Mormon Property

Abstract

For most of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the American government fought desperately to rein in the Mormons in Utah. Narratives about this conflict generally treat it as one centered on polygamy or tensions between religion and the state. This paper, however, considers the central role of competing visions of property and property law in the Mormon-American conflict. It explores how the Mormon property system was not only a driver of the conflict but also one of the Mormons’ most important tools in attempting to subvert and overcome the American legal system. In particular, it outlines how the Mormons treated group identity and community standing as a property asset in order to govern through ecclesiastical structures independent of state authority. This historical context offers three advantages. (I) First, a framing centered on competing visions of property law sheds new light on the historical causes and drivers of the Mormon-American conflict and the drastic legal actions of the federal government, including those of the Supreme Court in several prominent decisions. (II) Second, this novel historical framing provides a new throughline for understanding the evolution of the Mormon property system and underscores an overlooked irony in the development of Mormon history: in attempting to subvert “sole and despotic” Anglo-American property norms, the Mormons ultimately succumbed to the American property logic under increasingly elaborate property arrangements. (II) Third, exploring the Mormon property system as one of law rather than merely religion inspires new appreciation for the role of non-state institutions in private ordering and enforcing property systems. At this level, this paper attempts to flesh out the story of the administration of property in Territorial Utah, under the law of consecration, as a case study in law without violence.