Most broadly and concisely, property in the legal sense refers to the rights of people in or over certain objects or things.
These informal property rights are non-codified or documented, but recognized among local residents to varying degrees.
In capitalist societies with market economies, much of property is owned privately by persons or associations and not the government.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Wilson undertook a survey of the philosophical grounds of American property law in 1790 and 1791.
"[6] He also indicates that "the primary and principal object in the institution of government... was... to acquire a new security for the possession or the recovery of those rights".
From this simple reasoning he is able to present the conclusion that exclusive, as opposed to communal property, is to be preferred.
Wilson does, however, give a survey of communal property arrangements in history, not only in colonial Virginia but also ancient Sparta.
[1] William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, wrote that the essential core of property is the right to exclude.
[1] The "bundle of rights" view was prominent in academia in the 20th century and remains influential today in American law.
More minor property rights may be created by contract, as in the case of easements, covenants, and equitable servitudes.
The concept of possession developed from a legal system whose principal concern was to avoid civil disorder.
The most common method of acquiring an interest in property is as the result of a consensual transaction with the previous owner, for example, a sale, a gift, or through inheritance.
Dispositions by will may also be regarded as consensual transactions, since the effect of a will is to provide for the distribution of the deceased person's property to nominated beneficiaries.
For example, this occurs when a person dies intestate, goes bankrupt, or has the property taken in execution of a court judgment.
Eminent domain requires the state to "justly compensate" the property owner for the acquisition of their land.
Eminent domain also consists of enabling the state to condemn certain real estate construction and development rights for various reasons.
One must meet location specific regulatory standards and building codes in order to construct on property.
KELO V. NEW LONDON (04-108) 545 U.S. 469 (2005) was a pivotal case that increased the scope of the eminent domain power of the state.
Consequently, reformers have emphasised the need to assess residential tenancy laws in terms of protection they provide to tenants.
But the United States does have stipulations surrounding tribal land owned by the indigenous Native Americans.
All western legal systems allow for a number of different forms of group ownership of property.
In tenancy by the entirety, each owner of the property has an undivided interest in it along with full and complete ownership.
If the couple divorces and goes to court, a judge is granted wide discretion on how to divide the share interests of the property in common-law jurisdictions.
Corporations are legal non-human entities that are entitled to property rights just as an individual human is.
However, a corporation isn't a single human, it is the collective will of a group of people who provide a service or build a good.
They were created under general incorporation statutes that allow such fictitious legal persons to have property rights.
In capitalist market economies, the state largely serves as a mediator that facilitates and enforces private property laws.
"Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it – when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., – in short, when it is used by us" (Marx).
[22] However, it is important to note that many Marxist–Leninist societies such as China and the dissolved Soviet Union have forms of private property laws.
A fifth agency, the Department of Defense (excluding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), administers 8.8 million acres in the United States (as of September 30, 2017), consisting of military bases, training ranges, and more.