MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Faulkner Law Professor Adam J. MacLeod, an expert in property law, intellectual property, and jurisprudence, has recently added three articles to his lengthy list of published works. Additionally, he was recently appointed as the State Liaison Officer to serve as the United States Coast Guard’s state and legislative liaison to the State of Alabama. He will do this while continuing to serve as a legal staff officer in the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary.
The Modern Law Review, a leading peer-reviewed jurisprudence journal, published his review article What Makes Property Liberal? In this article, he considers contemporary attempts to ground property in new liberal values such as autonomy and equality, and he argues that the mischaracterizations of property that dominate contemporary scholarship should be rejected. Instead, he contends, scholars, judges, and lawyers should return to property’s classical justification of ordered liberty and understand how property enables people to lead lives of flourishing.
In his article, Public Rights After Oil States Energy, which was published by the Notre Dame Law Review, MacLeod explores the concept of public rights in the context of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Oil States Energy Services v. Greene’s Energy Group. He considers how the Court has used the term “public rights” to refer to three different concepts with different jurisprudential implications. Using insights drawn from historical and analytical jurisprudence, he distinguishes the three concepts and examines how each of them is at work in patent law.
In his article, Cyber Trespass and Property Concepts, published by IP Theory, a peer-edited, intellectual property law publication, MacLeod shows how basic property concepts such as bailment and public accommodation licenses can solve persistent problems in the law governing the Internet. He argues that property solutions can transcend national boundaries as they appeal to universal, practical reason.
MacLeod is Professor of Law at Faulkner University and a Research Fellow of the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy. He has been a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University and a Thomas Edison Fellow in the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property at George Mason University. He is co-editor of the fourth edition of Christie and Martin’s Jurisprudence (West Academic 2020) and author of Property and Practical Reason (Cambridge University Press 2015) and other books. He has published more than one hundred articles, essays, and book reviews in peer-reviewed journals, law reviews, news outlets, and journals of public opinion. He is an instructor in the James Madison Program’s graduate seminar on the Moral Foundations of Law, and he speaks at events and contributes to conferences, colloquia, and consultations around the world.
Professor MacLeod received his B.A. from Gordon College and his J.D. from the University of Notre Dame Law School. He served as law clerk to Chief Justice Christopher Armstrong and Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Appeals Court and to Chief Judge Lewis Babcock of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. He practiced law in the Boston area and has held appointment as a special Deputy Attorney General of Alabama.