Property

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Property law
Part of the common law series
Acquisition
Gift · Adverse possession · Deed
Conquest · Discovery · Accession
Lost, mislaid, and abandoned property
Treasure trove  · Bailment · License
Alienation
Estates in land
Allodial title · Fee simple · Fee tail
Life estate · Defeasible estate
Future interest · Concurrent estate
Leasehold estate · Condominiums
Conveyancing
Bona fide purchaser
Torrens title · Strata title
Estoppel by deed · Quitclaim deed
Mortgage · Equitable conversion
Action to quiet title · Escheat
Future use control
Restraint on alienation
Rule against perpetuities
Rule in Shelley's Case
Doctrine of worthier title
Nonpossessory interest
Easement · Profit
Covenant running with the land
Equitable servitude
Related topics
Fixtures · Waste · Partition
Riparian water rights
Lateral and subjacent support
Assignment · Nemo dat
Property and conflict of laws
Other common law areas
Contract law · Tort law
Wills, trusts and estates
Criminal law · Evidence

Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of persons. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property has the right to consume, sell, rent, mortgage, transfer, exchange or destroy their property, and/or to exclude others from doing these things.[1][2][3] Important widely-recognized types of property include real property (land), personal property (physical possessions belonging to a person), private property (property owned by legal persons or business entities), public property (state owned or publicly owned and available possessions) and intellectual property (exclusive rights over artistic creations, inventions, etc.), although the latter is not always as widely recognized or enforced.[4] A title, or a right of ownership, is associated with property that establishes the relation between the goods/services and other persons, assuring the owner the right to dispose of the property as they see fit. Some philosophers assert that property rights arise from social convention. Others find origins for them in morality or natural law.

Use of the term

Various scholarly disciplines (such as law, economics, anthropology or sociology) may treat the concept more systematically, but definitions vary within and between fields. Scholars in the social sciences frequently conceive of property as a bundle of rights. They stress that property is not a relationship between people and things, but a relationship between people with regard to things.

Property is usually thought of as being defined and protected by the local sovereignty. Ownership, however, does not necessarily equate with sovereignty. If ownership gave supreme authority, it would be sovereignty, not ownership. These are two different concepts.

Public property is any property that is controlled by a state or by a whole community. Private property is any property that is not public property. Private property may be under the control of a single person or by a group of persons jointly.[5]

General characteristics

Modern property rights are based on conceptions of ownership and possession as belonging to legal persons, even if the legal person is not a natural person. in most countries, corporations, for example, have legal rights similar to those of citizens. Therefore, the corporation is a juristic person or artificial legal entity, under a concept that some refer to as "corporate personhood".

Property rights are protected in the current laws of most states, usually in their constitution or in a bill of rights. Protection is also prescribed in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17, and in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Protocol 1.

Traditional principles of property rights include:

1. control of the use of the property
2. the right to any benefit from the property (examples: mining rights and rent)
3. a right to transfer or sell the property
4. a right to exclude others from the property.

Traditional property rights do not include:

1. uses that unreasonably interfere with the property rights of another private party (the right of quiet enjoyment) [See Nuisance]
2. uses that unreasonably interfere with public property rights, including uses that interfere with public health, safety, peace or convenience. [See Public Nuisance, Police Power]

Not every person or entity with an interest in a given piece of property may be able to exercise all possible property rights. For example, as a lessee of a particular piece of property, you may not sell the property, because a tenant is only in possession and does not have title to transfer. Similarly, while you are a lessee, the owner cannot use their right to exclude to keep you from the property, or, if they do, you may be entitled to stop paying rent or sue for access.

Further, property may be held in a number of forms, such as through joint ownership, community property, sole ownership or lease. These different types of ownership may complicate an owner's ability to exercise property rights unilaterally. For example, if two people own a single piece of land as joint tenants then, depending on the law in the jurisdiction, each may have limited recourse for the actions of the other. For example, one of the owners might sell their interest in the property to a stranger whom the other owner does not particularly like.

Legal systems have evolved to cover transactions and disputes that arise over the possession, use, transfer, and disposal of property, most particularly involving contracts. Positive law defines such rights, and the judiciary is used to adjudicate and to enforce property rights.

According to Adam Smith, the expectation of profit from "improving one's stock of capital" rests on private property rights. It is an assumption central to capitalism 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.

In his text The Common Law, Oliver Wendell Holmes describes property as having two fundamental aspects. The first is possession, which can be defined as control over a resource based on the practical inability of another to contradict the ends of the possessor. The second is title, which is the expectation that others will recognize rights to control resource, even when it is not in possession. He elaborates 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.

• Classical liberals, Objectivists, and related traditions

Most thinkers from these traditions subscribe to the labor theory of property. They hold that you own your own life, and it follows that you must own the products of that life, and that those products can be traded in free exchange with others. "Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself." (John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government) "The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property." (John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government) "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." (Frédéric Bastiat, The Law) "Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property." (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged)

• Socialism's fundamental principles are centered on a critique of this concept, stating, among other things, that the cost of defending property is higher than the returns from private property ownership, and that, even when property rights encourage their holders to develop their property or generate wealth, they do so only for their own benefit, which may not coincide with benefit to other people or to society at large.

• Libertarian socialism generally accepts property rights, but with a short abandonment period. In other words, a person must make (more or less) continuous use of the item or else lose ownership rights. This is usually referred to as "possession property" or "usufruct." Thus, in this usufruct system, absentee ownership is illegitimate and workers own the machines or other equipment that they work with.

• Communism argues that only collective ownership of the means of production through a polity (though not necessarily a state) will assure the minimization of unequal or unjust outcomes and the maximization of benefits, and that therefore private property (which in communist theory is limited to capital) should be abolished.

Both communism and some kinds of socialism have also upheld the notion that private property is inherently illegitimate. This argument centers mainly on the idea that creation of private property always benefits one class over another, giving rise to domination through the use of this private property. Communists are not opposed to personal property that is "hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned" (Communist Manifesto) by members of the proletariat.