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Cass, Ronald A. --- "Property Rights Systems and the Rule of Law" [2004] ELECD 107; in Colombatto, Enrico (ed), "The Elgar Companion to the Economics of Property Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to the Economics of Property Rights

Editor(s): Colombatto, Enrico

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781840649949

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Property Rights Systems and the Rule of Law

Author(s): Cass, Ronald A.

Number of pages: 27

Extract:

10 Property rights systems and the rule of law
Ronald A. Cass*


Introduction
Tolstoy's novel, Anna Karenina, starts famously with the observation that
`All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy
in its own fashion'. The opposite is more nearly true in respect to the rule of
law. Though many societies with differing governance structures and legal
systems adhere in their own ways to the rule of law, societies that derogate
from it do so in more similar fashion. In other words, it is easier to identify
departures from the rule of law than to explain why particular actions con-
form to it.
The rule of law matters to people around the world because it is a con-
comitant of a society that is successful and, in all likelihood, just (see Harvey
1961; Barnett 2001, pp. 136­44; Cass 2001, pp. xi­xii). It does not guarantee
justice or social welfare, but it does correlate with justice and social welfare
(under virtually any accepted definition of those terms). That is why the
concept has such broad appeal.
A critical aspect of the commitment to the rule of law is the definition and
protection of property rights ­ rights to control, use, or transfer things (broadly
conceived), including rights in intangibles such as intellectual property. Soci-
eties in which it is relatively easy to secure property rights, to protect them
against infringement, to gain recompense when rights are infringed, and to
transfer property rights in whole or in ...