The introduction outlines the historical problem central to this book. Namely, the question of what it meant to possess. The question loomed large in the eighteenth century because more people owned more things (particularly moveable property), the social function of movable property was shifting and in the commercial age, the law was often uncertain as to what could be owned and how. The introduction shows how the book seeks to explore the problem of what it meant to possess by examining how people responded to the loss of possessions.

Chapter 5 considers the legal definition of ownership and possession and how they were acquired and protected. Possession was important in that someone who had physical control of something, for example, a farm, could use the land and enjoy its fruits even though the property was formally owned by another. Having possession of an object brought significant benefits since it was an important step to proving and acquiring ownership by usucapio (that is, having it in your possession for at least two years in the case of immovables, one year for movables). The acquisition and distribution of land was part of the history of the republic, and the management of land, the designation of boundaries, the establishment of jurisdiction, and the resolution of disputes through the legal process remained important. We then consider the role of law in arranging farm tenancy and negotiating leases, and the position of urban landlords and tenants.

From the Middle English period grammatical relations that used to be coded by case-marked forms in Old English were increasingly expressed by prepositional constructions, without however completely replacing the former. Two prominent syntactic alternations arose as a result of this development, that is the dative and genitive variations: (1) Dative variation: John gave Mary a book vs. John gave a book to Mary. (2) Genitive variation: the king’s horse vs. the horse of the king. This chapter brings together research on these alternations, tracing their emergence and development, and focusing on the role of harmonic alignment (in particular, animacy). Although they are separate alternations, one operating on the VP level (datives) and the other on the NP level (genitives), their development shows some parallels, which are attributed to analogy based on functional overlap across the two alternations.

This chapter explores ways you can expand information provided in noun phrases, with the first half focusing on grammatical specification and the second half on semantic modification. The first section investigates the types of determiners that occur in languages, including articles and demonstratives, and the second section focuses on possessive forms and the types of relationships they can reflect. The final two sections introduce modifiers that can occur within noun phrases, including adjectives and adposition phrases. You will decide if your language will have any adjectives belonging to its basic vocabulary and set a foundation for the shapes modifiers take within noun phrases.

Fifth-century Greek tragedy and visual art centres on interaction between people, including antithetical relations, reflecting a society shaped by monetised exchange and commerce. Platonic metaphysics is focused on unchanging being, placing supreme value on the possession of money and devaluing or excluding exchange and interaction. Although dialogues such as the Phaedo contain the idea of the unity of opposites, and binary opposites such as body and soul, Platonic metaphysics aims at the negation of opposites, and thus of antithesis. The contrast between being and seeming emerges in fifth-century tragedy and philosophy, but it is given much greater prominence by Plato and is linked with the theory of Forms. One of the Platonic accounts of the relationship between Forms and particulars is in terms of original (Form) and copy or image (particulars). Plato is the first to offer a theorization of the idea of the image (in the Sophist) and to define the idea of mere image (not reality). Plato’s treatment of the being-seeming relation, like the theory of Forms generally, expresses the reification of the value of money, treated as the basis of possession, excluding exchange.

In acts that are properly acts of justice (rather than, say, compassion or generosity), what is good for people is sought under the mediating description what is due them. The virtue of justice is the generalized concern that people get what is due them. Objective justice is the property of states of affairs, actions, institutions, and personal relationships in which people tend to get what is due them. So the virtue of justice is the concern that such objects have that property. When is some good or evil due a person? It is due on at least eight kinds of basis: desert, status, need, current possession, agreement, legality, parity, and freedom. We appeal to these conditions in justifying justice claims. The person who has the virtue of justice is one who is consistently and intelligently concerned that states of affairs, actions, institutions, and personal relationships be objectively just.

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.

The first chapter explores the background to the 1600 Charter setting out the conditions for the establishment of the East India Company. Here I am interested in the rights of acquisition inherited from the exploratory age of the Tudor state rather than the more familiar story of its formal constitution. The language of charters granted to trading companies revealed something of the discursive complexity shaped by European powers striving to legitimize claims to overseas territory. England had few jurists of note and so the state drew partially and selectively on Roman and common law to foreground the precept of possession, not least because it conveniently rendered obsolete all challenges to the means of acquisition. The chartered companies of unprecedented size, capital and ambition which rose to power in the second half of the sixteenth century inherited this repertoire of legal pluralism but found in practice that the quest for conquest of overseas territory was compromised by geography and the existence of rival European powers with similar ambitions.

The chapter outlines the requirements for creating a valid pledge, including the necessity of an agreement and the transfer of possession.

The chapter then explores the concept of a lien, which grants a creditor the right to retain possession of a debtor’s property until the debt is satisfied. It explains the conditions under which liens arise, typically through the provision of services or materials that enhance the value of the property.

A significant portion of the chapter is dedicated to discussing the priority of claims. It explains how pledges and liens interact with other security interests and the legal rules that determine the priority of creditors’ claims. The chapter also details the enforcement mechanisms available to creditors, including the sale of the pledged or liened property and the distribution of proceeds.

By analyzing these aspects, the chapter provides a thorough understanding of the legal intricacies of pledges and liens, emphasizing their practical implications for securing and enforcing debts in China.

It begins by defining possession and its legal implications, detailing how possession is established, maintained, and protected. The chapter explores the rights and obligations of possessors and the legal remedies available in cases of wrongful possession or disputes. It then delves into the legal framework of expropriation, highlighting the conditions under which the state can expropriate private property. It discusses the procedural requirements for expropriation, including the need for public interest justification, fair compensation, and the legal processes involved in challenging expropriation decisions.

By analyzing these aspects, the chapter provides a comprehensive understanding of the balance between protecting individual property rights and the state’s power to expropriate property for public use. It highlights the challenges and legal safeguards in place to ensure fair and transparent expropriation practices, offering valuable insights into the complexities of possession and expropriation in the Chinese legal system.

This chapter studies the elements of an interest-based natural property right. To acquire a prima facie right in a resource, the claimant must use it productively and claim exclusivity to its use in terms others will understand. But the prima facie right may be overridden by either of two provisos. The sufficiency proviso limits property rights when a proprietor’s use of a resource does not leave others sufficient access to the same type of resource for their own needs. The necessity proviso limits natural rights when someone who does not hold property in a resource needs access to it to repel some serious threat to life or property. This chapter illustrates legal doctrines for capturing animals and other articles of personal property, occupying unowned land, and appropriating water flow by use. This chapter contrasts productive use with Locke’s treatments of labor, waste, and spoliation, and it contrasts claim communication with Pufendorf and Grotius’s treatments of possession. This chapter also considers familiar criticisms of rights-based property theories, involving hypotheticals with radioactive tomato juice or ham sandwiches embedded in cement.