Bundle of Rights

Diary Entry: January 25, 2025

Okay, so my professor shot down the “Coase is about property” idea. That’s fine. But it left me wondering... if Coase didn’t come up with the “bundle of rights,” who did? I spent some time digging through old property law articles, and... yeah. It seems the theory is way older than Coase. It comes from the legal realists in the 1910s and 1920s.

So, the professor was right, at least on that. Coase wasn’t inventing the “bundle of rights” theory in 1960; it was already an established concept in American law.

This just brings me back to the original mystery. If the paper isn’t about the “Coase Theorem,” and it isn’t a revolutionary theory of property, then... what is it about? Why is it so damn important? I’m still missing the key.