Product Code Database
Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, (2025). 9781579111588 ISBN 9781579111588 and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, rent, sell, exchange, transfer, give away, or destroy it, or to exclude others from doing these things, as well as to perhaps abandon it; whereas regardless of the nature of the property, the owner thereof has the right to properly use it under the granted property rights.
In economics and political economy, there are three broad forms of property: private property, public property, and collective property (or cooperative property). (2025). 9780618261819, Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 9780618261819 Property may be jointly owned by more than one party equally or unequally, or according to simple or complex agreements; to distinguish ownership and easement from rent, there is an expectation that each party's will with regard to the property be clearly defined and unconditional.. The parties may expect their wills to be unanimous, or alternatively each may expect their own will to be sufficient when no opportunity for dispute exists. The first Restatement defines property as anything, tangible or intangible, whereby a legal relationship between persons and the State enforces a possessory interest or legal title in that thing. This mediating relationship between individual, property, and State is called a property regime.
In sociology and anthropology, property is often defined as a relationship between two or more individuals and an object, in which at least one of these individuals holds a bundle of rights over the object. The distinction between collective and private property is regarded as confusion, since different individuals often hold differing rights over a single object. (2025). 9780312240448, Palgrave. ISBN 9780312240448Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Property in Anthropology,
Types of property include realty (the combination of land and any improvements to or on the ground), personal property (physical possessions belonging to a person), private property (property owned by legal persons, business entities or individual natural persons), public property (State-owned or publicly owned and available possessions) and intellectual property—including exclusive rights over artistic creations and inventions. However, the latter is not always widely recognized or enforced. An article of property may have physical and incorporeal parts. A title, or a right of ownership, establishes the relation between the property and other persons, assuring the owner the right to dispose of the property as the owner sees fit. The unqualified term "property" is often used to refer specifically to real property.
Various scholarly disciplines (such as law, economics, anthropology or sociology) may treat the concept more systematically, but definitions vary, most particularly when involving . Positive law defines such rights, and the judiciary can adjudicate and enforce property rights.
According to Adam Smith (1723–1790), the expectation of profit from "improving one's stock of capital" rests on private-property rights. Capitalism has as a central assumption that property rights encourage their holders to develop the property, generate wealth, and efficiently allocate resources based on the operation of markets. From this has evolved the modern conception of property as a right enforced by positive law, in the expectation that this will produce more wealth and better standards of living. However, Smith also expressed a very critical view of the effects of property laws on inequality:
In his 1881 text "The Common Law", Oliver Wendell Holmes describes property as having two fundamental aspects. The first, possession, can be defined as control over a resource based on the practical inability to contradict the ends of the possessor. The second title is the expectation that others will recognize rights to control resources, even when not in possession. He elaborates on the differences between these two concepts and proposes a history of how they came to be attached to persons, as opposed to families or entities such as the church.
Both communism and some forms of socialism have also upheld the notion that private ownership of capital is inherently illegitimate. This argument centers on the idea that private ownership of capital always benefits one Social class over another, giving rise to domination through this privately owned capital. Communists do not oppose personal property that is "hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned" (as "The Communist Manifesto" puts it) by members of the proletariat. Both socialism and communism distinguish carefully between private ownership of capital (land, factories, resources, etc.) and private property (homes, material objects, and so forth).
In common law, real property (immovable property) is the combination of Rights in land and improvements thereto, and personal property is interest in movable property. Real property rights are rights relating to the land. These rights include ownership and usage. Owners can grant rights to persons and entities in the form of , , and .
Throughout the last centuries of the second millennium, with the development of more complex theories of property, the concept of personal property had become divided into tangible property (such as Automobile and clothing) and intangible property (such as and related rights, including capital stock and bonds; intellectual property, including , and ; ; communication channels; and certain forms of identifier, including domain name, some forms of network address, some forms of Call sign and again trademarks).
Treatment of intangible property is such that an article of property is, by law or otherwise by traditional conceptualization, subject to expiration even when Inheritance, which is a key distinction from tangible property. Upon expiration, the property, if of the intellectual category, becomes a part of public domain, to be used by but not owned by anybody, and possibly used by more than one party simultaneously due to the inapplicability of scarcity to intellectual property. Whereas things such as communications channels and pairs of electromagnetic spectrum bands and signal transmission power can only be used by a single party at a time, or a single party in a divisible context, if owned or used. Thus far or usually, those are not considered property, or at least not private property, even though the party bearing right of exclusive use may transfer that right to another.
In many societies the human body is considered property of some kind or other. The question of the ownership and rights to one's body arise in general in the discussion of human rights, including the specific issues of slavery, conscription, rights of children under the age of majority, marriage, abortion, prostitution, drugs, euthanasia and organ donation.
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| ! General meaning or description, the activities occurring in a way not beholden to the wishes of the owner !! width=10% Committer |
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From some anarchism points of view, the validity of property depends on whether the "property right" requires enforcement by the State. Different forms of "property" require different amounts of enforcement: intellectual property requires a great deal of state intervention to enforce, ownership of distant physical property requires quite a lot, ownership of carried objects requires very little. In contrast, requesting one's own body requires absolutely no state intervention. So some anarchists don't believe in property at all.
Many things have existed that did not have an owner, sometimes called the commons. The term "commons," however, is also often used to mean something entirely different: "general collective ownership"—i.e. common ownership. Also, the same term is sometimes used by Statism to mean government-owned property that the general public is allowed to access (public property). Law in all societies has tended to reduce the number of things not having clear owners. Supporters of property rights argue that this enables better protection of scarce resources due to the tragedy of the commons. At the same time, critics say that it leads to the 'exploitation' of those resources for personal gain and that it hinders taking advantage of potential network effects. These arguments have differing validity for different types of "property"—things that are not scarce are, for instance, not subject to the tragedy of the commons. Some apparent critics advocate general collective ownership rather than ownerlessness.
Things that do not have owners include: (except for intellectual property), seawater (which is, however, protected by anti-pollution laws), parts of the seafloor (see the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea for restrictions), gases in Earth's atmosphere, animals in the wild (although in most nations, animals are tied to the land. In the United States and Canada, wildlife is generally defined in statute as property of the State. This public ownership of wildlife is referred to as the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation and is based on The Public Trust Doctrine.), celestial bodies and outer space, and land in Antarctica.
The nature of children under the age of majority is another contested issue here. In ancient societies, children were generally considered the property of their parents. However, children in most modern communities theoretically own their bodies but are not regarded as competent to exercise their rights. Their parents or legal guardian are given most of the fundamental rights of control over them.
Questions regarding the nature of ownership of the body also come up in the issue of abortion, drugs, and euthanasia.
In many ancient legal systems (e.g., early Roman law), religious sites (e.g. ) were considered property of the God or gods they were devoted to. However, religious pluralism makes it more convenient to have sacred sites owned by the spiritual body that runs them.
Intellectual property and air (airspace, no-fly zone, pollution laws, which can include tradable emissions rights) can be property in some senses of the word.
Ownership of land can be held separately from the ownership of rights over that land, including sporting rights, mineral rights, development rights, air rights, and such other rights as may be worth segregating from simple land ownership.
In many countries women have limited access to property following restrictive inheritance and family laws, under which only men have actual or formal rights to own property.
In the Inca empire, the dead emperors, considered gods, still controlled property after death.Mckay, John P. , 2004, "A History of World Societies". Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company
That principle was carried to the United States. Under U.S. law, the principal limitations on whether and the extent to which the State may interfere with property rights are set by the Constitution. The Takings clause requires that the government (whether State or federal—for the 14th Amendment's due process clause imposes the 5th Amendment's takings clause on state governments) may take private property only for a public purpose after exercising due process of law, and upon making "just compensation." If an interest is not deemed a "property" right or the conduct is merely an intentional tort, these limitations do not apply, and the doctrine of sovereign immunity precludes relief.See, for example, "United States v. Willow River Power Co." (not a property right because the force of law not behind it); "Schillinger v. the United States," 155 U.S. 163 (1894) (patent infringement is a tort, not taking of property); "Zoltek Corp. v. United States", 442 F.3d 1345 (Fed. Cir. 2006). Moreover, if the interference does not almost completely make the property valueless, the interference will not be deemed a taking but instead a mere regulation of use." Penn Central Transportation Co. v. City of New York", 438 U.S. 104 (1978). On the other hand, some governmental regulations of property use have been deemed so severe that they have been considered "regulatory takings."See United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, 474 U.S. 121 (1985). Moreover, conduct is sometimes deemed only a nuisance, or another tort has been held a taking of property where the conduct was sufficiently persistent and severe. United States v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256 (1946).
In his encyclical letter Rerum novarum (1891), Pope Leo XIII wrote, "It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and after that to hold it as his very own."Leo XIII (1891), Rerum novarum On the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor, paragraph 5, accessed 30 January 2023
Anthropology studies the diverse ownership systems, rights of use and transfer, and possessionHann, Chris " A new double movement? Anthropological perspectives on property in the age of neoliberalism" Socio-Economic Review, Volume 5, Number 2, April 2007, pp. 287–318(32) under the term "theories of property". As mentioned, western legal theory is based on the owner of property being a legal person. However, not all property systems are founded on this basis.
In every culture studied, ownership and possession are the subjects of custom and regulation, and "law" is where the term can meaningfully be applied. Many tribal cultures balance individual rights with the laws of collective groups: tribes, families, associations, and nations. For example, the 1839 Cherokee Constitution frames the issue in these terms:
Communal property systems describe ownership as belonging to the entire social and political unit. Common ownership in a hypothetical communist society is distinguished from primitive forms of common property that have existed throughout history, such as Communalism and primitive communism, in that communist common ownership is the outcome of social and technological developments leading to the Post-scarcity in society.
Corporate systems describe ownership as being attached to an identifiable group with an identifiable responsible individual. The Roman property law was based on such a corporate system. In a well-known paper that contributed to the creation of the field of law and economics in the late 1960s, the American scholar Harold Demsetz described how the concept of property rights makes social interactions easier:
Different societies may have other theories of property for differing types of ownership. For example, Pauline Peters argued that property systems are not isolable from the social fabric, and notions of property may not be stated as such but instead may be framed in negative terms: for example, the taboo system among Polynesian peoples.
The Bible in Leviticus 19:11 and 19:13 states that the Israelites are not to steal.
Aristotle, in Politics, advocates "private property". He argues that self-interest leads to neglect of the commons. "That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest, and only when he is himself concerned as an individual."This bears some similarities to the over-use argument of Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons."
In addition, he says that when property is common, there are natural problems that arise due to differences in labor: "If they do not share equally enjoyments and toils, those who labor much and get little will necessarily complain of those who labor little and receive or consume much. But indeed, there is always a difficulty in men living together and having all human relations in common, but especially in their having common property." ( Politics, 1261b34)
Cicero held that there is no private property under natural law but only under human law. citing Cicero, De officiis, i. 7, "Sunt autem privata nulla natura". Seneca viewed property as only becoming necessary when men become avaricious. citing Seneca, Epistles, xiv, 2. St. Ambrose later adopted this view and St. Augustine even derided heretics for complaining the Emperor could not confiscate property they had labored for.
In later years, the ranks of Harrington's admirers included American revolutionary and founder John Adams.
Even when it keeps to proper legislative form, Locke held that there are limits to what a government established by such a contract might rightly do.
"It cannot be supposed that the they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give anyone or more an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them; this were to put themselves into a worse condition than the State of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single man or many in combination. Whereas by supposing they have given themselves up to the absolute arbitrary power and will of a legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed him to make a prey of them when he pleases..."John Locke, "The Second Treatise of Civil Government" (1690), Chap. XI, § 137.
Both "persons" and "estates" are to be protected from the arbitrary power of any magistrate, including legislative power and will." In Lockean terms, depredations against an estate are just as plausible a justification for resistance and revolution as are those against persons. In neither case are subjects required to allow themselves to become prey.
To explain the ownership of property, Locke advanced a labor theory of property.
In contrast, one might think to his polemical works on religion and his empiricism-driven skeptical epistemology, Hume's views on law and property were quite conservative.
He did not believe in hypothetical contracts or the love of humanity in general and sought to ground politics upon actual human beings as one knows them. "In general," he wrote, "it may be affirmed that there is no such passion in the human mind, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, or services, or of relation to ourselves." Existing customs should not lightly be disregarded because they have come to be what they are due to human nature. With this endorsement of custom comes an endorsement of existing governments because he conceived of the two as complementary: "A regard for liberty, though a laudable passion, ought commonly to be subordinate to a reverence for established government."
Therefore, Hume's view was that there are property rights because of and to the extent that the existing law, supported by social customs, secure them.This view is reflected in the opinion of the United States Supreme Court in "United States v. Willow River Power Co.". He offered some practical home-spun advice on the general subject, though, as when he referred to avarice as "the spur of Private industry," and expressed concern about excessive levels of taxation, which "destroy industry, by engendering despair."
By the mid 19th century, the industrial revolution had transformed England and the United States and had begun in France. As a result, the conventional conception of what constitutes property expanded beyond land to encompass scarce goods. In France, the revolution of the 1790s had led to large-scale confiscation of land formerly owned by the church and king. The restoration of the monarchy led to claims by those dispossessed to have their former lands returned.
Comte, as Proudhon later did, rejected Roman law with its toleration of slavery. Instead, he posited a communal "national" property consisting of non-scarce goods, such as land in ancient hunter-gatherer societies. Since agriculture was so much more efficient than hunting and gathering, private property appropriated by someone for farming left remaining hunter-gatherers with more land per person and hence did not harm them. Thus this type of land appropriation did not violate the Lockean proviso – there was "still enough, and as good left." Later theorists would use Comte's analysis in response to the socialist critique of property.
His analysis of the product of labor upon natural resources as property (usufruct) is more nuanced. He asserts that land itself cannot be property, yet it should be held by individual possessors as stewards of humanity, with the product of labor being the producer's property. Proudhon reasoned that any wealth gained without labor was stolen from those who labored to create that wealth. Even a voluntary contract to surrender the product of work to an employer was theft, according to Proudhon, since the controller of natural resources had no moral right to charge others for the use of that which he did not labor to create did not own.
Proudhon's theory of property greatly influenced the budding socialist movement, inspiring anarchist theorists such as Mikhail Bakunin who modified Proudhon's ideas, as well as antagonizing theorists like Karl Marx.
Bastiat theorized that, as a result of technological progress and the division of labor, the stock of communal wealth increases over time; that the hours of work an unskilled laborer expends to buy e.g., 100 liters of wheat, decreases over time, thus amounting to "gratis" satisfaction. Thus, private property continually destroys itself, becoming transformed into communal wealth. The increasing proportion of communal wealth to private property results in a tendency toward equality of humanity. "Since the human race began in greatest poverty, that is, when there were the most obstacles to overcome, all that has been achieved from one era to the next is due to the spirit of property."
This transformation of private property into the communal domain, Bastiat points out, does not imply that personal property will ever totally disappear. On the contrary, this is because man, as he progresses, continually invents new and more sophisticated needs and desires.
Galambos taught that property is essential to a non-coercive social structure. He defined freedom as follows: "Freedom is the societal condition that exists when every individual has full (100%) control over his property."Galambos, Andrew (1999). Sic Itur Ad Astra. San Diego, California: The Universal Scientific Publications Company, Inc. pp. 868–869. . Galambos defines property as having the following elements:
Property includes all non-procreative derivatives of an individual's life; this means children are not the property of their parents.Galambos, Andrew (1999). Sic Itur Ad Astra. San Diego, California: The Universal Scientific Publications Company, Inc. p. 23. . and "primary property" (a person's own ideas).Galambos, Andrew (1999). Sic Itur Ad Astra. San Diego, California: The Universal Scientific Publications Company, Inc. pp. 39, 52, 84, 92–93, 153, 201, 326. .
Galambos repeatedly emphasized that actual government exists to protect property and that the State attacks property. For example, the State requires payment for its services in the form of taxes whether or not people desire such services. Since an individual's money is his property, the confiscation of money in the form of taxes is an attack on property. Military conscription is likewise an attack on a person's primordial property.
Hernando de Soto has argued that an essential characteristic of the capitalist market economy is the functioning state protection of property rights in a formal property system which records ownership and transactions. These property rights and the whole legal system of property make possible:
According to de Soto, all of the above enhance economic growth. Academics have criticized the capitalist frame through which property is viewed pointing to the fact that commodifying property or land by assigning it monetary value takes away from the traditional cultural heritage, particularly from first nation inhabitants.Kristen A. Carpenter, Sonia Katyal, and Angela Riley, 'In Defense of Property' 2009 118 Yale L J 101, 101–117, 124–138Margaret Jane Radin, Property and Personhood, 34 STAN. L. REV. 957, 1013-15 (1982) These academics point to the personal nature of property and its link to identity being irreconcilable with wealth creation that contemporary Western society subscribes to.
Property-giving (legal)
Property-taking (legal)
Property-taking (illegal)
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