Class notes
Land Law (LAW242) - Semester 2 Lecture Notes
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Full lecture notes for land law (LAW242) - semester 2 Contains cases, judicial opinions and academic commentary.
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Land Law – Dr John TribeLecture 1: introduction
Prof avna offer (?)
- Less about individuals pushing through statute that suited them, more about
changing the societal way that land is owned
The place of land law in society
- Every society must have some concept of property
- This relationship can be with people specifically (by excluding other people from
using it)
o Everyone must have somewhere to live, and consequently everyone wants
land
However- land is finite and may have competing demands on it
Tensions with e.g. utilities and vehicles
- Smith – focusses on purchasers
- Birks – takes conceptual approach in conceptualising land and time
Relationships with land
- Proprietary or personal
- Also studying relationships between people (ie tenant/landlord) and protection of
interests in land
Social context of land law
- Land Registration for the 21st Century: A Conveyancing Revolution, 2001, Law Com
No.271
Statutory evolution
- Land registration act 2002
- Land Registration Rules 2003 SI 2003 No.1417
- Protection from Eviction Act 1977
- Family Law Act 1996
- Administration of Justice Act 1970
- Housing Act 1988
Judicial evolution
- Williams & Glyn’s Bank Ltd v Boland [1980] 2 All ER 408
o Gives spouses in actual occupation interest
- Royal Bank of Scotland v Etridge (No 2) [2001] 4 All ER 449
o Lord nicholls
o Lord Birkenhead – opinion
Individual interests and larger social interests
,The extent of land
- Definition:
o LPA 1925
o Grigsby v Melville
Large detached house split into 2 by vendor
Cellar ran below both properties
Buyer claimed that he had bought the cellar
If you purchase a property/land, what is the extent of your
ownership
o Prima facie, you own everything underneath what you
buy
- Case of Mines (1567) 1 Plowd 310
o Held that the gold and silver at that time under the property belongs to the
crown
- Petroleum act 1988
o Gives crown exclusive right to petrol on your land
- Coal Act
- Treasure act 1996
- Civil Aviation Act 1982
o You also own the air above you
o Prof gray property in thin air (article)
The extent to which you can/can’t have ownership of tangible
property
- Restrictions on land
o Environmental protection act 1990
Must register contaminated land
o Town and country planning act 1990
Planning permission
o Water resources act 1991
Mine water is very damaging
Trusts of land
- Trusts in the family home
- Charitable trusts in land
- Management of property
o Eg a trustee company
Estates in land
- Freehold estate – as close to outright ownership as possible in English law
- Leasehold estate
- Joint freehold / joint lease
Law and equity
- Equitable lease
- Legal lease
Lecture 2 – Estates and interests
,Recap
- Property in thin air – prof gray (good article)
- Lack of formality equity can have a role
- Trusts of land
o Trusts in the family home
o Charitable trusts in land
o Management of property
e.g. a trustee company
- Estates in land
o Freehold estate
As close to outright ownership as possible in English law
o Leasehold estate
o Joint freehold/joint lease
- Law and equity
o Equitable lease
o Legal lease
o It is possible to hold trusts over land
Equity overlap
o A major course focus will be estates in land
These are already familiar from ordinary life: freehold and leasehold
o Law and Equity work together
more on this later in the course
Estates and interests
- what is a legal estate?
o Title (estate ownership)
e.g. fee simple absolute in possession
Freehold
Majority of rights helpful for enforcement
e.g. term of years absolute in possession
Leasehold
Rights time-limited
- What is a legal interest?
o Every relationship to the land which is not an estate
e.g. legal easement
e.g. legal mortgage
o Recognised by the ordinary law – not equity
- Easement as an interest in land
o Dominant tenement (needs the easement eg for access to house)
o Servient tenement (provides the easement e.g. driveway goes through their
land – right of passage)
o ‘Relationship with land’ as opposed to ‘relationships with people’
- Title as a bundle of rights
, o Contains multiple different interests e.g. mortgages, easements, leaseholds,
freeholds
- Before Law of Property Act 1925
o Law designed to further specific interests
e.g. family interests
pre-WW1 majority of people were leaseholders
o Fee tail
Used by aristocrats
Constructed to facilitate the passing of property through the male
heir line to retain estate value
o Life estate
Estate providing for an individual for their entire lives
o Estate pur autre vie
Created to give interest to another
Associated with helping members of the family
- Simplification of estates
o Law of Property Act 1925, s.1(1)
Only estates now existing are fee simple absolute in possession &
term of years absolute in possession.
o Law of Property Act 1925, s.1(3)
Old estates continue to be recognised by Equity
- Fee simple absolute in possession
o ‘absolute’ capacity of continuing indefinitely
- Freehold v leasehold estates
o Only estates now existing are fee simple absolute in possession & term of
years absolute in possession
Core summary
- Used to be a wider range of legal estate
o Some continue to half-exist in equity
- Now there is just freehold and leasehold
o Ownership rights
- Legal interests relate to land (not arrangements with people)
- Estates give ownership interests,
Leases
- Sparkes, ‘Certainty of Leasehold Terms’(1993) 109 L.Q.R. 93
o Leases must be for a certain term (know when the lease started, how long
they will, and when they will end)
o Allows smooth and predictable transactions for business
- Harwood, ‘Leases: are they still not really real?’ (2000) Legal Studies 503
o Worth reading
o Conceptualisation of the lease by the legislature and text-book writers
o Dixon v Harwood two opposing views from their articles
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