Absolute Preferences and Relative Preferences in Property Law

This article suggests that the population is roughly divided between individuals primarily oriented toward absolute gains and losses, and those oriented toward relative gains and losses. That is, some people consistently care more about the absolute size of the pie slice they are eating, and others care more about how their percentage of the pie stacks up against their peers’ portions. This article examines how property law deals with that heterogeneity in relative and absolute preferences. It focuses initially on inheritance law, particularly cases in which a decedent with living children has adopted her grandchild or someone else within the bloodstream, engendering results that might be acceptable to an heir with absolute preferences but unacceptable to an heir with relative preferences. The article then shows how similar controversies play out in takings law and the law of easements. In many of these cases vehement disagreements between majority opinions and dissents can be understood as clashes between jurists who are focused on absolute resources and those who are focused on relative resources. The article then hypothesizes that some relatively low-stakes disputes explode into contentious lawsuits precisely because a landowner oriented towards absolute gains and losses is incapable of understanding a conflict from the perspective of his neighbor, for whom relative preferences are decisive. The article concludes by referencing examples from takings law and the law of waste, in which divergent assumptions about the prevalence of relative and absolute preferences render property doctrines ambiguous, tenuous, or incoherent