There is nothing new about legal rules which provide that a person who is in control of land owes a duty of care to entrants thereto. These occupiers’ liability rules are often seen as something primarily to do with tort, but their content and substance are also likely to reveal a good deal about the ‘property policy’ of the legal system in question, in the sense that they will indicate the respective weight and importance attachkd to various kinds of competing claim over land. A legal system containing rules that restrict the circumstances in which those with individual, controlling claims over land owe a duty of care to other persons entering that land would appear to indicate a policy preference for supporting and protecting ‘private property’ claims to land above others. On the other hand, a system which imposes on those controlling land a greater degree of legal responsibility for persons entering thereon may be one based on a policy of recognising, protecting and supporting a range of claims in land beyond those of a narrow, private nature.