Bulletin n. 1-2/2014 | ||
November 2014 | ||
Joseph Blocher |
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Selling State Borders | ||
in University of Pennsylvania Law Review , vol. 162, issue 2 , 2014 , 241-305 | ||
The relationship between state sovereignty and state territory in the United States is more complex, interesting, and unstable than the reassuring familiarity of an American map might suggest. State borders move as a result of wandering rivers, interstate border compacts, and even newly discovered surveying errors. States and the federal government also buy and sell proprietary interests in vast tracts of public land, while effectively leasing their sovereign functions to private parties. This Article argues that those threads—mobile state borders and active markets for public land and sovereign functions—can and should be woven together to create an interstate market for sovereign territory. | ||