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Boundaries of Personal Property
By
Arianna Pretto
Description
This study of the boundaries of
personal property has an inward and an outward perspective, with the
intellectual emphasis on the latter. The inward-looking inquiry
considers shares as items of personal property. Nowadays those who
think of themselves as shareholders often stand one step removed from
the share itself. They hold what this book christens a sub-share.
This part of the book asks in what sense shares and sub-shares can be
conceived to be things, how those things are alienated, and how they
are protected in litigation. The outward-looking inquiry then asks
whether personal property can be contemplated as a sub-category of
the law of things and, more particularly, as the law of all things
locatable in space, alienable, or vindicable in court.
The outward inquiry considers three
boundaries. Within the law of property the line between realty and
personalty proves relatively uncontroversial; the second boundary
lies between property and obligations; the third between wealth and
non-wealth. The second boundary is the main concern. Respect for it
necessitates a differentiation between the law of property in the
strict sense and the all-encompassing law of wealth, even where the
consequence might be to exclude shares and sub-shares from the law of
property.
In maintaining the value of careful
proprietary taxonomy and in reviving the underlying concepts on which
it depends, this book opposes modern scepticism as to the possibility
and desirability of precision in legal classification. In these
commitments it could fairly be styled a post-modern study of personal
property.
Winner of the SLS Birks Prize for
Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2006 - Second Prize.
Arianna Pretto-Sakmann is a Fellow and
Tutor in Law of Brasenose College Oxford.
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