I don't see the validity of this argument. Look at the number of freedom of religion lawsuits which have come to the US Supreme Court. That doesn't mean that people don't have a reasonable and practical understanding of the topic for most cases.
Going to your question, one sprang quickly to mind, and I'm not even a lawyer. Kelo v. City of New London, concerning the use of eminent domain. The holding was "The governmental taking of property from one private owner to give to another in furtherance of economic development constitutes a permissible "public use" under the Fifth Amendment."
Here are some of the physical property cases from the last 10 years (based on the list at Wikipedia; many of which are not described, so there are likely more).
There's Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States, "holding that it was possible for government-induced, temporary flooding to constitute a "taking" of property".
There's Marvin Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States which "held that a railroad right-of-way granted under the General Railroad Right-of-Way Act of 1875 is an easement. Therefore, when a railroad abandons such a right-of-way, the easement disappears, and the land owner regains unburdened use of the land."
In Horne v. United States Department of Agriculture, No. 14-275, "The Fifth Amendment requires that the Government pay just compensation when it takes personal property, just as when it takes real property."
In Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection the Supreme Court addressed a question concerning "littoral property owners' rights to future accretions and to contact the water".
Does that mean that no one understands the laws regarding ownership and control of physical objects?
I think what you say is a "case on strategic grain reserve regulation" is Horn v. USDA. It concerns raisins, not grain. It concerns the ability of the Raisin Administrative Committee to take physical property in order to enforce regulations.
Writing for the majority, Roberts wrote (quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horne_v._Department_of_Agricul... ):
> Chief Justice Roberts began his analysis by tracing the history of personal property from the protection of farmers’ corn in the 1215 Magna Carta,[15] to the 1641 Massachusetts Body of Liberties,[16] to a 1778 editorial by John Jay.[17] Chief Justice Roberts concluded that personal property has not been given any less protection than real property for at least 800 years and that the physical appropriation of property gives rise to a per se taking.
Previously, "the Ninth Circuit found that there had been no taking because the takings clause protects personal property, like raisins, less than real property."
Thus, while the case was a consequence of a regulatory decision, the holding establishes that personal property and real property have equal protections.
In your [1] you objected that you were only talking about "physical personal property", and not real estate or other forms of property. However, as you can see in the above quote, the taking of the raisins was the taking of personal property.
Thus, even if you take all the other cases away, there's still at least one case which fits your requirement.
Concerning your synopsis of Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, I do not see how you can summarize it as a case on environmental regulation.
The owners of beachfront property wanted to continue as owners of beachfront property and argued that the construction of a new public beach between their land and the water was the taking of part of their property right. The FL Supreme Court said there was no perpetual right for beachfront property to touch the water, and the Supreme Court affirmed.
The owners also said that they had a "right to receive accretions to their property", that would be taken by the creation of the beach. Again, that Supreme Court found otherwise.
There is no mention of any environmental regulation in the 08–1151 brief.
In your [1] you assert that I somehow knew you were only talking about "physical personal property". Your leadup to it was: "actual property law ... who owns a physical object".
Black's Law, second edition, defines "property" as:
> Rightful dominion over external objects; ownership; the unrestricted and exclusive right to a thing; the right to dispose of the substance of a thing in every legal way, to possess it, to use it and to exclude every one else from interfering with it.
and further distinguishes between absolute property, common property, literary property, personal property, private property, real property, and more. Private property, for example, is of a tangible nature, and includes houses and lands.
So I think you can forgive me for reading your description of "property" and "physical object" as to include private property such as real estate.
I still do not agree with the validity of your argument. Given the number of freedom of religion laws which have come before the Supreme Court in the last 10 years, does that mean that no one has a reasonably practical understanding of the freedom of religion?
I still think your premise - that looking at Supreme Court cases to establish what is well known - is bogus. You have not responded to my counter-example based on the freedom of religion.
The rest of what I wrote is to get you to say what it is you mean, since it certainly wasn't clear from your original text that you were only referring to personal property rights, and specifically excluding real estate. Narrow down the topic enough and of course there won't be any Supreme Court cases, so I that's surely not what you mean to do.
You have further misrepresented court cases, seemingly to make it appear as if the findings are not all, or mostly, related to property law.
In addition, you somehow believe that my citations from Wikipedia (or one link away) are equivalent to a Lexis-Nexis search. I presume that is satire.
I see no reason to find people who group all of my examples under "property law" since I have no problems with assuming that some of them are mistaken. But it seems that you think that none of them fall under "property law."
For Horne v. USDA I found http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/04/argument-preview-regulatio... which says "The Hornes have drawn the support of the Federal Circuit Bar Association and property law scholars, worried over the impact on “takings” law generally of treating personal property differently from real property;". Therefore, that's one citation which places Horne v. USDA in the category of "property law."
FWIW, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_law lists "easements" as part of property law, so Marvin Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States deals with property law.
If you don't like Wikipedia, http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/03/opinion-analysis-victory-a... refers to that case saying:
> The dispute between the Roberts opinion and Justice Sotomayor’s dissent focused mainly on the meaning of a 1942 decision by the Court, and on whether railroad right-of-way ownership disputes should be treated by their own set of property laws rather than general property law principles.
and http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/01/argument-recap-oh-give-me-...
> He had Scalia on his side almost all the way (at least after the Justice’s initial taunt). But he and government lawyer Yang had to cope, repeatedly, with Justice Breyer’s sometimes awkward efforts to remember the phrases he had learned as a student of property law.
If you don't like scotusblog site, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, as part of the progression of this case, also quotes refers to "property law" in https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/12-1173 :
> On the other hand, the Cato Institute argues on behalf of the Trust that arbitrary changes in the principles of property law ultimately undermine landowners’ right to be secure in their property. ...
> The Northwest Legal Foundation (“NLF”) argues on behalf of the Trust that, under the common principles of property law, property is never impliedly conveyed; it is only expressly conveyed. The NLF argues that, because the Trust’s land patent does not contain an expressly reserved reversionary interest, the United States retaining a reversionary interest in the right-of-way is tantamount to a taking by the government. As such, the NLF argues that, without the procedural safeguards of government takings under a doctrine like eminent domain, allowing the United States to retain a reversionary interest, here, undermines the principles of property law and greatly expands the United States’ takings powers.
Thus, two of my examples do fall under the 'umbrella term 'property law'".
I fail to understand your ridicule.
Nobody is confused about what is being referred to when someone says "IP", except people like Stallman (and maybe you) who are trying to score gotchas by pretending you can't talk about complex things in simplified terms.