Article 1 of the First Protocol (A1P1) to the ECHR states that every natural and legal person has a right to enjoyment of their possessions. The meaning of the text is anything but straightforward. There is no mention of companies but in common and civil law jurisdictions there is no doubt that companies are ‘legal persons’ (‘personnes morales’). Neither is the term ‘property’ used. Instead, the French version uses the term ‘biens’ whilst the English version uses the word ‘possessions’. Nor does the English text proclaim a right to own property but mentions instead enjoyment of possessions. Yet it is well established in the jurisprudence of the ECtHR that A1P1 protects property rights and that companies have standing to launch claims as victims of violations of their right to property. Why was this not made unambiguously clear by the drafters? And why would a human rights treaty include companies as victims of violations of human rights?The drafting history reveals that the wording of A1P1 was a political compromise,obfuscating the legal reach of protection of A1P1 andits dissonance with the moral foundations of universal human rights.

Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend lectures are contemporaneous to his Groundwork, which first sketches some key features of his Critical moral philosophy. Evidence of Kant’s Groundwork stands out when his lectures are compared to Achenwall’s Prolegomena and to Kant’s assigned text, Achenwall’s Ius naturae. Kant’s own Critical Rechtslehre, including his theory of property, develops much later, yet these lectures reveal several of Kant’s key issues and problems, his profound disagreements with traditional and contemporaneous natural law, some of his critical resources for radically improving philosophy of law. This chapter focuses on how Kant’s Critical issues and innovations pertain to individual rights to property.

Private law theory is pulled in opposite directions: internal and external perspectives on law; holistic and reductionist methodologies; conceptualist and nominalist views; and deontological and consequentialist approaches. Relatedly, theories tend to focus on the micro or the macro scales – interpersonal relations or societal effects – but face difficulties in connecting them. In this paper, we examine these problems in private law theory through the lens of the legal phenomenology of Adolf Reinach. According to Reinach, the law presupposes a realm of real, timeless entitles and their workings that are synthetic a priori: they are neither conventional nor contingent. Nor are they inherently moral or customary. We argue that regardless of the ontological status of what Reinach identifies as a priori, it points toward something more robust than most current theories would countenance. We illustrate the usefulness of this perspective through Reinach’s analysis of property, transfer, and representation. Reinach captures features and generalizations that have eluded analysis, as, for example, when he treats the principle of nemo dat quod non habet (‘one cannot transfer what one does not own’) as underlying all transfer even if displaced by positive rules such as good faith purchase. His views also point toward the importance of accessibility for legal concepts, including cases of tacit knowledge. Whatever its exact source, this “deep structure” of the law has the potential to partially reconcile some of the fissures in private law theory and to connect the micro and the macro through a better understanding of system in law.

The state of nature in social contract theories tells us two stories, one about who the main political actors are, and another one about the supra-juridical normativity and principles those actors use to judge and act politically once they are in the civil state. In my chapter I focus on the latter matter by contrasting Kant’s approach to the state of nature and its role in his social contract theory as given in the Feyerabend lectures with the conceptions of the state of nature in Hobbes, Locke, Achenwall, and Rousseau. Following the thesis that pre-juridical normativity functions as supra-juridical normativity once in the state, my main question is: how is "natural", in the sense of "pre-political", normativity generated? With this I am referring not only to the source of normativity, but mainly to how pretensions of normativity arise when people interact in the state of nature, and if these are or are not regulated by a moral-legal order independent from that interaction.

This paper examines what Kant says about the economy in Feyerabend’s notes of Kant’s lectures on natural right. While Feyerabend does not report Kant having a systematic discussion of the economy as a topic in its own right the text is interesting in what it shows about the context and the development of Kant’s thought on issues to do with political economy. I look at the Feyerabend lecture notes in relation to things said about the economy in Achenwall’s Natural Law, Kant’s text book, as well as in Kant’s Doctrine of Right. Looking at the three texts in relation to each other illuminates the development of Kant’s thinking and the paper focuses on tracing the relations between ideas to do with the economy in the three texts. I look at Kant’s developing thoughts on the economy in relation to the following ideas: an account of money; an account of value and price; the theorization of labor; taxation; property and the commons.

The textbook Immanuel Kant assigned for his course on Naturrecht was Gottfried Achenwall’s Natural Law. In the Feyerabend transcript of his course (1784), Kant not only explains Achenwall’s text but also criticizes him and expounds his own alternative theory. Since it is not always obvious from the lecture notes whether Kant is explaining Achenwall, criticizing him, or presenting his own theory, one must know the basics about Achenwall’s positions when reading Kant’s Feyerabend lectures. In this essay, we introduce Achenwall and his handbook to readers of Kant’s Feyerabend lectures. We start with some background information and then discuss Achenwall’s position on freedom and obligation, natural law and right, and his theory of property and the state. We end by pointing out a few of the main points of disagreement between Kant and Achenwall that emerge from the Feyerabend lectures.

It explores the various methods of property acquisition under Chinese law. The chapter begins by distinguishing between original and derivative acquisition, emphasising the different processes involved in each. It highlights the legal nuances and state ownership implications, particularly in cases involving lost property and unowned estates.

The chapter then delves into the theory and practice of property transfer, discussing the principles governing the transfer of ownership through delivery (for movables) and registration (for immovables). A significant portion is dedicated to the land registration system, detailing its historical development, functions, and the dual registration models (mandatory and voluntary). It addresses the legal mechanisms for ensuring accurate registration, liability for mistakes and fraud, and the processes for rectifying errors. The chapter concludes by analyzing the different methods of delivery, both actual and constructive, and their implications for property rights transfer.

Psychology and law, by their nature, are deeply entwined. Both are about human behavior – understanding it, modifying it, regulating it. Psychology’s research engagement with legal topics enjoys a long history, but until recently has been largely limited to clinical assessment (e.g., capacity, insanity) and police and trial evidence and procedures (e.g., eyewitnesses, jury instructions). The traditional canon of “Psychology & Law” research gained prominence when DNA evidence revealed that many wrongful convictions involved problems foreseen by psychologists. Also, the emergence of “Behavioral Law & Economics” likely provided more legitimacy to law’s engagement with empirical psychology topics and methods, spurring “Law & Psychology” teaching and research in law schools. The expanded range of research can be found across the US law curriculum as illustrated in four main first-year courses – Criminal Law, Torts, Contracts, and Property – and two commonly taken or required courses – Evidence and Professional Responsibility. The current experimental jurisprudence boom has added to the topics and methods used in this research and amplifies the existing trend in which psychology engages more closely with the content and values of law.

This chapter examines how property regimes are likely to respond to the significant increase in average life expectancy predicted by “100-year life” theories. It takes a relatively pessimistic position, arguing that the optimal institutional response to demographic aging will be very difficult to produce: some countries, most notably the US, are likely to underrespond to the socioeconomic demands that demographic aging will probably impose on property law, whereas others, such as China and Japan, may well overrespond. This is because, within the realm of property rights and regulation, the economics and politics of demographic aging may well contradict each other: aging potentially reinforces political opposition to public governance even as it creates economic demand for it.

As people live longer, how will they change the way they transfer their property when they die? This chapter argues that death-time transfers will become less important, not more. Longer lifespans will deplete more of the wealth people might have otherwise transferred upon their deaths and will necessitate transfers earlier in donors’ lifetimes to ensure wealth can be accessed by children and other donees at times when they are still young enough to use the wealth productively. Enabling flexibility in the timing of transfers will require changes to income, estate, and gift tax policies that currently favor transfers at death. Will-making will become less important as people use up their wealth or transfer it before their deaths.

This chapter studies the property’s analytical structure. The most basic concept for property is the concept of a usufruct. The conceptual model for usufructs describes informal property right and simple legal rights like easements and common law water rights. That model also describes the features of the natural rights that conventional property institutions should secure. Usufructs consist of in rem and immunized claim-rights in relation to separable resources, they possess institutional status, and they are structured to perform the function of facilitating productive use as studied in Chapters 4 and 5. The foregoing definition of a usufruct is a definition in relation to a focal or core case. This chapter contrasts its conceptual claims with exclusion theories and bundle of rights theories.

This chapter explains what property covers and what interest it serves. Property is the field for legal and social relations for separable resources. And property serves an interest people have in acquiring and using separable resources for survival or flourishing. This chapter relies on work by James Penner and Neil MacCormick to introduce separability. This chapter studies property in body parts, names, identities, and slaves.

This book introduces a normative theory of property. Property laws and social norms are justified by whether and how well they secure natural rights. The natural rights are justified by run-of-the-mill principles of natural law, which evaluate human action by whether it helps people survive or flourish rationally. The book studies how natural rights legitimate property law in general and in specific doctrines. It also studies the main topics in property law and policy – ownership, public commons, the appropriate design of property rights, rights less sweeping than rights of ownership, property torts, regulatory takings, and eminent domain. The book studies in particular the phenomenon of practical reasoning, the sphere of moral reasoning that converts fundamental moral goals into specific laws and policies to enforce in practice. A theory of natural rights contributes importantly to normative theory beyond the theories most respected today – egalitarian or progressive theories, law and economics, and approaches the book calls pragmatic.

Shelley’s engagement with economics is central to his work. From Queen Mab (1813) to ‘A Philosophical View of Reform’ (composed 1819–20), his discussion of economic events and ideas helped him to critique the social world and propose how it could be improved. His work responds to the productive activities of the labouring poor in the factories and the fields, and to the financial phenomena reshaping Britain’s economy, from public debt to fiat currency. Crucial to Shelley’s economics was the perception that orthodox ideas, such as the labour theory of value and the quantity theory of money, could be used to promote radical ends. The chapter outlines the role of such ideas in Shelley’s work and his response to key economic writers, including Thomas Robert Malthus and William Cobbett. It also outlines how, for Shelley, the production of credible economic knowledge was vital to attaining economic change to benefit the many.