Contemporary Property Law

First published in 1999, this is the first of two books based on papers given at the conference organised by the Centre for Property Law at Reading in March 1998 under the title ‘Contemporary Issues in Property Law’. Speakers represented jurisdictions from around the world. Their subjects ranged from the theoretical and jurisprudential to the severely practical. No one who attended the conference – or subsequently reads the papers in this and the following book, Property Law: Current Issues and Debates – can believe in the picture of property law as archetypical, dry as dust, black letter, law. Questions of human rights, changes in social structures, technological developments are all shown to have their impact on property law, calling for careful analysis of the present law and practical proposals for reforms to reflect new developments.

Part 1: General Property Law. 1. Property: the Challenge from Restitution. Charles Rickett and Ross Grantham. 2. The Remedial Aspects of Equitable Property. David Wright. 3. What are We Going to Do about Estoppel? Elizabeth Cooke. 4. Property Law: between Private Rights and Public Policy. Michael Doup and Michael Salter. Part 2: Land Law. 5. Justice, Informality and Home-sharing. JW Harris. 6. Reform of the Law Relating to Property Rights on the Breakdown of Cohabitation. Mark P. Thompson. 7. Structural Differences Between Registered and Unregistered Land Law – A Flickering Awareness. Graham Ferris. 8. Title Insurance: Its Relevance to Lenders. Giles Morgan. 9. Continuing Problems of Formality in Contracts for the Sale of Land? The Issue of Substantive Interpretation. Gerwyn Griffiths. 10. Formalities for Declaring Trusts of Land. David Wilde. 11. Mortgages and the Flexible Workforce. Jill Morgan. 12. Acquiring a Prescriptive Right to Commit a Nuisance. Ian Dawson and Alison Dunn. 13. Suing in Private Nuisance: the Rights of the Property Owner. Rosalind Malcolm. Part 3: Landlord and Tenant. 14. The Shift Towards a Commercial Interpretation of Leases – Hunting for Allegories on the Banks of the Nile. Mike Biles. 15. Repudiation of Leases – a Fool’s Paradise. Warren Barr. 16. Reimbursement of Tenant Substitutes. Peter Sparkes. 17. Private Sector Agricultural Tenancy Arrangements: the European Experience. Neil Ravenscroft, Roger Gibbard, Susan Markwell and Jo Reeves.