育红小学财产法(中英文对照)

2021年1月20日发(作者：董秋斯)
财产法（中英文对照）


The Law of Property
财产法


The old common law1 was preeminently the law of
real property
；

and the distinction between “real
property” and “personal property3” was a crucial
one.
Generally speaking
，
real property means real
estate -1and and buildings ---- but it also includes
such things as growing crops. Everything else ----
money
，
stocks and bonds
，
jewelry
，
cars
，
carloads
of lumber
，
IOUs
，
bank deposits- is personal property.
We all have a stake in real estate
，
since we all live
somewhere
；
and we work
，
study
，
and travel
somewhere
，
too. Everyone is a renter or an owner
，
or
lives with renters or owners. But for most of us
，

that as far as the law is concerned the word property
means primarily real property
；
personal property is
of minor importance.
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Actually
，
personal property is legally a minor
field. There is no single
，
special field of law
devoted to personal property. Personal property is
what contract law
，
commercial law
，
and bankruptcy
law ---- yes
，
and torts
，
too ---- are all about. But
there are so many special rilles about real estate
that it makes sense to treat this as a separate field
of law.
Property law is still one of the fundamental
branches of law
，
and real estate is a significant
branch of law practice. Yet property law is a mere
shadow of its former self
，
legal speaking. In fact
，

one of the major developments in our system
，
if you
take the long view
，
is the relative decline of real
property law. In medieval England
，
it would have only
been a slight exaggeration to say that land law was
the law of the land. When Blackstone published his
“Commentaries” midway through the eighteenth
century
，
one whole volume was devoted to land law. A
modern Blackstone would shrink the topic to a fraction
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of this bulk ---- 5 or 10 percent
，
at most
，
of the
total law.
Medieval England lived under a feudal system.
Power and jurisdiction ---- the cornerstones of wealth
and position in society were based on land and land
alone. The “lord” was a person who held an estate
--
-- a person with ownership
，
mastery
，
control over
land. A person without land was a person with no real
stake in affairs of state. The common law
，
as the
royal law courts expounded it had little to say to men
and women without land
，
who were the majority of the
English population. In America
，
at one time
，
only
persons who had interests in land were entitled to
vote or hold office. The New York constitution of
1777
，
for example
，
restricted the right to vote for
state senators to men who owned “freeholds” with
$$100 or more
，
free and clear of debt
（
Article X
）

all this
，
of course
，
has ended
；
land is only one
form of wealth. A great and powerful family is one
that controls mighty enterprises
，
rather than one
that rules vast estates.
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Property law still covers a rich and varied group
of subject. To begin with
，
it asks. What does it mean
to “own” land？
How can I get title to land and how
can I dispose of it legally
？
There are issues about
deeds
，
joint ownership
，
and land records and
registration
；
and problems of land finance
，

including rules about mortgages and foreclosures.
There is the law of “nuisance”，
which restricts me
from using my land in such a way as to hurt my
neighbors
，
pouring smoke or sending bad smells onto
his land
，
for example. There are the law of
“easements” and the exotic law of “covenants”
（especially those that “run with the land”）：

these deal with rights a person might have in his
neighbor's land ---- rights to drive a car up his
driveway
，
to walk across his lawn
，
or to keep him
from taking in boarders. These are not rights of
ownership
；

rather they are “servitudes”
----
restrictions or exceptions to the owner's rights
，
in
favor of those another.
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The common law was ingenious in carving up rights
to land into various complex segments called
“estates”。
These could be either time segments or
space segments. A “life estate” （
my right to live
in a certain house
，
for example
，
until I die
），
is
a time segment
；
so is a three-year lease of a farm or
apartment house. Space segments include air rights
（
the right to build on top of certain property
）
and
mineral rights
（
the right to dig underneath it
）。

Nowadays
，
the condominium is also popular
；
I can own
a slice of some building thirty stories above the
ground. The common law was also quite ingenious in
devising forms of common or joint ownership
，
with
subtle technical differences between them.
There are also all sorts of “future interests”
known to the common law. Suppose I leave my house to
my sister for life
，
and then to any of her children
who might be alive when she dies. The children have a
future interest
；
that is
，
the time they will get the
house is postponed to some far-off date. But the
future event is certain to happen
，
and thus the
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