Land Tenure, Property, and Development

Abstract

The law provides a complex set of rules that have evolved within each society to ensure its orderly running and the peaceful behaviour of its members. The law may take several forms, amongst which broadly speaking, there is statutory law and customary law. Under statutory law, all rules and regulations are written down and codified; under customary law there is no written record but it is assumed that the code is well known by all members of society. In some jurisdictions there is the common law which grew out of customary law; over time the judgements of the courts have been written down and now create precedents whereby new cases can be judged. many jurisdictions have legal regimes that combine in some fashion statutory and customary law. The law of property deals both with relations between people (in personam) and of persons to things (in rem). The law recognizes different types of interest in property and makes a distinction between the physical objects and the abstract rights associated with their use. Land as real or immovable property is in many jurisdictions taken to include all things attached to it such as buildings and other permanent fixtures. It also usually includes the minerals below the soil and the air above, unless these are specifically excluded. In some countries, however, a distinction is made between ‘land’ as a natural object with soil and a surface and ‘property’, which is taken to mean the buildings and other man-made objects attached to the land. In the present context, land will be regarded as including all construction and development, while the word ‘property’ will normally be used more specifically to relate to the abstract nature of land. Rights describe what may be done with property; they are abstract but none the less real in their effect. They have been described as being like a bundle of sticks associated with any property, one stick for each thing that can be done with the property.