“The British aristocracy was very neurotic about inheritance: it was common for the children of a landed family to squander away mum and dad’s estate. British inheritance law was pretty complicated – you can’t follow a Jane Austen novel without knowing it.”
IIUC some of the weird common law concepts that affect property law come from bizarre inheritance arrangements. For example, the rule against perpetuities comes from the Duke of Norfolk’s case. According to Wiki:
“The rule has its origin in the Duke of Norfolk's Case of 1682.[2] That case concerned Henry, 22nd Earl of Arundel, who had tried to create a shifting executory limitation so that some of his property would pass to his eldest son (who was mentally deficient) and then to his second son, and other property would pass to his second son, but then to his fourth son. The estate plan also included provisions for shifting property many generations later if certain conditions should occur.
“When his second son, Henry, succeeded to his elder brother's property, he did not want to pass the other property to his younger brother, Charles. Charles sued to enforce his interest, and the court (in this instance, the House of Lords) held that such a shifting condition could not exist indefinitely. The judges believed that tying up property too long beyond the lives of people living at the time was wrong, although the exact period was not determined until another case, Cadell v. Palmer, 150 years later.[3]”
You may also be interested in this podcast based on a book by the great Taisu Zhang: https://newbooksnetwork.com/taisu-zhang-the-laws-and-economics-of-confucianism-kinship-property-in-preindustrial-china-and-england-cambridge-up-2017. The sketch of the argument is that Chinese underdevelopment may have been partly due to various customary Confucian practices that made it difficult to permanently alienate property. Often, relatives or descendants could continue to assert vaguely defined property rights against buyers, sometimes many decades after the sales. That made it difficult for land to be sold to the most productive users of that land, disincentivized improvements of land because of residual legal risks that the value of one’s investment would be expropriated, etc.
This might more just be an artefact of what economists mean by "strengthening" of property rights and me not knowing the lingo, but:
"After William III became king in 1689, Parliament started passing a lot more legislation, much of which clarified and strengthened property rights."
"The link with the Industrial Revolution is that these strengthenings of property rights (allegedly) gave capital-owners an economic incentive to invest in automation, and gave a legal status that allowed for new agricultural methods like Norfolk crop rotation."
A bit nitpicky and orthogonal to your take but I don't think strengthening is the right word? More like "reforming in a way that might weaken individual rights but can be done in a positive sum way such that everyone is better off afterwards". "Positive-sum weakening + clarification of property rights perhaps. Especially since the problem with continental property rights/strict settlement was that they were *too* strong or, err, strict.
If you didn’t watch it yet, I think the Fiennes Odyssey was really interesting to watch with Nolan’s fresh in my mind.
Flattered. Though technically I suggested the links were esoteric and made no view on your wonderful self. Still I like the links. Good work!
“The British aristocracy was very neurotic about inheritance: it was common for the children of a landed family to squander away mum and dad’s estate. British inheritance law was pretty complicated – you can’t follow a Jane Austen novel without knowing it.”
IIUC some of the weird common law concepts that affect property law come from bizarre inheritance arrangements. For example, the rule against perpetuities comes from the Duke of Norfolk’s case. According to Wiki:
“The rule has its origin in the Duke of Norfolk's Case of 1682.[2] That case concerned Henry, 22nd Earl of Arundel, who had tried to create a shifting executory limitation so that some of his property would pass to his eldest son (who was mentally deficient) and then to his second son, and other property would pass to his second son, but then to his fourth son. The estate plan also included provisions for shifting property many generations later if certain conditions should occur.
“When his second son, Henry, succeeded to his elder brother's property, he did not want to pass the other property to his younger brother, Charles. Charles sued to enforce his interest, and the court (in this instance, the House of Lords) held that such a shifting condition could not exist indefinitely. The judges believed that tying up property too long beyond the lives of people living at the time was wrong, although the exact period was not determined until another case, Cadell v. Palmer, 150 years later.[3]”
You may also be interested in this podcast based on a book by the great Taisu Zhang: https://newbooksnetwork.com/taisu-zhang-the-laws-and-economics-of-confucianism-kinship-property-in-preindustrial-china-and-england-cambridge-up-2017. The sketch of the argument is that Chinese underdevelopment may have been partly due to various customary Confucian practices that made it difficult to permanently alienate property. Often, relatives or descendants could continue to assert vaguely defined property rights against buyers, sometimes many decades after the sales. That made it difficult for land to be sold to the most productive users of that land, disincentivized improvements of land because of residual legal risks that the value of one’s investment would be expropriated, etc.
This might more just be an artefact of what economists mean by "strengthening" of property rights and me not knowing the lingo, but:
"After William III became king in 1689, Parliament started passing a lot more legislation, much of which clarified and strengthened property rights."
"The link with the Industrial Revolution is that these strengthenings of property rights (allegedly) gave capital-owners an economic incentive to invest in automation, and gave a legal status that allowed for new agricultural methods like Norfolk crop rotation."
A bit nitpicky and orthogonal to your take but I don't think strengthening is the right word? More like "reforming in a way that might weaken individual rights but can be done in a positive sum way such that everyone is better off afterwards". "Positive-sum weakening + clarification of property rights perhaps. Especially since the problem with continental property rights/strict settlement was that they were *too* strong or, err, strict.