BOOK REVIEW

COMPARATIVE PROPERTY LAW
Global Perspectives

Edited by Michele Graziadei and Lionel Smith

ISBN: 978 1 84844 757 8

Edward Elgar Publishing

www.e-elgar.com


PROPERTY LAW ACROSS THE GLOBE: COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF A WIDE VARIETY OF JURISDICTIONS WORLDWIDE

An appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers

Property -- and the relevant laws which govern it -- has been a part of civil life for millennia. However, all too many studies published on the subject focus on specific localities in specific jurisdictions.

Fortunately for international lawyers concerned with the vagaries of global markets, this new handbook from Edward Elgar is a departure from the norm. As the title indicates, it offers comparative studies and therefore global perspectives on property law across a wide range of countries and jurisdictions worldwide.

Joint editors Michele Graziadei and Lionel Smith from, respectively, the Universities of Turin and McGill (Montreal), head a team of over two-dozen international contributors, all acknowledged experts in this field. ‘This volume,’ says Robert Erickson of Yale Law School…’cuts across disciplines and cultures’, adding in effect, that it provides a welcome antidote to traditional parochial approaches to this subject.

As the editors remark, ‘property in today’s world ‘is a contested institution on many grounds.’ The book therefore contains a number of chapters which refer to, or address this and related problems. There is a chapter, for example, on the globalization of property and land grabbing, another on water rights, and another on community rights to forests in the tropics.

Interestingly, there are certain chapters which cover, as the editors explain, ‘communities living outside the formal boundaries of the law’ where property rights are governed instead by custom. The chapter on customary tenure in sub-Saharan Africa illustrates this point.

Another thought-provoking study here is the chapter on ‘Indigenous Territorial Rights in the Common Law’ which examines the interaction between the common law systems of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States and what are sometimes known as the ‘aboriginal rights’ of their indigenous, or ‘First Nation’ populations.

It is reassuring that co-editor Michele Graziadei has included his own examination of how the differences between civil law and common law jurisdictions complicate the study of comparative property law (as well they might) and suggests ways to approach such problems.

As one of the latest titles in Elgar’s ‘Research Handbooks in Comparative Law’ series, this book presents the results of an enormous amount of up-to-date research in this increasingly topical area of law and contains a wealth of references in the extensive footnoting and the bibliographies which follow most chapters. For comparative lawyers, or property lawyers advising international clients, this is an extremely useful volume to acquire.

The publication date is cited as at 2017.

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