Property Article

Property as the Law of Things

Vol. 125 No. 7 Private law deals with the interactions of persons in society. If we think about all the effects produced by the relation between each pair of persons and then unlimited chains of such interactions – A sells Blackacre to B, who sells to C, who mortgages to D and rents to E, and so on – then prescribing results for such interactions is a potentially intractable problem. Private law would be an impossible enterprise. This is where property comes in.