Category: Property Rights

August 29, 1786 – Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.

8/29/2021

Daniel and Abigail Shays' Pelham, MA farmhouse, c. 1898

Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes both on individuals and their trades. The fight took place mostly in and around Springfield during 1786 and 1787. American Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led four thousand rebels (called Shaysites) in a protest against economic and civil rights injustices. Shays was a farmhand from Massachusetts at the beginning of the Revolutionary War; he joined the Continental Army, saw action at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill, and Battles of Saratoga, and was eventually wounded in action.

In 1787, Shays' rebels marched on the federal Springfield Armory in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government. The confederal government found itself unable to finance troops to put down the rebellion, and it was consequently put down by the Massachusetts State militia and a privately funded local militia. The widely held view was that the Articles of Confederation needed to be reformed as the country's governing document, and the events of the rebellion served as a catalyst for the Constitutional Convention and the creation of the new government. There is still debate among scholars concerning the rebellion's influence on the Constitution and its ratification.

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July 31, 1790 – The first U.S. patent is issued, to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process

7/31/2021

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The First US Patent

The modern concept of the Rule of Law began life not as a political theory, but a economic one. The basic thesis of this theory was that an economy flourishes best under a system of government that treats all persons equally, fairly, and consistently, thus allowing for certainty in commerce, labor, and invention. Invention, the creation of something new through the combination of intellect and skill, creates a new form of property with economic value -- intellectual property. The Founding Fathers were aware of the economic value of intellectual property and want to encourage innovation and creativity " by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” U.S. Constitution, Art. I, sec. 8, Cl. 8.

One of the outcomes of the patents and copyright's clause was the formation of the US Patent and Trademark Office, but in the early years of the republic, obtaining a patent was an informal affair. The first Patent Act povided that a patent would issue if a committee of the Secretary of State, Secretary of War and the Attorney General agreed on the merit of the application.

On July 31, 1790, the first U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement "in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process". The patent was signed by President George Washington, Attorney General Edmund Randolph, and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. The other U.S. patents issued that year were for a new candle-making process and Oliver Evans's flour-milling machinery.

Patents were not initially numbers, and when a fire in 1836 destroyed the record of almost all the patents that had been issued up to that point, over 9,000 patents were lost. The Patent Office attempted to replicate the lost records, and the reconstructed archive number the patents included an "X" to indicate that they were not the original. Thus, Hopkins' patent, copies of which were readily available owing to its historic significance, was number X000001. Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin patent was number X000072 and a patent issued to Samuel Colt for an early improve to his multi-chamber revolver, which was among the patents issued just before the fire destroyed the records, was number X09430. One of the lost patents discovered in the Dartmouth College archives in 2004 turned out to be the first known patent for an internal combustion engine. Only about 2800 of the lost patents have been recovered.

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June 20, 1943 – The Detroit race riot breaks out and continues for three more days.

6/20/2021

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Sign posted near the planned site of the Sojouner Truth Housing Project for black workers moving to Detriot to work in automotive factors to support the war effort.

The 1943 Detroit race riot took place in Detroit, Michigan, of the United States, from the evening of June 20 through to the early morning of June 22. It occurred in a period of dramatic population increase and social tensions associated with the military buildup of U.S. participation in World War II, as Detroit's automotive industry was converted to the war effort. Existing social tensions and housing shortages were exacerbated by racist feelings about the arrival of nearly 400,000 migrants, both African-American and White Southerners, from the Southeastern United States between 1941 and 1943. The new migrants competed for space and jobs, as well as against European immigrants and their descendants.

The Detroit riots were one of five that summer; it followed ones in Beaumont, TX, Harlem, NY, Los Angeles, CA (the Zoot Suit Riot), and Mobile, AL.

The rioting in Detroit began among youths at Belle Isle Park on June 20, 1943; the unrest moved into the city proper and was exacerbated by false rumors of racial attacks in both the black and white communities. It continued until June 22. It was suppressed after 6,000 federal troops were ordered into the city to restore peace. A total of 34 people were killed, 25 of them black and most at the hands of the white police force, while 433 were wounded (75 percent of them black), and property valued at $2 million ($30.4 million in 2020 US dollars) was destroyed. Most of the riot took place in the black area of Paradise Valley, the poorest neighborhood of the city.

At the time, white commissions attributed the cause of the riot to black people and youths. But the NAACP claimed deeper causes: a shortage of affordable housing, discrimination in employment, lack of minority representation in the police, and white police brutality. A late 20th-century analysis of the rioters showed that the white rioters were younger and often unemployed (characteristics that the riot commissions had falsely attributed to blacks, despite evidence in front of them). If working, the whites often held semi-skilled or skilled positions. Whites traveled long distances across the city to join the first stage of the riot near the bridge to Belle Isle Park, and later some traveled in armed groups explicitly to attack the black neighborhood in Paradise Valley. The black participants were often older, established city residents, who in many cases had lived in the city for more than a decade. Many were married working men and were defending their homes and neighborhood against police and white rioters. They also looted and destroyed white-owned property in their neighborhood.

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May 31, 1790 – The United States enacts its first copyright statute, the Copyright Act of 1790.

5/31/2021

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The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright act to be instituted in the United States, though most of the states had passed various legislation securing copyrights in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. The stated object of the act was the "encouragement of learning," and it achieved this by securing authors the "sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending" the copies of their "maps, charts, and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14-year term should the copyright holder still be alive.

In 1783 a committee of the Continental Congress concluded "that nothing is more properly a man's own an the fruit of his study, and that the protection and security of literary property would greatly tends to encourage genius and to promote useful discoveries." At the Constitutional Convention 1787 both James Madison of Virginia and Charles C. Pinckney of South Carolina submitted proposals that would allow Congress the power to grant copyright for a limited time. These proposals are the origin of the Copyright Clause in the United States Constitution, which allows the granting of copyright and patents for a limited time to serve a utilitarian function, namely "to promote the progress of science and useful arts".

Both houses of Congress pursued a copyright law during 1790's second session. They responded to President George Washington's 1790 State of the Union Address, in which he urged Congress to pass legislation designed for "the promotion of Science and Literature" so as to better educate the public. This led to the Patent Act of 1790 and, shortly thereafter, the Copyright Act of 1790.

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May 15, 1891 -- Pope Leo XIII defends workers' rights and property rights in the encyclical Rerum novarum

5/16/2021

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Rerum novarum (from its incipit, with the direct translation of the Latin meaning "of revolutionary change"), or Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor, is an encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII on 15 May 1891. It is an open letter, passed to all Catholic patriarchs, primates, archbishops and bishops, that addressed the condition of the working classes. It discusses the relationships and mutual duties between labor and capital, as well as government and its citizens. Of primary concern is the need for some amelioration of "the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class." It supports the rights of labor to form unions, rejects both socialism and unrestricted capitalism, while affirming the right to private property. Rerum Novarum is considered a foundational text of modern Catholic social teaching.

Pope Leo XIII (Public Domain)

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May 3, 1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.

5/3/2021

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The case arose after an African-American family purchased a house in St. Louis that was subject to a restrictive covenant preventing "people of the Negro or Mongolian Race" from occupying the property. The purchase was challenged in court by a neighboring resident, and was blocked by the Supreme Court of Missouri before going to the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal. The Supreme Court of Missouri held that the covenant was enforceable against the purchasers because the covenant was a purely private agreement between its original parties. A materially similar scenario occurred in the companion case McGhee v. Sipes from Detroit, Michigan, where the McGhees purchased land that was subject to a similar restrictive covenant. In that case, the Supreme Court of Michigan also held the covenants enforceable.

Three justices—Robert H. Jackson, Stanley Reed and Wiley B. Rutledge—recused themselves from the case because they owned property subject to restrictive covenants. In a majority opinion that was joined by the other five participating justices, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson struck down the covenant, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibits racially restrictive housing covenants from being enforced. Vinson held that private parties could abide by the terms of a racially restrictive covenant, but that judicial enforcement of the covenant qualified as a state action and was thus prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause.

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August 29, 1786 – Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.

July 31, 1790 – The first U.S. patent is issued, to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process

June 20, 1943 – The Detroit race riot breaks out and continues for three more days.

May 31, 1790 – The United States enacts its first copyright statute, the Copyright Act of 1790.

May 15, 1891 -- Pope Leo XIII defends workers' rights and property rights in the encyclical Rerum novarum

May 3, 1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.

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