Introduction to Property Law

Introduction to Property

• Property serves as the institution through which societies manage access to material resources, holding a legal significance akin to other social institutions.
• Property law governs the establishment, conveyance, and enforcement of rights tied to tangible items.
• The nature of property regulations variesacross time periods, locations, and historical contexts.
• Rules about property differ substantially between traditional and contemporary societies.
• Differences in legal rules for accessing and using things can be considerable even among industrialized nations.
• A primary divergence between capitalist and communist societies historically concerned their views on private property.
• Capitalist societies strongly protect private property, believing it encourages wealth creation.
• Communist societies have typically favored publicly-owned property in key economic sectors to prevent oppression and inequality.
• Most countries today have mixed economies, using both private ownership and state regulation.
• Communist China now legally recognizes private property.
• Private property dominates in advanced Western democracies, but some resources are regarded as common property.
• Australia's property rules reflect traditional practices alongside modern property concepts, such as Indigenous land rights.
• The concept of private land ownership was introduced during colonization in Australia, challenging existing systems of Aboriginal common ownership, the two exist side by side.
• Property law falls under private law, which governs interactions among individuals, different from public law, which concerns state-individual and state-state relations.
• Contract, tort, and unjust enrichment are conventionally subcategorized under private law
• Property law defines the relationships between legal persons and things.
• Understanding property law is challenging without considering both its legal and social dimensions.

Significance of Context in Property Law

• Property law is deeply influenced by historical, economic, and social factors.
• Property ownership and power are connected; large property holders wield greater influence on property law's structure.
• Property law changes with social conditions, prompting courts and legislatures to address new issues.
• Courts and legislatures have had to decide whether human cells or body parts constitute property.
• New types of statutory rights, like grazing licenses, can be considered property.
• The shifting lines between property rights, contractual rights, personal rights, public rights, and private property rights, are scrutinized.
• Laws determining property classification are examined in various contexts, including fixtures.

Key Concepts in Property Law

• Basic concepts of the legal system are revealed through property law, like possession, title, fragmentation of interests, and distinctions between legal/equitable interests.
• Legal and statutory regimes reconcile competing property claims.
• Australian law has historically focused on the English common law's influence on property law.
• Specialized forms of land tenure, influenced by Australian conditions, have gained prominence in native title cases like Mabo v Queensland (No 2).
• The historical importance of land in England shapes Australian property law with emphasis on real property obscures the significance of intellectual property and personal property.
• Examples are drawn from both, land law and personal property law

Conceptual Examination of Property

• A critical examination of the concept of property must precede the understanding of property law's central principles.
• The concept differentiates proprietary from other interests.
• The Commonwealth can only acquire property compulsorily on just terms, as per constitutional requirements (s 51(xxxi)).
• The Family Court can redistribute 'property' under the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) s 79.
• Understanding enables placing property law rules and procedures within a framework.
• What it means for someone to have a property right, is explored how these rights integrate into private and public law
• What the major categories of property law are is explored
• To what extent property has changed historically is explored
• What factors do courts and legislatures consider when they make decisions whether to recognize new forms of property is explored

Philosophical Exploration of Property

• Property is not merely a thing, but a relationship someone has with a thing.
• Claiming 'property' in a resource asserts a strategic control degree over that resource.
• Confusing control with the thing controlled can be an analytical error.
• 'Property' describes concentrations of power over things/resources.
• It's an abbreviated reference to socially permissible power over a valued resource, reflecting the root of its semantic correctness and identifies resource as 'proper' to someone.
• The language of 'property' may have more in common with 'propriety' than 'entitlement' as well as 'property right' may relate to 'rightness' perceptions than enforceable exclusory title understandings

Relative Nature of Property

• The power relationship implicit in property is relative, not absolute, there may well be gradations of 'property' in a resource.
• The amount of ‘property’ someone can claim in a resource is calibrated along at zero the resource is misused and no one has any property in resource at all
• It remains feasible and is indeed importan to measure someone’s quantum of ‘property’ at a particular time
• ‘Property’ has an almost infinitely gradable quality and is also not a monolithic notion with standard content and invariable intensity
• Having ‘property’ in a resource is consistent with the acquisition or retention by others
• The complex interrelation comprises the modern land law

Perspectives on English Land Law

• English law handles the idea of property in land varies between three perspectives
• Dominant models of property in land fluctuate between three perspectives
• Doctrinal uncertainty explains some land law dilemmas while impeding responses to twenty-first century land law.
• The common law world has never resolved whether property in land is empirical facts, defined rights, or duty-laden social utility allocations.
• These perspectives interact and overlap but it unclear whether it resides in human conduct data or in entitlement claims or in the socially directed land use
• Idea of property oscillates between behavioural, conceptual, and obligational, between properties as a fact, and right, and a responsibility

Property Rights and U.S. Constitution

• In determining whether property falls within the U.S. Constitution’s 5th Amendment, US Supreme Court considers relation to item
• Rights to use, dispose of, and exclude others, are emphasized

Blackburn J's Approach in Aboriginal Land Rights Case

• Property implies the rights to use/enjoy, exclude, and transfer (alienate)
• Although legal discourse implies these elements, it's possible for property to exist with one or more missing.

Judicial Interpretations of 'Property'

• Gleeson CJ, Gaudron, Kirby, and Hayne JJ held that 'property' does not mean full, exclusive, or beneficial ownership in Yanner v Eaton (1999).
• "In the Fauna Act or elsewhere in law ‘property’ isn’t used to refer to thing, but it describes legal relation
• Concept maybe elusive, usually a bundle of rights. Refers to law regulated permissible power over certain things
• False thinking about property relates to perceiving as resource or thing instead of legally concentration of power".
• Finkelstein J referred to Hohfeld's view that ‘property is legal relations instead of things', with not absolute domination need.
• Sackville J highlighted that property is interwoven with rules and principles from lawyer, with Bentham and Paul also providing

The Right to Alienate Details:

• Mason J noted in R v Toohey; Ex parte Meneling Station Pty Ltd (1982) that assignability isn't always essential.
• Forms of property are inalienable by statute
• Lord Wilberforce said is 'capable in its nature of assumption by parties’
• Some non-assignable rights are still treated as property rights by courts.
• Re Potter (decd) held that a beneficiary has non assignable right to live where she choses
• So-called 'statutory' tenancy of someone over lease with expired can't hold interest over land
• In New south wales, land held by the council to better the community cannot be inalieniable

The Right to Exclude Details:

• Property implies a right to exclude others, making it private and exercisable against the public and state.
• Public rights are shared equally over land, like fishing/navigating the open sea
• These are unlike utilities ownership with state ownership over benefiting public and it is corporate like
• The following case is a good example that the public rights
• Stowe v Mineral Holdings (Australia) shows how it is important

Core Arguments over Rights:

• Aickin J explains a question under the Mining Act relating to his decision
• Warden has no power over deciding whether a license is refused unless minister believes it is important
• Only eligible objectors are those whom benefit of land, which is based on confilcting effects
• 'Interest in land' isn't defined in the act or any relative law and also doesn't denote public
• It means individual right of proprietary meaning "demand of another”
• Ordinary expression or estate and it's nature is used to describe lands
• Cannot embrace some claims with higher stake or public
• There are people that claim lands with Crown lands for recrreation which means people can all go on and exist on such land
• If they don't then land cant be described or a private right could become of estate etc

Key Questions

• Why is right to walk inside a park not property.
• How to know whats private vs whats public and such.
• Does property involve exclude
• Fishing, and to navigate, why not property
• The case of landlord five year term for a building, the whole deal discussed here, modify "right to exclude"?
• Can argue access to park should be proprietary as a right exists

Property Rights and Contractual Rights

• Boundaries that property rights share with other classes of rights are the scheme
• Private law is right between other types of other people, which are like contracts or something
• Property and personal are the same as rem in a thing/ personal or contract

Contract for land

• Two side relation occur where personal right to sue contract
• Also propriatary right there exisits

Right over thing

• insufficient to state a good and fine interest of non owner
• the clear is a license interest with substantial power and it is helpful to examine what makes these boundaries.

Licenses: Bare, Contractual, or Coupled with Interest

• A license arises when permission is given to do an act on the licensor’s land that would otherwise be a trespass.
• A landowner permitting someone to picnic creates a licensor-licensee relationship.
• This is a bare license, not associated to contract etc. It is revoked at will to any reason what so ever
• the licensee is trespasser at reasonable time with breach
• contract when a second arises with ticket means

If that breach then can be terminated as ordinary contractual, law it be difficult

• The at will but you must be reasonable and can be liable when eject and force used is reasonable
• ticket damages are ticket cost can enjoyment third is propriety intreset cannot be reoved at there
• A may be to enter land will now cannot revoked the problem with below is can you perform at contract
• What does this to license mean when with against party it it come the necessary.

Licences and Their Legal Impact

• Latham CJ argued that the plaintiff was suing to get his assaults compensated, defendant says he trespass the plaintiff is in need
• Naylor made the Court to follow which is a past judgement
• if men proprietary may what own the grantor right with given break it for righted owner what is.
• That decision was all contract

Analysis of High Court case

• Evatt thinks cannot support of the this type cases equity shouldnt be needed so to be what of entertainment
• Equity can never can not have for and so the point is if you say your legal should be respected
• As that of the cases is right in its own form

Inconvenient Results?

• Latham says bad decisions happen why is that the case etc and should equity ever prevent things happen even if contract is breached
• What in land of a right is never really to just state someone

More Recent Case Law

• Case law doesn't completely follow Cowell, equity can prevent breach although contract breached when Council allowed sports and people allowed and could for such thing for use at
• That, is because it isn't good adequate for the loss if granted could from this

High Court and Related Case Law

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Licensing Issues

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Issues of Validity

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Licences and Third Parties

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Kings and rights

• Some people can sell license and those can to make it all be more

Questions

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