PROPERTY RIGHTS LEGAL PERSPECTIVE
Atty. Erwin L. Tiamson
Traditional Concepts and Definitions
•This term is often used to signify any valuable right or
interest protected by law and the subject matter or things in
which rights or interest exists it is thus a creation of law, and is
all its forms is a creature of the law.
•Property rights are the rules provided by law that determine
who gets or do what and who must compensate whom if
damages occur.
•Property means the right which a person has in relation to
something as distinguished from the thing itself.
Traditional Concepts and Definitions
• It is the right of an individual to dominion over such things
as permitted by the state such as right of possession, user,
enjoyment, and disposition.
•Not the Object, the Thing or the RES but the juridical tie by
virtue of which, a person has the exclusive power to receive or
obtain all the benefits from a thing, except those prohibited or
restricted by law or the rights of others
•However, the property itself, as a thing, could have a distinct
and legal meaning.
Sources of Property Rights
Property rights, from a purely legal sense, are established by
the State through:
• Statues
•“Legal Precedents” interpreting the laws.
•Executive Implementation of the laws
•Individuals through contracts and other binding agreements
•Customs and Traditions recognized by the law
Identifying Property Rights
•In modern society and legal system, property includes
practically all valuable rights and is indicative of wide range
of interest which a person can have in either real or
personal, corporeal or incorporeal, future or existing,
divisible and indivisible, private or public property and
other rights.
•Includes the right to practice the profession, pursue
lawful business, carry an occupation, right to labor and
contract employment, right to terminate such employment,
etc.
Identifying Property Rights
•Whether they are formal or informal, whether they
apply to tangible or intangible assets, property rights
consist of multiple characteristics often referred to by
lawyers as a bundle of sticks, each of which
represents a different aspect of property ownership.
•These ownership characteristics include the right to
use and enjoy, the right to exclude others, the right to
transfer an asset to others and the right to just
compensation, if the property is taken by the state in
the exercise of its right of eminent domain.
Property as Bundle of Rights
•Blackstone's characterization - sole and despotic dominion
in total exclusion of the right of any other individual.
•Possibilities for a holder to act, reasonably undisturbed by
other people.
•In reality, it is often subject to limitations such as the general
limitations for the benefit of the state, those by law by contract
or last will by the owner himself and those arising from
conflicts with other similar rights.
Property as Bundle of Rights
The bundle of rights is a common way to explain the
complexities of property ownership between the title
owner, third parties and the state.
•Property rights are really relational and may vary
according to actors or property rights holders
exercising their particular rights.
•Each individual is located within a matrix of
property relationships with other property holders,
including the state.
Property as Bundle of Rights
PROPERTY RIGHTS IS RELATIONAL
• A land owner can legally refuse to sell his land to his
neighbor or tenants but not to the state under a valid
exercise of the power of eminent domain such as when
his land is covered by agrarian reform laws.
• Ordinarily prohibit his neighbor from entering his
land by his right to exclude but not when the intrusion is
necessary to avert an imminent danger or “acts of
necessity. The owner is obliged by law to tolerate the
act.
Property as Bundle of Rights
• In Great Britain the right of land owner to exclude is
greatly diminished by the Countryside and Rights of Way
Act of 2000 (CRoW) that gives right to walkers to cross
private lands.
•The rights emerged as an ethical obligation on the part of
both the landowner – to allow access – and the visitor – to
not disturb the landowner’s privacy or damage his land.
Case in Point – Sta. Rosa Realty vs. Court of Appeals
DAR issue CARP Coverage
State Enacts Agrarian Reform
DENR and Local Government
Presented Evidence Land is
Watershed & zoned as Park
Court Issue Eviction
Land Owner Files Ejectment in
Court
Tenants Petition DAR for CARP
Coverage
RIGHT TO EXCLUDE
RIGHT OF EMINENT
DOMAIN
RIGHT OF AGRARIAN
REFORM BENEFICIARY
STATE/LOCAL
RESTRICTION AS TO THE
USE OF THE PROPERTY
Supreme Court Upheld
DAR’s Coverage
COMPENSATION TO THE OWNER
BY THE STATE
Legal Definition of Thing
Defining the physical and legal attribute of the “thing” is
also important in understanding property relations because
of its effect on the rights of the property holder.
• Physical Attributes of things is different from its legal
attributes.
• The term “forest” or “watershed” in law for instance is
descriptive of the legal nature or status of the land and not
of its physical character.
•Source of conflicts, i.e. Boracay Island
Conclusion
•The volume of the laws that are being enacted and the
complex structure and ambiguities in its language, often leads
to the multiple interpretation and unpredictable application of
property relations.
•The inclusion or exclusion of what can be considered as
property rights, are mostly defined by legal precedents, the
interpretation of the courts of the law with respect to a
particular set of facts.
•Property owners can never be fully certain if their actions or
freedom to act is legitimate or within the bounds of the law,
resolution though litigation in court.
Conclusion
•Courts however are designed to be reactive enforcers.
Courts intervention to conflict in property relations
begins only once another party has initiated legal
proceedings. The courts do not initiate proceedings
•As an effect, defining property rights are often left in
the hands of the legal practitioners when drafting
contracts and agreements between property holders or
when partitioning the bundle of sticks, with the courts
entering the fray only when conflict arises out of the said
partitions or rebundling of rights
Thank you!