Compelling Loan Modifications A Violation Of Investors' Constitutional Rights? Not So, Says One Expert

David Dana, professor of law and associate dean for academic affairs at Northwestern University School of Law writes in The Huffington Post:

• In recent years, mortgages have been carved up into so many pieces that the re-working of mortgages -- and the saving of homes from foreclosure -- is not happening even when there are responsible homeowners who are willing and able to make reasonable payments.

• Regulators and politicians have done nothing yet to compel the re-working of mortgages, in part because they fear that they will be labeled as trampling upon the constitutional rights to property of the investors who own parts of these troubled mortgages.

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• Our property law and property rights tradition simply does not require, or even allow, our lawmakers to sit back while the ill-advised chopping up of property into competing interest creates a gridlock that undermines national prosperity. As Abraham Lincoln famously remarked, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.

For the case Professor Dana makes in support of his position, see The Feudal Mistake.