Paperback, Captus Press
Persons and Property in Private Law is a curated collection of socio-legal scholarship and primary legal sources examining the roots, relevance, and application of the legal categories of persons and property. These categories are foundational — being regarded as fundamental to the semantic architecture of law. This comprehensive and thought-provoking book is designed for students in undergraduate law and legal studies programs. The book delves into the origins, evolution, and ideological dimensions of the concepts of persons and property in the legal realm. It explores how the notion of legal personality has evolved over time and its impact on various individuals and entities. Additionally, it critically examines the construct of property and its connection to ownership rights, highlighting the ideological underpinnings and societal implications associated with different forms of property.
Divided into four parts, Persons and Property provides a systematic exploration of the subject. Part I, titled “Persons, Property, and Legal Ordering”, introduces the conceptual frameworks that underpin private law, using sample cases to illustrate how the law is structured. Part II, “The Legal Person”, delves deeper into the definition and function of legal personality through five thematic areas. These include an examination of transatlantic chattel slavery, the personification of business entities through corporations, the historical exclusion of women from legal personhood, and the complexities of legal capacity and agency related to reproductive decision-making for Indigenous women and persons with disabilities. The part concludes by raising emerging issues, such as biomedicine and the legal status of artificial intelligence and its implications.
Part III, “Property (and the Legal Person)”, shifts the focus to the concept of property as a legal object, challenging traditional understandings and delving into the rationales, justifications, and types of property in the current legal taxonomy. It scrutinizes the use of racially restrictive covenants and intentional racism towards racialized communities, exploring how property law has been employed to facilitate segregation and perpetuate systemic racism. Furthermore, the section critically analyzes the impact of colonization and Indigenous land claims on the narrative of public property, highlighting the need to re-evaluate the idea of ownership itself in relation to Indigenous perspectives.
Finally, Part IV, “Persons, Property, and the Planet”, addresses the anthropocentric nature of Western legal constructs and their disconnect from Indigenous worldviews and ecological concerns. It challenges the prevailing understanding of property as a human-centred concept and advocates for a paradigm shift towards sustainability and an earth-centric jurisprudence with habitat at its core. This section explores Indigenous narratives of place and space, focusing on Indigenous Protected Conserved Areas and the growing recognition of legal personhood for natural ecosystems. By highlighting these developments and recognizing the urgent imperatives facing the law, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, the book underscores the dynamic nature of the study of persons and property in relation to contemporary societal, ecological, and economic transformations.
Persons and Property in Private Law provides a rich and multidimensional exploration of the concepts of persons and property, urging readers to critically engage with the ideological dimensions and implications of these legal constructs. By examining historical perspectives, contemporary issues, and emerging challenges, the book offers a comprehensive and insightful analysis that encourages students and scholars alike to reevaluate traditional legal taxonomies and envision a more inclusive, sustainable, and earth-centred legal framework.
In this edition, the editor, Brettel Dawson, creates three interconnected Conceptual Frameworks of Persons and Property. Drawing upon her extensive 30+ years of teaching experience in the subject, she has carefully crafted these frameworks to provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic. By structuring the book content accordingly and offering visual representations in the form of maps, Dawson guides readers in analyzing and addressing legal and social issues that emerge in response to societal changes or crises. The editor's purpose in developing these three conceptual frameworks is to provide a comprehensive and visual understanding of the field of law pertaining to persons and property. By distilling and organizing the complex subject matter into these frameworks, the editor aims to reveal the interconnectedness and underlying structures of the legal concepts involved. The frameworks serve as a navigational aid, allowing readers to grasp the "big picture" relationships and lines of connection within the field of study. Furthermore, the editor emphasizes that the frameworks highlight the evolving nature of the law in response to social, scientific, technological, and economic changes or crises, prompting readers to consider the framing of issues and the choices to be made in such contexts. Ultimately, these frameworks help to facilitate a deeper understanding of the subject matter and encourage critical thinking about the implications of legal and social ordering in relation to persons and property. New feature in this book
How’s this edition different?
The new edition prompts readers to consider the question of “what is a legal education for on a planet with a biosphere”. It considers the capacity of private law to be used at a turning point in response to three great challenges of our times: climate change, artificial intelligence, and decolonization.