Property law


Property law is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property and personal property. Property refers to legally protected claims to resources, such as land and personal property, including intellectual property. Property can be exchanged through contract law, and if property is violated, one could sue under tort law to protect it.
The concept, idea or philosophy of property underlies all property law. In some jurisdictions, historically all property was owned by the monarch and it devolved through feudal land tenure or other feudal systems of loyalty and fealty.

Theory

The word property, in everyday usage, refers to an object owned by a person—a car, a book, or a cellphone—and the relationship the person has to it. In law, the concept acquires a more nuanced rendering. Factors to consider include the nature of the object, the relationship between the person and the object, the relationship between a number of people in relation to the object, and how the object is regarded within the prevailing political system. Most broadly and concisely, property in the legal sense refers to the rights of people in or over certain objects or things.
Non-legally recognized or documented property rights are known as informal property rights. These informal property rights are non-codified or documented, but recognized among local residents to varying degrees.

Justifications and drawbacks of property rights

In capitalist societies with market economies, much of property is owned privately by persons or associations and not the government. Five general justifications have been given on private property rights:
  1. Private property is an efficient way to manage resources in a decentralized basis, allowing expertise and specialization to develop with regard to the property.
  2. Private property is a powerful incentive for owners to put it to productive use, because they stand to gain in the investment.
  3. Private property allows exchanges and modifications.
  4. Private property is an important source of individual autonomy, giving individuals independence and identity distinct from others.
  5. Private property, being dispersed, allows individuals to exercise freedom, against others or against the government.
Arguments in favor of limiting private property rights have also been raised:
  1. Private property can be used in a way that is harmful to others, such as a factory owner causing loud noises in nearby neighborhoods. In economics, this is known as a negative externality. Nuisance laws and government regulations have been used to limit an owners' right to use the property in certain ways.
  2. Property can lead to monopolies, giving the owner the power to unfairly extract advantages from others. Because of this, there are laws on competition and antitrust.
  3. Property can lead to the commodification of certain domains which people would prefer not to be commodified, such as social relations.
  4. Private property gives individuals power, which can exacerbate over time and lead to too much inequality within a society. The propensity for inequality is justification of wealth redistribution.

    Natural rights and property

In his Second Treatise on Government, English philosopher John Locke asserted the right of an individual to own one part of the world, when, according to the Bible, God gave the world to all humanity in common. He claimed that although persons belong to God, they own the fruits of their labor. When a person works, that labor enters into the object. Thus, the object becomes the property of that person. However, Locke conditioned property on the Lockean proviso, that is, "there is enough, and as good, left in common for others".
U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Wilson undertook a survey of the philosophical grounds of American property law in 1790 and 1791. He proceeds from two premises: "Every crime includes an injury: every injury includes a violation of a right." The government's role in protecting property depends upon an idea of right. Wilson believes that "man has a natural right to his property, to his character, to liberty, and to safety." He also indicates that "the primary and principal object in the institution of government... was... to acquire a new security for the possession or the recovery of those rights".
Wilson states that: "Property is the right or lawful power, which a person has to a thing." He then divides the right into three degrees: possession, the lowest; possession and use; and, possession, use, and disposition – the highest. Further, he states: "Useful and skillful industry is the soul of an active life. But industry should have her just reward. That reward is property, for of useful and active industry, property is the natural result." From this simple reasoning he is able to present the conclusion that exclusive, as opposed to communal property, is to be preferred. Wilson does, however, give a survey of communal property arrangements in history, not only in colonial Virginia but also ancient Sparta.

Property rights

There are two main views on the right to property, the traditional view and the bundle of rights view. The traditionalists believe that there is a core, inherent meaning in the concept of property, while the bundle of rights view states that the property owner only has bundle of permissible uses over the property. The two views exist on a spectrum and the difference may be a matter of focus and emphasis.
William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, wrote that the essential core of property is the right to exclude. That is, the owner of property must be able to exclude others from the thing in question, even though the right to exclude is subject to limitations. By implication, the owner can use the thing, unless another restriction, such as zoning law, prevents it. Other traditionalists argue that three main rights define property: the right to exclusion, use and transfer.
An alternative view of property, favored by legal realists, is that property simply denotes a bundle of rights defined by law and social policy. Which rights are included in the bundle known as property rights, and which bundles are preferred to which others, is simply a matter of policy. Therefore, a government can prevent the building of a factory on a piece of land, through zoning law or criminal law, without damaging the concept of property. The "bundle of rights" view was prominent in academia in the 20th century and remains influential today in American law.

Priority

Different parties may claim a competing interest in the same property by mistake or by fraud, with the claims being inconsistent of each other. For example, the party creating or transferring an interest may have a valid title, but may intentionally or negligently create several interests wholly or partially inconsistent with each other. A court resolves the dispute by adjudicating the priorities of the interests.

Property rights and rights to people

Property rights are rights over things enforceable against all other persons. By contrast, contractual rights are rights enforceable against particular persons. Property rights may, however, arise from a contract; the two systems of rights overlap. In relation to the sale of land, for example, two sets of legal relationships exist alongside one another: the contractual right to sue for damages, and the property right exercisable over the land. More minor property rights may be created by contract, as in the case of easements, covenants, and equitable servitudes.
A separate distinction is evident where the rights granted are insufficiently substantial to confer on the nonowner a definable interest or right in the thing. The clearest example of these rights is the license. In general, even if licenses are created by a binding contract, they do not give rise to property interests.

Property rights and personal rights

Property rights are also distinguished from personal rights. Practically all contemporary societies acknowledge this basic ontological and ethical distinction. In the past, groups lacking political power have often been disqualified from the benefits of property. In an extreme form, this has meant that people have become "objects" of property—legally "things" or chattels More commonly, marginalized groups have been denied legal rights to own property. These include Jews in England and married women in Western societies until the late 19th century.
The dividing line between personal rights and property rights is not always easy to draw. For instance, is one's reputation property that can be commercially exploited by affording property rights to it? The question of the proprietary character of personal rights is particularly relevant in the case of rights over human tissue, organs and other body parts.
In the United States, a "quasi-property" interest has been explicitly declared in the dead body. Also in the United States, it has been recognised that people have an alienable proprietary "right of publicity" over their "persona". The patent/patenting of biotechnological processes and products based on human genetic material may be characterised as creating property in human life.
A particularly difficult question is whether people have rights to intellectual property developed by others from their body parts. In the pioneering case on this issue, the Supreme Court of California held in Moore v. Regents of the University of California that individuals do not have such a property right.

Classification

Property law is characterised by a great deal of historical continuity and technical terminology. The basic distinction in common law systems is between real property and personal property.
Before the mid-19th century, the principles governing the transfer of real property and personal property on an intestacy were quite different. Though this dichotomy does not have the same significance anymore, the distinction is still fundamental because of the essential differences between the two categories. An obvious example is the fact that land is immovable, and thus the rules that govern its use must differ. A further reason for the distinction is that legislation is often drafted employing the traditional terminology.
The division of land and chattels has been criticised as being not satisfactory as a basis for categorising the principles of property law since it concentrates attention not on the proprietary interests themselves but on the objects of those interests. Moreover, in the case of fixtures, chattels which are affixed to or placed on land may become part of the land.
Real property is generally sub-classified into:
  1. corporeal hereditaments – tangible real property
  2. incorporeal hereditaments – intangible real property such as an easement of way
Although a tenancy involves rights to real property, a leasehold estate is typically considered personal property, being derived from contract law. In the civil law system, the distinction is between movable and immovable property, with movable property roughly corresponding to personal property, while immovable property corresponding to real estate or real property, and the associated rights, and obligations thereon.