Some Brief History

The importance of property in human history can be gleaned from the fact that many ancient legal codes specifically incorporated provisions for the regulation of property. Moreover, even though such codes are far removed from us in time and place, the regulation of property in such codes does not seem particularly strange to us. For instance, the Roman emperor Justinian, who ordered that the laws of Rome be codified in the 6^th century, included the following in his Institutes:

If anyone has bona fide purchased land from another, whom he believed to be the true owner, when in fact he was not, or has bona fide acquired it from such a person by gift or by any other good title, natural reason demands that the fruits which he has gathered shall be his in return for his care and culture.[1]

This is just one example of the vast treatment of property in ancient codes, many more of which may be located through web searching. One thing of which you would become aware as you read through various and sundry laws, including our own, is that the idea of “property” is much more than the “thing” owned by someone. As stated by our own courts:

“Property” in its legal sense means a valuable right or interest in something rather than the thing itself, and is the right to possess, use and dispose of that something in such a manner as is not inconsistent with law.[2]

So, when someone states “This is my property,” there is an entire world of legal relationships being implied. Property law, generally, is the law that describes and regulates the relationship between legal entities (people, businesses, etc.) and things found in the world.

[1] Corpus juris civilis. Institutiones. [from old catalog], and Thomas Collett Sanders. The Institutes of Justinian. 6th ed. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1878.

[2] Coutar Remainder I, LLC v. State, 91 N.E.3d 610, 615 (Ind. Ct. App. 2017).