Property teachers take note: F. E. Guerra-Pujol, University of Central Florida and the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, has posted Buchanan v. Samuels: The Cedar Rust Case Redux:
One of the most fascinating sessions at the 2025 meeting of the History of Economics Society (HES) was a roundtable on “The 50th anniversary of the Buchanan-Samuels Exchange.” As it happens, this intellectual exchange was motivated by an old takings case—Miller v. Schoene, decided in 1928—and takings law is one of my areas of expertise. The remainder of my paper reframes the Buchanan-Samuels exchange as a three-act drama and is thus organized as follows: Act I sets the stage of our story by revisiting the dispute in Miller v. Schoene. Next, Act II compares and contrasts Samuels’s framing of this case with Buchanan’s alternate framing. For Samuels, in brief, Miller v. Schoene is a textbook case of reciprocal harms, while for Buchanan, this case is about the sanctity of property rights. Lastly, Act III concludes with the climax and Buchanan’s denouement.
--Dan Ernst
