The Universal Law of the Land

Abstract:     
Are we witnessing the gradual globalization of national land laws, which have traditionally been considered to be the paradigm of legal idiosyncrasy, by virtue of their reflecting place-specific society, culture, and politics? This Article offers an innovative analysis of the conflicting forces at work in this legal field, basing itself on an historical, comparative, and theoretical study of the structures and strictures of domestic land laws and of current cross-border phenomena that dramatically affect national land systems.

The central thesis of this Article is that, irrespective of our basic, normative viewpoint regarding the opening up of domestic land laws to the forces of "globalization," we must come to terms with the particularly difficult institutional and jurisprudential constraints that are involved in undermining the local basis of land laws. Thus, if we wish to systematically succeed in intensifying cross-border land law rules, we need to construct more comprehensive supra-national institutions, prevent normative over-fragmentation within each legal system, and pay close attention to local-specific interplays between law, politics, economics, and culture.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 32

Keywords: land, property theory, international, globalization, institutions, norms, jurisprudence, history, society, culture, economics, common law, civil law, comparative law, conflict of laws, human rights

JEL Classification: F02, F3, F4, F15, F21, K11, K33, O2, O16, O19, P5, R51, R52

working papers series