Abstract

In the history of political thought, the relationship between property and power has been a central preoccupation. The very nature of private property, on many accounts, is to put owners in a position of self-serving power to make decisions about matters of concern to others. In many legal systems, the vast power of owners is pervasive, as an ever greater range of resources is brought within the property regime and subjected to private power backed by the coercive power of the state. Political and legal philosophers have long puzzled over how to reconcile the nature of private property with the limits and social responsibilities upon which, at least for some accounts, property’s legitimacy depends. The perennial question, then, is how best to understand the nature of property such that property’s limits can also be accounted for coherently within our legal and constitutional arrangements. Robé’s book Property, Power and Politics provides us with a wide-ranging analysis of property. There is much that we agree with and applaud here. In this contribution we seek to situate a key aspect of his work within this larger context, and to offer a criticism of one element of his view: his rejection of an understanding of ownership as an office. In Robé’s analysis, offices belong in the public sphere, where officeholders are held to account by their constituencies. We argue that Robé’s rejection of the idea of ownership-as-office rests on a misunderstanding of the legal concept of “office.” Moreover, this idea, properly understood, provides sound conceptual support for the normative aims of Robé’s account: to bind property and social responsibility tightly together. Robé’s project to criticize the virtually unlimited power of private owners in the contemporary world is served, not undermined, by understanding property as an office. First, we provide a brief summary of the key elements of Robé’s view of property (Part II). We then introduce a theoretical perspective on property as office as it has been developed in legal theory (Part III). Finally, we argue that this perspective fits better with Robé’s stated purposes than his own rejection of it suggests and raises some questions for future discussion (Part IV).