May 2012, Volume 98, Issue 3| Atrocity, Entitlement, and
Personhood 98 Va. L. Rev. 635 (2012) For a generation since
Margaret Jane Radin’s classic article Property and Personhood,
scholars have viewed personhood as a conception of property that
affirms autonomy, dignity, and basic civil rights, a progressive
alternative to traditional, more economically focused property
theories. This Article presents a fundamental challenge to
personhood as a progressive approach to property. It shows that
personhood claims often derive from violent and other harmful
acts committed in the course of acquiring and owning property.
This persistent and pervasive connection between personhood and
violence—the “atrocity value” in property—upends core
assumptions about the American property tradition and
complicates the progressive social function of property law.
This Article explains why atrocity creates entitlement, drawing
from social psychology and accounts of law and violence to show
how violence can foster personhood. The Ar