the First appearance of the word “Anticommons” ?
Post date: Oct 19, 2012 3:25:27 PM
19 October 2012
Michel Heller (1998: 623, fn 7) insists that he is developing the “anticommons” idea by Frank I. Michelman:
Frank Michelman appears to have coined the term “anticommons.”
Yutaka Suga (2010), too, attributes the word “anticommons” to F. Michelman, in Japanese:
「アンチ・コモンズ（anticommons）」という言葉自体は、アメリカの法学者・フランク・マイクルマンが、一九八二年に早くも言及している［Michelman 1982: 6］（菅豊 2010: 276-7）.
However, I CANNOT find out the word “anticommons” within the whole article of F. Michelman (1982). Indeed M. Heller (1998: 667) changes his expression slightly, from ‘the term’ to ‘the equivalent of’:
In his 1982 article challenging the presumptive efficiency of private property, Frank Michelman introduces the equivalent of an anticommons through his speculative definition of a “regulatory regime” [fn. 207: Michelman, supra note 9 [= Michelman 1982], at 6.].
And F. I. Michelman (1982: 6) discuss the “regulatory regime” just as following (original emphasis), without the word “anticommons”:
2. Regulatory regime (REG). The converse of SON [State of nature] is a regulatory regime (REG), in which everyone always has rights respecting the objects in the regime, and no one, consequently, is ever privileged to use any of them except as particularly authorized by the others. (Rules for determining when such authorization exists may vary along several axes. At one extreme, authorization would require near-simultaneous unanimous consent; tending toward the other extreme would be a rule defining authorization as expressions of consent from any two persons occurring within the same twelve-month time span. The latter rule constitutes an REG: under it, each person always has a right that each of the others shall leave the covered objects alone except insofar as authorization is obtained.)
The term “anticommons” appears in a footnote by Robert C. Ellickson (1993), which refers to Michelman (1982) and, to which is referred by Heller (1998: 667):
Table I omits the anticommons, a land regime in which each member of a public owns a right to exclude, and consequently for which no one owns a privilege of entry and use. A classic example is a wilderness preserve that “any person” has standing to enforce. Because anticommonses yield no profits, they are typically owned by either governments or nonprofit organizations. Frank Michelman first conceived of this land institution, which he called an extreme “regulatory regime” in which authorization to use required “near simultaneous unanimous consent.” Michelman, supra note 9 [= Michelman 1982], at 6.
(Ellickson 1993: 1322, fn 22, original emphasis)
As far as I can search, it seems that in 1993 Robert. C. Ellickson used the term “anticommons” first.
Probably I must continue to search the origin!
Relevant Note:
Relevant short note:
the Comedy or Drama of the Anticommons to come?
REFERENCES
- Ellickson, Robert C. 1993 “Property in Land,” Yale Law Journal 102(6): 1315-1400.
- Heller, Michael A. 1998 “The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets,” Harvard Law Review 111(3): 621-688.
- Michelman, Frank I. 1982 “Ethics, Economics, and the Law of Property,” in J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (eds.) Ethics, Economics, and the Law: Nomos XXIV, New York, New York University Press: 3-40.
- 菅豊（2010）「ローカル・コモンズという原点回帰——「地域文化コモンズ論」へ向けて」山田奨治編『コモンズと文化—文化は誰のものか—』東京堂出版: 263-291.