Legal and Equitable Property Rights By John Tarrant

This book provides a precise understanding of legal and equitable property. John Tarrant sets out a unifying theory of legal and equitable property rights and shows how property rights fit within private law.

The book:

• examines the case law concerned with property rights to identify what concept of property has been adopted by the courts;
• outlines what things can be the legitimate subject of property rights by looking at the case law, and statute;
• demonstrates that our legal system has adopted a thinghood approach to property, and the courts and the legislature determine what things can be the object of property rights;
• explains the different characteristics of property rights, and how they correlate with duties of non-interference and obligations, and how some private law property rights also have a public law aspect.

Tarrant shows how legal and equitable property rights fit within private law by demonstrating that private law only has two purposes: first, to protect personal integrity; and second, to protect private property (our things) through the availability of a range of private law remedies. In simple terms, private law provides remedies for people and for their tangible and intangible things in interactions with other legal persons.