Introduction

Question 1

What is the legal definition of property?

Answer 1

The network of legal relationships prevailing between individuals in respect of things

Question 2

How is property a relationship?

Answer 2

The “subject” (a person) has a relationship to the “object” (the thing possessed)

Question 3

When can property be describe as a “bundle of rights”?

Answer 3

Property comprises bundles of mutual rights and obligations between “subjects” in respect of certain “objects”

Question 4

Give an example of property as a “bundle of rights”.

Answer 4

In real estate, for example:

• Owner has right of possession
• Bank has mortgage
• Tenant has estate of years

Question 5

In what 11 elements can a right of property be broke down?

Answer 5

1. The right to possess and have exclusive physical control over an object or a thing
2. The right to use
3. The right to manage
4. The right to draw income
5. The right to transmit or destroy capital
6. The right to enjoy protection from expropriation
7. The right to dispose of the interest on death
8. The right to hold forever
9. The right to have a residual or reversionary interest arising on the expiration of a prior interest
10. Property is liable to seizure for debt
11. Property is subject to regulation against its harmful use

Question 6

What are the three types of property?

Answer 6

1. Private: the property of natural persons and corporations or other legal entities on which they have the right to exclude
2. Public: that which the state possesses the right to exclude on i.e. parks, schools, post offices, conservation lands, etc.
3. Common: property in which everyone has a right to use, but no one has a power to exclude i.e. the air, the sea, rivers, lakes, fishes

Question 7

What is the concept of tragedy of the commons?

Answer 7

Because common property doesn’t belong to anybody, then nobody has the obligation to care for it because nobody has an interest in it

Question 8

Name some corporal goods that can be the object of property.

Answer 8

Automobiles, books, houses.

Question 9

Name some incorporeal goods that can be the object of property.

Answer 9

Shares of stock in a corporation, a license to use a software.

Question 10

Describe the concept of the “ right to exclude”.

Answer 10

The right to decide who may or may not enter on your property and when

Question 11

What is the Occupation (Maine) justification for private property?

Answer 11

People who occupy property have a right to separate it from the common mass. If I got there first, it’s mine.

Question 12

What is the Natural Law (Aquinas) justification for private property?

Answer 12

God intended that man would have dominion over property because God gave the things of this world to man

Question 13

What is the Labour Theory (Locke) justification for private property?

Answer 13

If I own my body, I own anything that I produce with it. If I take or make something, then it is mine because I have mixed my labour with it.

Question 14

What is the Utilitarianism (Bentham) justification for private property?

Answer 14

Government, with positive law, creates property because in doing so it ensures the happiness of the greatest number of people. Property is an expectation that the law protects and by doing that, we provide an orderly system that benefits the majority of us.

Question 15

What is the Economic (Smith) justification for private property?

Answer 15

Permitting private individuals to acquire and exploit property increases aggregate economic wealth.

Question 16

What is the Communist (Marx/Engels) critic private property?

Answer 16

The accumulation of property by the bourgeoisie has produced the alienation of the proletariat. Private property creates and underclass that stays a underclass. It will only create the unification of the proletariat who will rise up and destroy the present property system.