An Overlooked Overriding Interest in Singapore's Torrens System?

Abstract

A landowner free to develop his land as he wishes before the imposition of public controls, finds himself prohibited from doing so as a consequence of the controls. The title to his ownership of an estate or interest in the land is not disturbed or called into question in any fundamental way—he owns what he had previously … Nevertheless, the powers of ownership are not what they were in all their fullness. He cannot legally do now what before he was at law and at liberty to do. His rights have been curtailed. He has lost something. What is it?