Property law

Property law is the area of law that governs legal rights, including ownership and tenure, in property, covering how proprietary rights are acquired, given up and enforced, and functioning mainly as private law while carrying some public law elements. Legal systems generally recognize two broad categories, real property relating to land and personal property covering everything else, with personal property further split into tangible property such as money and intangible property such as intellectual property. Beyond private relationships between owners, property law also reaches public concerns including compulsory land acquisition, wealth redistribution, environmental effects, antitrust and economic competition, indigenous rights, and human rights to property and housing. Common law jurisdictions trace their property frameworks to medieval English law, developed through separate courts of equity and common law, while civil law jurisdictions build on Roman law, and the two traditions now influence each other.