The new issue of the University of Toronto Law Journal (63:1, January 2013) is a special focus issue edited by Prof. Angela Fernandez, titled Foxes, Seals, Whales and the Rule of Capture: Animals in the Law and Legal History.
The common-law rule on the capture of wild animals is often cited by law and economics scholars to demonstrate the superiority of clear rules over vague or "fuzzy" standards. In countless property law courses, the famous fox hunt case, Pierson v. Post (1805), is used to support the "catch it and kill it if you can" view of property: mere pursuit of a wild animal is insufficient to establish possession. Where "hot pursuit" might have been sufficient according to the sportsman's custom, escape was always possible, and the law preferred certainty. In this forthcoming focus feature, four scholars spanning law and history challenge this rules v. standards approach to the rule of capture, demonstrating that, understood historically, the situation is much more complicated and interesting - which wild animal, which type of hunting, in what period all turn out to be important.
In addition to editing the issue, Prof. Fernandez has contributed an article, "Fuzzy Rules and Clear Enough Standards: The Uses & Abuses Of Pierson V Post".
The issue also includes the text of the 2011-12 Annual Cecil A. Wright lecture by Prof. Hanoch Dagan of Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Law, "Inside Property" and a response from Prof. Lisa Austin, "Pluralism, Context, and the Internal Life of Property: A Response to Hanoch Dagan."
See the full issue on the University of Toronto Law Journal website.
