Ownership, and what it actually consists of — a bundle of rights over land and things, with trusts, leases and succession attached.
10 topics · 9 curated works
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Fit-for-Purpose Land Administration: Guiding Principles
Enemark, McLaren & Lemmen · 2015
Argues developing countries cannot afford full-precision land registration systems built on the Western survey model, and should instead register…
Primary sources and full treatments.
Commentaries on the Laws of England
William Blackstone · 1766
Book II sets out English real property law as a coherent structure of estates and tenures descended from feudal land tenure, becoming the standard…
+7 more at this level
9 works
Enemark, McLaren & Lemmen
Argues developing countries cannot afford full-precision land registration systems built on the Western survey model, and should instead register land at scale using a simpler, less accurate but affordable approach.
link checked 17 Sept 2026William Blackstone
Book II sets out English real property law as a coherent structure of estates and tenures descended from feudal land tenure, becoming the standard account American courts inherited at independence.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026Frederic William Maitland
Traces how the English trust grew out of the medieval 'use' enforced by the Chancellor's conscience, arguing equity is best understood historically as a gloss on the common law rather than a rival system.
about 3 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Harold Demsetz
Argues private property rights emerge when the benefits of internalising externalities exceed the cost of doing so, illustrated by the rise of private land rights among Quebec hunters as the fur trade grew.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Frank I. Michelman
Asks when a government regulation becomes a taking requiring compensation, and argues the answer should turn on whether paying compensation costs more, in demoralisation, than it saves in efficiency.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Susan F. French
Argues the common law's separate, inconsistent doctrines for easements, covenants and equitable servitudes should be unified into one law of servitudes organised around the parties' actual intent.
John H. Langbein
Argues American succession law is being bypassed en masse by will-substitutes — trusts, joint accounts, payable-on-death designations — and that the law of wills must adapt to a system people no longer use.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Edward H. Rabin
Traces how American courts replaced the caveat-emptor lease with an implied warranty of habitability, and argues the shift mainly helped tenants who could still afford to litigate, not the poorest renters.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Carol M. Rose
Argues American and English first-possession rules for personal property, from wild animals to found objects, work by requiring a claimant to make a public, clearly understood 'statement' of ownership.
link checked 17 Sept 2026