It is difficult to overstate the everyday importance of home in law. Home provides the backdrop for our lives, and is often the scene or the subject of legal disputes. In addition, in recent decades there has been growing academic interest in the meaning of home, which has prompted empirical studies and theoretical exploration in a wide range of disciplines. Yet, while the authenticity of home as a social, psychological, cultural and emotional phenomenon has been recognised in other disciplines, it has not penetrated the legal domain, where the proposition that home can encapsulate meanings beyond the physical structure of the house, or the capital value it represents, continues to present conceptual difficulties. This book focuses on the competing interests of creditors who lend money against the security of the property and the occupiers who dwell in the property, in the context of possession actions. By mapping the concept of home as it has evolved in other disciplines against existing legal frameworks, Conceptualising Home examines the possibilities for developing a coherent concept of home in law.

The first coherent analysis of the topic of possession from a comparative and historical legal perspective. The volume comprises contributions from some very distinguished scholars from the civilian tradition (Germany, Italy) as well as the common law (England) and mixed legal systems (Quebec, Scotland, South Africa).

Possession is a foundational concept in property law. Despite its undoubted importance, it is poorly understood and a perennial source of confusion. Indeed, there is a widely held view amongst lawyers that possession is an irredeemably ambiguous and amorphous concept. This book aims to challenge this conventional wisdom and to demonstrate that possession is in fact far simpler than generations of lawyers have been led to believe. In viewing possession as a knotty problem for the philosopher or legal theoretician, scholars are apt to overlook the important truth that possession is a concept that laymen routinely and, for the most part, effortlessly apply as they navigate through the countless property interactions that shape everyday life. The key to understanding the nature and function of possession in the law is to appreciate that the possession 'rule' is, first and foremost, a spontaneously emergent phenomenon. Possession describes those acts that, as a matter of an extra-legal convention, constitute the accepted way in which members of a given population stake their claims to tangible things. Fusing traditional legal analysis with insights from philosophy and economics, An Expressive Theory of Possession applies this central claim to both theoretical and doctrinal problems in property law and, in doing so, provides a coherent explanation of possession and its role in law and life.