Time Has Come to Change
I believe it’s time to make the law reflect the scientific reality, and at least one reason is this: Elsewhere in property law, life tenants are much more restricted in terms of what they can and cannot do with a piece of land. These restrictions recognize — correctly — that the life tenant is but a temporary possessor of the land and that the land will outlive anyone now living. They further recognize — and here’s the point — the importance of preserving this land in usable form for those who will come to possess the land next (“remaindermen,” to use the legal term). These restrictions therefore prevent a life tenant from committing "waste" on the land, such as robbing the land of its resources or destroying the land’s value.
Unless we want to see every last acre of usable land denaturalized and turned into a parking lot, condo complex or landfill, we must begin to see that we are all life tenants and thereby begin to apply a modernized form of the doctrine of waste to all landowners.
Seeds for Improvement Already in the Law
In summary, once we recognize that every landowner is but temporary, we can begin to develop property laws that reflect this reality. In particular, we can develop a scientifically acceptable system that provides not only a moral obligation to preserve the land but also a legal obligation to do so. Corporations — whose shareholders and officers die, too — must also be held to this standard.
The good news is that, even though the medieval property system needs updating, we do not have to reinvent the wheel: This same system already contains the life estate form of ownership and the doctrine of waste. These legal concepts are a good starting point for updating the property system, even though they were not developed with the dangers of modern technology in mind.
S. E. Harrison is author of Plutonomics: A Unified Theory of Wealth. (http://plutonomics,wordpress.com).
