Ablavsky: The Roots of Federal Land Titles
Gregory Ablavsky (Law and History, Stanford Law School) has a new book on the roots of federal title called Federal Ground: Governing Property and Violence in the First U.S. Territories. In this book, Ablavsky depicts the haphazard and unplanned growth of federal authority in the Northwest and Southwest Territories at the end of the Eighteenth Century. This digest gives a brief summary of Ablavsky’s new book and higlights three reviews and reflections that have recently been published about the book.
In Federal Ground, Ablavsky takes the reader west of the original colonies just as the U.S. Constitution is newly enacted. Ablavsky covers three broad themes in these borderland developments: (1) the complex gymnastics required of federal officials to reconcile diverse, preexisting claims to land ownership into a single system of federalized property title, (2) the role of violence and, especially, federal monetary distributions either to fund border violence or to repair harm caused by violence, in legitimizing early federal authority, and (3) the ultimately negotiated balance of federalism that allowed future territories to also become states, but still subject to ongoing federal land distribution and other authorities.
Overall, in crisp and vibrant detail, Ablavsky reveals how federal officials used improvised, ad hoc, and largely extra-legal methods to settle border disputes, especially around property and territory. Ablavsky’s story shows, how these initially haphazard mechanisms to negotiate and resolve disputes ultimately laid the foundation for more traditional, formal, and “bureaucratic incarnations” of federal power.
Ablavsky’s book has generated many reactions and reviews, three of which are highlighted here. First, in her essay The Truth About Property, Jessica Shoemaker (University of Nebraska – Lincoln, College of Law) explains that “reading Gregory Ablavsky’s Federal Ground was like this: a new creation story that changed how I understand the current legal world and how I imagine what is possible.” In particular, The Truth About Property highlights important insights about the nature of property relations today that flow from Ablavsky’s alternative history, including “important lessons about how property systems emerge and evolve, how property choices entrench inequities across geography and generations, and what might be lost in the continuing homogenization of how we even imagine and conceive of what property, land, and community relations can be.”
Second, in his book review Who Were the Real Founders?, Craig Green (Temple Law School) focuses on the foundation of the United States’ legal system in the Northwest and Southwest Territories, not simply in urban centers like Philadelphia and New York. His review unfolds in three parts. First, Green describes Ablavsky’s work of “property pluralism” and intercultural violence along the American frontier, which in turn affected the emergence of constitutional statehood. Second, Green describes implications for three areas of mainstream legal discourse: property, administrative law, and constitutional originalism. Third, Green explains how scholarship like Federal Ground can influence national legal communities that exist at the intersection of doctrine, scholarship, and education.
Finally, Turtle Talk blog – “the leading blog on legal issues in Indian country” – has shared a video of a panel moderated by Liz Reese (Stanford Law School) about Ablavsky’s book with contributions from Alison LaCroix (University of Chicago Law School), Joseph Singer (Harvard Law School), and Matthew Fletcher (Law Professor, University of Michigan Law School). A recording of this panel, in its entirety, can be found here: Greg Ablavsky’s Federal Ground: Reviews and Book Panel.
