Introduction to Property Law

English land law is the law of real property in England and Wales. Because of its heavy historical and social significance, land is usually seen as the most important part of English property law. Ownership of land has its roots in the feudal system established by William the Conqueror after 1066, and with a gradually diminishing aristocratic presence, now sees a large number of owners playing in an active market for real estate. The modern law's sources derive from the old courts of common law and equity, along with legislation such as the Law of Property Act 1925, the Settled Land Act 1925, the Land Charges Act 1972, the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 and the Land Registration Act 2002.
Land law impacts upon many facets of our day-to-day living, it determines: the difference between what is property and what is land; who owns property in the land; who may have access to land; your rights to land as a tenant, and; how you utilize your land. Land law is unusual in that you can own it outright but still be limited in how you can use it.
Ultimately, land law is looking to determine what interests there are in the land and therefore what a person can do with the land. These interests can be impacted depending on whether the land is registered or not registered. Beyond owning an interest in the land, less obvious interests can also come in the following forms:
Minor and Overriding interests
Equitable Interests
Covenants
Leases and Licenses
Because we are only studying private rights in land we define property as rights against the world, in contrast to the contractual rights, which are rights against individuals. Thus, when a child shouts ‘mine’, a landowner says ‘keep out’, or a corporation seeks an injunction alleging trademark infringement, all three claimants are asserting that they have rights better than anyone else in the world (or at least, for reasons you will see later, better than the vast majority of the world including the individuals to whom these actions are directed). In other words, a private property right gives the rights-holder the ability to exclude anyone in the world from interfering with that right apart from someone (if there is someone) with a better claim to the right in question. That is why property is so powerful as it implicitly involves a claim that has consequences for just about everyone else in the world.
Unfortunately, it’s more complicated. In this jurisdiction, there are in fact two types of property right, known as legal and equitable interests. The former were the traditional rights of property recognized by the common law whereas the latter were rights known only to the Court of Chancery. Despite the fact that they both represent a sense of ownership over an asset, legal interest and equitable interest are quite distinct to one another.
• A legal property interest, conforms to the traditional notion of property. It is a right that binds the world. Legal interest represents an ownership that can be enforced by law. An owner who has a legal interest over an asset is able to take legal action in the event that another party tries to overstep his rights of ownership.
• Equitable interest is where the said party will have a financial interest in the asset in question. An equitable interest holder will be able to enjoy the assets without holding the actual legal title to the asset.
The concept of state has enabled English Law to develop a complex and flexible means of land ownership. As it is the estate, rather than the land, which is owned it is often stated that it is only the Crown (from whom historically every estate is ultimately derived) that actually owns land under English law and although there has been sheer skepticism surrounding this argument, no one can deny that the estate is the most important interest in land under this system. For the estate is an open-textured property right that gives its owner possession of the land and the ability to use it in innumerable (but not unlimited) ways, in contrast to lesser forms of property interest in land such as easements (a right of way exercised by one landowner over that of their neighbour), restrictive covenants (a private right one landowner has to restrict what happens on their neighbour’s land) and mortgages (whereby someone is granted an interest over land as security for a debt they are owed), which give the owner of the interest a non-possessory, and much more limited, single-use right over the land to which they are attached. It is possible for a lesser estate to be carved out of a greater estate.