The Land Registration Act 2002 (LRA 2002) has been in force for almost 12 years. When enacted, the legislation, which replaced the LRA 1925, was intended to offer a clear and lasting framework for the registration of title to land in England and Wales. However, confounding the hopes of its drafters, the legislation's interpretation and application has generated many unanticipated problems which require urgent attention. The extent of these problems is strikingly demonstrated by burgeoning litigation around the LRA 2002, often involving some of the knottiest issues in land law, with major financial implications turning on the outcome. This book exposes both theoretical and policy debates, and more concrete, technical controversies within the law of land registration. Wherever possible, it will also offer appropriate solutions and/or proposals for reform.

The Land Registration Act 2002 has been in force for almost fifteen years. When enacted, the legislation, which replaced the Land Registration Act 1925, was intended to offer a clear and lasting framework for the registration of title to land in England and Wales. However, perhaps confounding the hopes of its drafters, the legislation's interpretation and application has since generated many unanticipated problems which demand attention. In this book's twenty chapters, leading land law scholars, Law Commissioners past and present, judges, and Registry lawyers unpick key technical controversies, and expose underlying theoretical and policy concerns. Core issues addressed in these chapters include: the legitimate ambitions of registration regimes; the nature and security of title afforded by registration; the resolution of priority disputes affecting registered titles; the relationship between the general law and the registration regime; and new challenges presented by modern technological developments.

The main theme of this volume is a discussion of the ways in which legal mechanisms, such as the Land Groups Incorporation Act (1974) in PNG, and the Native Title Act (1993) in Australia, do not, as they purport, serve merely to identify and register already-existing customary indigenous landowning groups in these countries. Because the legislation is an integral part of the way in which indigenous people are defined and managed in relation to the State, it serves to elicit particular responses in landowner organisation and self-identification on the part of indigenous people. These pieces of legislation actively contour the progressive evolution of landowner social, territorial and political organisation at all levels in these nation states. The contributors to this volume provide in-depth anthropological case studies of social structural and cultural transformations engendered by the confrontation between states, developers and indigenous communities over rights to customarily owned land.

Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World is the first comprehensive exploration of key emerging issues facing developing-country agriculture today, from rapid urbanization to rural transformation to climate change. In this four-part volume, top experts offer the latest research in the field of agricultural development. Using new lenses to examine today’s biggest challenges, contributors address topics such as nutrition and health, gender and household decision-making, agrifood value chains, natural resource management, and political economy. The book also covers most developing regions, providing a critical global perspective at a time when many pressing challenges extend beyond national borders. Tying all this together, Agricultural Development explores policy options and strategies for developing sustainable agriculture and reducing food insecurity and malnutrition. The changing global landscape combined with new and better data, technologies, and understanding means that agriculture can and must contribute to a wider range of development outcomes than ever before, including reducing poverty, ensuring adequate nutrition, creating strong food value chains, improving environmental sustainability, and promoting gender equity and equality. Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World, with its unprecedented breadth and scope, will be an indispensable resource for the next generation of policymakers, researchers, and students dedicated to improving agriculture for global wellbeing.

This book explores the relationships between property and the concept of sovereignty from a number of different perspectives. It distinguishes between the dual meaning of 'sovereignty' in property discourse - political sovereignty and owner sovereignty. The contributors discuss the nature of sovereignty in both senses, applying it to a wide range of topics such as the evolution of property rights in fragile and conflict-affected nation states, and notions of sovereign property in new worlds. A section on the Arts illuminates the relationships between property, sovereignty, and culture, and a further section investigates regulatory property and governmental control over resources. The book concludes with an exploration of sovereign shaping of private property entitlements to achieve instrumental ends. This interesting collection will be valuable to those in the fields of legal philosophy, property theory, international and comparative law, and political sociology. This book explores the relationships between property and the concept of sovereignty from a number of different perspectives. It distinguishes between the dual meaning of ‘sovereignty’ in property discourse - political sovereignty and owner sovereignty. The contributors discuss the nature of sovereignty in both senses, applying it to a wide range of topics such as the evolution of property rights in fragile and conflict-affected nation states and notions of sovereign property in new worlds. A section on The Arts illuminates the relationships between property, sovereignty and culture and a further section investigates regulatory property and governmental control over resources. The book concludes with an exploration of sovereign shaping of private property entitlements to achieve instrumental ends. This interesting collection will be valuable to those in the fields of legal philosophy, property theory, international and comparative law, and political sociology.

Land Fictions explores the common storylines, narratives, and tales of social betterment that justify and enact land as commodity. It interrogates global patterns of property formation, the dispossessions property markets enact, and the popular movements to halt the growing waves of evictions and land grabs. This collection brings together original research on urban, rural, and peri-urban India; rapidly urbanizing China and Southeast Asia; resource expropriation in Africa and Latin America; and the neoliberal urban landscapes of North America and Europe. Through a variety of perspectives, Land Fictions finds resonances between local stories of land's fictional powers and global visions of landed property's imagined power to automatically create value and advance national development. Editors D. Asher Ghertner and Robert W. Lake unpack the dynamics of land commodification across a broad range of political, spatial, and temporal settings, exposing its simultaneously contingent and collective nature. The essays advance understanding of the politics of land while also contributing to current debates on the intersections of local and global, urban and rural, and general and particular. Contributors Erik Harms, Michael Watts, Sai Balakrishnan, Brett Christophers, David Ferring, Sarah Knuth, Meghan Morris, Benjamin Teresa, Mi Shih, Michael Levien, Michael L. Dwyer, Heather Whiteside

Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, known as the Fair Housing Act, prohibited discrimination in the sale, rent, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin. However, manifold historical and contemporary forces, driven by both governmental and private actors, have segregated these protected classes by denying them access to homeownership or housing options in high-performing neighborhoods. Perspectives on Fair Housing argues that meaningful government intervention continues to be required in order to achieve a housing market in which a person's background does not arbitrarily restrict access. The essays in this volume address how residential segregation did not emerge naturally from minority preference but rather how it was forced through legal, economic, social, and even violent measures. Contributors examine racial land use and zoning practices in the early 1900s in cities like Atlanta, Richmond, and Baltimore; the exclusionary effects of single-family zoning and its entanglement with racially motivated barriers to obtaining credit; and the continuing impact of mid-century "redlining" policies and practices on public and private investment levels in neighborhoods across American cities today. Perspectives on Fair Housing demonstrates that discrimination in the housing market results in unequal minority households that, in aggregate, diminish economic prosperity across the country. Amended several times to expand the protected classes to include gender, families with children, and people with disabilities, the FHA's power relies entirely on its consistent enforcement and on programs that further its goals. Perspectives on Fair Housing provides historical, sociological, economic, and legal perspectives on the critical and continuing problem of housing discrimination and offers a review of the tools that, if appropriately supported, can promote racial and economic equity in America. Contributors: Francesca Russello Ammon, Raphael Bostic, Devin Michelle Bunten, Camille Zubrinsky Charles, Nestor M. Davidson, Amy Hillier, Marc H. Morial, Eduardo M. Peñalver, Wendell E. Pritchett, Rand Quinn, Vincent J. Reina, Akira Drake Rodriguez, Justin P. Steil, Susan M. Wachter.

Academically rigorous yet welcoming and fully attuned to the needs of the student reader, Chris Bevan's Land Law represents a new breed of textbook, blending traditional and contemporary teaching approaches to guide readers to a confident understanding of the subject. With its lively, engaging writing style - in which the author's enthusiasm is always apparent - and distinctive way of speaking directly to students, anticipating their questions and areas of confusion, Bevan's book does not simply set out the law but actively teaches it. Clear explanations are complemented by carefully-crafted visual aids, conveying key concepts in ways that all students can understand, and topics are broken down into sections that are easy to digest. This book maintains a critical emphasis and encourages students to consider and understand the law in context (both within society and their degree). 'Key case' boxes offer concise insights on leading cases that pique students' interest, spurring them to conduct their own reading of primary material, and although the book reflects on historical background in order to make sense of today's law, its overriding perspective is forward-looking, epitomized in the 'Future directions' conclusions for each chapter which consider future implications and likely reforms. Balancing brevity with detail and rigour with accessibility, Land Law is a truly modern textbook that supports and motivates its readers, allowing them to reap the rewards an understanding of this complex but fascinating subject will bring. Digital formats and resources The third edition is available for students and institutions to purchase in a variety of formats, and is supported by online resources. The e-book offers a mobile experience and convenient access along with self-assessment activities, videos, podcasts, animated flowcharts, example legal documentation and links that offer extra learning support: www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/ebooks A comprehensive suite of additional resources to support the book are available online for all readers at www.oup.com/he/bevan3e/, including: - Self-test and scenario questions with feedback - Videos from the author - Animated flowcharts explaining cases and legislation - Podcasts from the author - Annotated examples of legal documents - Visual land law scenarios with prompts and guidance - Exclusive interviews between the author and lawyers on real-life cases - Downloadable figures from the book - Flashcard glossary

This book is an examination of the law of land registration in England and Wales, in the light of the Land Registration Act 2002, and in particular at the way land registration is influenced by, and in turn influences, the evolution of land law as a whole. It examines the legal problems that have arisen in connection with land registration and considers the effect of the 2002 statute, drawing extensively upon the law in other jurisdictions and considering possibilities for future development. This is a book which will be essential reading for students, their teachers, and practitioners who will have to grapple with the intricacies of the new Act when it comes into force.

Although today's richest countries tend to have long histories of secure private property rights, legal-titling projects do little to improve the economic and political well-being of those in the developing world. This book employs a historical narrative based on secondary literature, fieldwork across thirty villages, and a nationally representative survey to explore how private property institutions develop, how they are maintained, and their relationship to the state and state-building within the context of Afghanistan. In this predominantly rural society, citizens cannot rely on the state to enforce their claims to ownership. Instead, they rely on community-based land registration, which has a long and stable history and is often more effective at protecting private property rights than state registration. In addition to contributing significantly to the literature on Afghanistan, this book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on property rights and state governance from the new institutional economics perspective.