History of the Land Law

This chapter discusses one of the most important components of the land law system: the registration of title to land. This is the system whereby rights in land are recorded on a publically available register. The chapter first examines some of the history of English land law in the 20th and 21st centuries, considering the 1925 reforms and the Land Registration Act 2002. It also describes what the land register is, and how it fits into the system of rights in land. Land registration essentially contains three guiding rules. Certain rights must be registered to be created. Once registered, the effect of such rights is determined by their registered status. The relationship between the right-holder and third parties who later acquire rights in, or transact in relation to, the relevant land is, again, determined by registration. The register therefore has three functions: it controls creation of rights, the effects of such rights, and the interaction between rights. In this sense, registration fundamentally determines how land law works. The chapter then looks at the principles of conveyancing in unregistered land.

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An Introduction to the History of the Land Law. By A. W. B. Simpson, M.a., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. [London: Oxford University Press. 1961. xx, 261 and (bibliography and index) 15 pp. 25s. net.]

The Cambridge Law Journal ◽

10.1017/s0008197300010667 ◽

1962 ◽

Vol 20 (2) ◽

pp. 267-269

Author(s):

Gareth Jones

Keyword(s):

Land Law ◽

Oxford University ◽

History Of ◽

Lincoln College ◽

Oxford University Press

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Land, Law, and Education: The Troubled History of Indian Citizenship, 1871–1924

Civic and Moral Learning in America ◽

10.1057/9781403984722_9 ◽

2006 ◽

pp. 119-134

Author(s):

David Wallace Adams

Keyword(s):

Land Law ◽

History Of

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The Archaeology of Land Law: Excavating Law in the West Bank

International Journal of Legal Information ◽

10.1017/s0731126500011410 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 40 (3) ◽

pp. 344-392 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Natalie Orpett

Keyword(s):

International Law ◽

Political History ◽

West Bank ◽

The State ◽

Land Law ◽

The West ◽

Legal Regimes ◽

History Of ◽

The Law

Land law in the West Bank is a mess of multi-layered legal regimes representing the complicated political history of the region. From this confusion flow some of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today, such as the legitimacy of settlements and the legality of the security barrier. Whether one's concerns regarding the “Question of Palestine” are humanitarian or political, one fact is clear: the legal muddle of land law must be addressed.But addressing the law first requires that we understand what that law is. This paper is not an investigation of the relative legitimacy under domestic or international law of each of the innumerable changes that were made to land law over the course of multiple legal regimes. Rather, it attempts to develop a purely descriptive answer to the seemingly straightforward question: what is the state of land law? To do this, I reconstruct the law of land as much as possible, from the still-operative, sedimentary layers of Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli, Palestinian and international law. In compiling this information, I hope to contribute to the efforts to fully understand where we are, so we can honestly assess where we may go from here.

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The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting: Native Title Law and Reconciliation in Australia

Cosmopolitan Civil Societies An Interdisciplinary Journal ◽

10.5130/ccs.v1i3.1077 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 1 (3) ◽

pp. 1-34

Author(s):

Francesca Giorgia Dominello

Keyword(s):

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Historical Context ◽

Land Law ◽

Native Title ◽

History Of ◽

The Impact

The post-Mabo era was to be the age of reconciliation and the end of unjust dispossession of indigenous peoples’ lands. However, as the more recent cases in native title show this vision did not become the reality. In this paper, I will examine Mabo in its historical context. In particular I will examine the claim that Mabo was a product of the “new history” movement in Australia. This movement developed in response to the silence that had shrouded the history of colonial relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples for most of the 19th and 20th centuries. Through the writing of these histories, new historians have raised awareness of the history of colonization in Australia and the impact it has had on indigenous peoples in particular. In the paper I will outline the ways in which Mabo is a product of this history. However, if Mabo did not bring to an end to the injustice and inequality facing indigenous peoples in the context of land law in Australia, it is because of the traces of another history informing that decision and the events that followed it. In this paper I will refer to this history as the “old history” of Australia. In this history indigenous peoples are placed in a paradoxical position: they are inferior, but still seen as threat to the colonial enterprise. The paper will explore how this “history” is repeated in Mabo and continues to inform the High Court’s approach to native title law.

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