This book contains materials regarding intersections of property law with civil and human rights claims in the United States and internationally. The chapters cover The Nature of Property, The Development of Civil Rights Principles in the U.S., International Human Rights Law, and Human Rights in the U.S. Roisman addresses homelessness, expropriation, and discrimination on the bases of race, sex, sexual orientation, disability, and other characteristics. Among the recent cases presented are the U.S. Supreme Court's 2004 decision rejecting a claimed property interest in the recognition of a protective order, a South African case enforcing a right to housing, a 2003 Maryland decision assessing the need for just cause for eviction in Low Income Housing Tax Credit developments, a 2002 9th Circuit opinion regarding disability discrimination, and the Michigan Supreme Court decision overturning Poletown. A teacher's manual will detail suggested ways of presenting these materials in the property course.

This text contains an introduction to the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998 and an explanation of the Convention jurisprudence. It provides a detailed analysis of Article 1, Protocol No.1, and Articles 6, 8 and 14, all of which are likely to have an impact on English property law. The relevant case law of the Strasbourg institutions (the European Court of Human Rights and the Commission) is considered in depth and case summaries of the most important property-related cases are provided in an appendix. The book considers the impact of the Human Rights Act on specific aspects of English property law and considers how some areas appear vulnerable to challenge under the Act. The book should be of use to both practitioners and academics by providing a comprehensive and easy-to-read guide to the impact of the Human Rights Act on property law.

This book explores the interface between intellectual property and human rights law and policy. The relationship between these two fields has captured the attention of governments, policymakers, and activist communities in a diverse array of international and domestic political and judicial venues. These actors often raise human rights arguments as counterweights to the expansion of intellectual property in areas including freedom of expression, public health, education, privacy, agriculture, and the rights of indigenous peoples. At the same time, creators and owners of intellectual property are asserting a human rights justification for the expansion of legal protections. This book explores the legal, institutional, and political implications of these competing claims: by offering a framework for exploring the connections and divergences between these subjects; by identifying the pathways along which jurisprudence, policy, and political discourse are likely to evolve; and by serving as an educational resource for scholars, activists, and students.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In recovering assets that are or that represent the proceeds, objects, or instrumentalities of grand corruption, do states violate the human rights of politically exposed persons, their relatives, or their associates? Radha Ivory asks whether cooperative efforts to confiscate illicit wealth are compatible with rights to property in public international law. She explores the tensions between the goals of controlling high-level, high-value corruption and ensuring equal enjoyment of civil and political rights. Through the jurisprudence of regional human rights tribunals and the literature on confiscation and international cooperation, Ivory shows how asset recovery is a human rights issue and how principles of legality and proportionality have mediated competing interests in analogous matters. In cases of asset recovery, she predicts that property rights will likewise enable questions of individual entitlement to be considered in the context of collective concerns with good governance, global economic inequality, and the suppression of transnational crime.

In Human Rights and The Transformation of Property, leading human rights lawyer Stuart Wilson develops a novel theory of how law leads to social change and what the prospects are for South Africa's Constitution to shape a more just distribution of property. Wilson questions long-held beliefs about the nature of land reform and the appropriateness of the concept of ownership as a way of organising access to land and property in South Africa. The book gives an overview of key aspects of constitutional and common law property rights - including the rights of ownership, possession and eviction; the rights associated with leases and mortgages; the National Credit Act; and the PIE Act - and discusses how they interact. It shows how recent developments in the law of eviction, rental housing, mortgage and consumer credit have opened up new spaces in which unlawful occupiers, tenants and debtors are challenging the power of landlords and financial institutions to dispossess them. By triggering a radical restructuring of property law, Wilson argues, the Constitution may yet keep the promise of a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it. Human Rights and The Transformation of Property offers the most up-to-date critical account of recent developments in residential lease law, mortgage bond law and eviction law, and provides a policy rationale for these developments. It will be a valuable teaching text for law students and a reference guide for law and humanities academics, legal practitioners, NGOs and activists.

3 Framework for research

In Body Parts, E. Richard Gold examines whether the body and materials derived from it--such as human organs and DNA--should be thought of as market commodities and subject to property law. Analyzing a series of court decisions concerning property rights, Gold explores whether the language and assumptions of property law can help society determine who has rights to human biological materials. Gold observes that the commercial opportunities unleashed by advances in biotechnology present a challenge to the ways that society has traditionally valued the human body and human health. In a balanced discussion of both commercial and individual perspectives, Gold asserts the need to understand human biological materials within the context of human values, rather than economic interests. This perceptive book will be welcomed by scholars and other professionals engaged in questions regarding bioethics, applied ethics, the philosophy of value, and property and intellectual property rights. Given the international aspects of both intellectual property law and biotechnology, this book will be of interest throughout the world and especially valuable in common-law (most English-speaking) countries.

Does a right to property exist under international law? The traditional answer to this question is no: a right to property can only arise under the domestic law of a particular nation. But the view that property rights are exclusively governed by national law is obsolete. Identifiable areas of property law have emerged at the international level, and the foundation is now arguably being laid for a comprehensive international regime. This book provides a detailed investigation into this developing international property law. It demonstrates how the evolution of international property law has been influenced by major economic, political, and technological changes: the embrace of private property by former socialist states after the end of the Cold War; the globalization of trade; the birth of new technologies capable of exploiting the global commons; the rise of digital property; and the increasing recognition of the human right to property. The first part of the book analyzes how international law impacts rights in specific types of property. In some situations, international law creates property rights, such as rights in aboriginal lands, deep seabed minerals, and satellite orbits. In other areas, it harmonizes property rights that arise at the national level, such as rights in intellectual property, rights in foreign investments, and security interests in personal property. Finally, it restricts property rights that may be recognized at the national level, such as rights in celestial bodies, contraband, and slaves. The second part of the book explores the thesis that a global right to property should be recognized as a general matter, not merely as a moral precept but rather as an entitlement that all nations must honour. It establishes the components of such a right, arguing that the right to property at the international level should be seen in the context of five key components of ownership: acquisition, use, destruction, exclusion, and transfer. This highly innovative book makes an important contribution to how we conceptualize the protection of property and to the understanding that much of this protection now takes place at the international level.

Can private law assume an ecological meaning? Can property and contract defend nature? Is tort law an adequate tool for paying environmental damages to future generations? This book explores potential resolutions to these questions, analyzing the evolution of legal thinking in relation to the topics of legal personality, property, contract and tort. In this forward thinking book, Mattei and Quarta suggest a list of basic principles upon which a new, ecological legal system could be based. Taking private law to represent an ally in the defence of our future, they offer a clear characterization of the fundamental legal institutions of common law and civil law, considering the challenges of the Anthropogenic era, technological tools of the Internet era, and the global rise of the commons. Summarizing the fundamental institutions of private law: property rights, legal personality, contract, and tort, the authors reveal the limits of these legal institutions in relation to historical international evolution and their regulation in the contexts of catastrophic ecological issues and technological developments. Engaging and thoughtful, this book will be interesting reading for legal scholars and academics of private law and, in particular, those wishing to understand the role of law when facing technological and ecological challenges.