1 - Why Property Law Needs Globalization Strategies

Summary

Chapter 1 illustrates the prevalence of cross-border property disputes that stem from current processes of globalization and the challenge that such scenarios pose for legal governance because of disparities across national legal systems. The chapter identifies the structural features of property law and, in particular the need to create a set of norms for the in rem ranking of rights, powers, and priorities in regard to assets. It shows how such structural features translate to the creation of a closed list of property rights for each legal system, with national systems diverging from one another in the rigidity of the list, the types of rights included, and the specific content given to each such right. Showing that such disparities result not only form historical reasons, but also from economic, political, and cultural ones, Chapter 1 presents the four globalization strategies (soft law, conflict of laws, harmonization, and supranationalism) that could be utilized to mitigate the gaps between the domestic basis of property law and the current economic, social, and technological processes of globalization and defines the methodological principles that can guide the choice of strategies.