Closing the Deal

This chapter refers to Doug Harmon, a real-estate broker at Eastdil Secured, that lost to Darcy Stacom of CB Richard Ellis when MetLife had put Stuyvesant Town up for sale in 2006. It reviews MetLife's desire to shoot the moon for the highest possible price, and Stacom's promise to deliver to them what they wanted without regard for the tenants' arguments about preserving middle-class housing. It also notes Harmon's intuition that the deal that was being pitched by Stacom was going to have bad consequences for the tenants. The chapter talks about how Harmon set the real-estate record for the most expensive building sale in New York City history by selling the General Motors Building for $1.4 billion in 2003. It examines the Stuy Town deal that required CWCapital to present the right buyer and push for a quick decision.

Authority

Opening with the case of United States v. Campbell, a case from the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit involving a real estate broker charged with money laundering, this chapter offers two stories. The first, involving a fictional king named Rex, illustrates the extent to which criminal law theorists (and citizens more generally) disagree about what justice requires across a range of rules governing the imposition of state punishment. In light of such disagreement, how is Rex to decide what, as a matter of justice, the criminal law should be? The second story, involving an imaginary island named Anarchia, illustrates how state authority provides an important good—authoritatively resolving reasonable disagreements among free and equal democratic citizens about the requirements of justice—and explains why those subject to a democratic state’s authority are morally bound to conform their conduct to the law resolving those disagreements. It then argues that a democratic state’s authority to resolve disagegreements among its citizens over the demands of justice is nonetheless limited authority. A democratic state has wide authority, but not unlimited authority. The actus reus and mens rea requirements limit the authority of a democratic state to ascribe guilt.