.

That may have been true in the Middle Ages, but the concept of attachment had to change over the years. Ownership laws simply had to keep up with the development of technology. A hundred years ago, courts actually said that you didn’t own the air above your home. A different decision would have grounded the nascent aviation industry.

Who owns your body? Historically, our bodies have been considered sacred, unlike the objects we buy and sell, such as bicycles or furniture. But these days, the answer is far from obvious. Think about the organs inside your body.

Advances in medical technology have made transplantation possible. So can you trade your body parts for money? The answer often depends on which body part and, in some cases in the US, in which state. According to US law, what you do with your body isn’t always your choice.

When upstate New Yorker Burr McDowell passed away in 1973, his adult children Arthur and Mildred inherited his rocking chair. The chair wasn’t worth much, but the children both had a sentimental attachment to it. The problem was that they couldn’t agree on how it could be split.

Arthur took the chair from Mildred’s house. So she sued him.