Consolidation of Property Rights in Customs and Law: From Family Crests and Coats of Arms to Ex-Libris

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of the features of consolidation of property rights in customs and in law. The authors are shadowing the genesis and evolution of family crests among the Finno-Ugric peoples as one of the ways of of property rights objectification and drawing a parallel with ex-libris endowed with traditional customary and legal characteristics and securing the ownership of books. The choice of the research topic is not accidental, as it is predetermined by the absence of contemporary research works devoted to the problems of customary law of various peoples and research papers covering the features of the customary legal objectification of property rights among the Finno-Ugric peoples, as well as the legal nature of the ex libris. Under the conditions of the positivist legal doctrine prevalence, the Soviet science was convinced in disappearing and rudimentary nature of customary law and in the absence of the need to study the problems of ethnic law explaining the functioning of customary legal institutions. This conviction did not allow exploring various elements forming the essence of ethnic law that «emerged from the people», determining characteristic features of their functioning and carrying out research on social relations in a traditional society. The paper reveals similar and distinctive features in the consolidation of property rights in customs and law using family crests and ex-libris applied exclusively to books as property objects.