This engaging book presents fourteen stimulating essays, all originally presented at the 2001 Annual Colloquium of the International Association of Legal Science, held in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, in October 2001. These essays, all by leading scholars in the field, deal with a broad array of significant issues, including such debates as the following:
- Public vs. private property: a meaningful distinction?
- How customary law defeats the purpose of state land law; and
- Land ownership: to pollute or not to pollute?
as well as detailed discussion of the special land needs of small islands, private residential governments, regulatory takings, land transfer, mortgage law, securities in property transactions, housing, town planning, agricultural land use, and water and riparian rights. The scope is global, with attention to the great differences in terminology and even in basic legal concepts.