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Ireland, Paddy --- "Property law" [2019] ELECD 1680; in Christodoulidis, Emilios; Dukes, Ruth; Goldoni, Marco (eds), "Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 260

Book Title: Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory

Editor(s): Christodoulidis, Emilios; Dukes, Ruth; Goldoni, Marco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: Property law

Author(s): Ireland, Paddy

Number of pages: 24

Abstract/Description:

This chapter uses the continuing appeal of Blackstone’s conception of property as thing-ownership (‘sole and despotic dominion . . . over the external things of the world’) as a jumping off point for a critical and historically and contextually informed exploration of the nature of property and property rights in contemporary capitalism. It argues that history reveals the public, contested and contingent nature of property and property rights, and their lack of an essence which transcends temporal and spatial specificities. History also reveals them to be important sources of power and sites of class struggle, particularly when productive resources are at stake. The simple thing-ownership conception tends to underplay and conceal these social–relational dimensions of property. Developing a proper understanding of property requires us to recognise that there are important senses in which in contemporary capitalism it is simultaneously a thing, a bundle of rights and a social relation.