This is far too cool
Of course, by “cool”, I mean, “geeky as hell.”
Glenn Reynolds, the irascible law professor of Instapundit fame, enjoys throwing little articles like this at his unwitting readership. After digging a little further into the article, I found this…
Lord of the Rings as Property Law
Let’s take a hit of that, shall we?
The novel The Lord of the Rings was a phenomenon. The movie trilogy based upon it has grossed over a billion dollars and won a slew of Oscars.
But what’s really interesting about the work is that it is about property law.
Seems Like a Property Exam
Consider the following facts which seem ripped from a first year property law exam:
1. Sauron holds ownership in the Ring through accession, by working one thing (base metals) into a new thing (a ring of power)
2. He is dispossessed by Isildur, who now holds possession in the Ring.
3. Isildur loses the Ring (he has a manifest intent to exclude others but no physical control) when it slips off his finger as he was swimming in the Auduin river to escape from Orcs.
4. Déagol finds the Ring.
5. He is dispossessed by Sméagol (a.k.a. Gollum).
6. Gollum loses the Ring and it is finally found by Bilbo.
7. Bilbo gifts the Ring to Frodo. Later, Aragorn (the heir of Isildur) tells Frodo to carry the ring to Mordor, making Frodo his bailee.
8. Sam, assuming that Frodo is dead, takes the Ring according to instructions to help Frodo with the Ring in grave circumstances. Sam is acting here as a (fictional) bailee and he returns possession to Frodo after finding him still alive.
9. At the end of the book, Gollum restores his possession of the ring. Seconds later, he and the Ring are both destroyed. At this point all property held in the Ring disappears.
The article then proceeds to explain whether or not Sauron has a legal right to claim The Ring as his property. Go ahead and read the article - I’m not spoiling the ending for you.
This does make me wonder what other novels and pieces of literature can be examined with a purely legalistic mind. Would an examination of the legal constructs of 1984 be compelling? What about a legalistic examination of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan?
Oooh… I just got goosebumps thinking about that last one. Who, in fact, really owns the Genesis device? Is it Dr. Carol Marcus? The United Federation of Planets? Khan Noonian Singh? Based on that analysis of the LoTR in the above post, it would seem that Khan is merely a possessor. What gets interesting, however, is that the UFP did, in fact, grant resources towards the construction of the Genesis Device (namely, the U.S.S. Reliant, among other things), so, depending on the terms of the grant provided to Dr. Marcus, the UFP may have sole legal ownership of the Genesis Device.
I’m stopping now.
geeky, links | David Colborne | 
March 30, 2008 11:23 am
2 Comments
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Subscribe
By Jacob, March 30, 2008 @ 6:58 pm
Glad you liked the article!
Professor Ilya Somin has done yeoman’s work legally analyzing other novels and pieces of literature:
Pride and Prejudice
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (not technially “literature”, I guess).
And there’s lots of stuff on Harry Potter:
A Symposium
A paper on IP
In terms of who held ownership in the Genesis Device I’d say probably the Federation given that they put up the resources and the important security ramifications of the device. The UFP has a not particularly friendly attitude towards private property in general, I would be surprised if they were to make an exception for something as sensitive as Genesis.
By David Colborne, March 30, 2008 @ 7:19 pm
True - my understanding of the UFP’s position on private property is along the lines of, “We’ve outgrown such things,” hence why the Ferengi are considered so contemptible. Even if Dr. Marcus or David had any legal basis to claim ownership of Genesis, the Federation did a wonderful job in Star Trek III of declaring knowledge of the existence of Genesis, to say nothing of the records pertaining to its construction, to be top secret, which would imply ownership.
That said - this entire topic has opened a whole new level of interest in law for me. To be bluntly honest, I had no idea that one could even view fiction through the eyes of property law.
Methinks I have some research to do…