This paper investigates the concept of the commons in the context of the emergence of convenience-based delivery drone networks around the world. It contends that the drone-facilitated commodification of our skies constitutes a modern form of enclosure, facilitated by a legal architecture that centres around questions of ownership. Additionally, and consistent with more traditional land-grabs, expropriation of the sky is supported by its characterisation as a vacant and unused resource. Drawing on historical, doctrinal, and socio-legal perspectives, this paper explores the powerful, countervailing implications of identifying this strategy, and reconceptualising the sky as a commons – for law, governance, and society.

Following the proclamation of constitutionalism on 23 July 1908, villagers throughout the Ottoman Empire occupied and reclaimed çiftlik (plantation) lands from which they had previously been dispossessed. This article approaches the Ottoman 1908 Revolution as part of the “global wave of constitutional revolutions” by shifting the historiographical focus of the 1908 revolution from urban to agrarian spaces. It investigates a series of land occupations that emerged across the Ottoman çiftlik geography, conceptualizing them as the “constitutionalism of the dispossessed.” I argue that this constitutionalism of the dispossessed was a response to what I call the “order of dispossession” that emerged in the late nineteenth century: a class project of çiftlik owners reacting to global economic, imperial fiscal, and local ecological crises that aimed to subordinate labor to the circuits of global capital. Furthermore, this article discusses the failure of the constitutionalism of the dispossessed in the face of a social counter-revolution by çiftlik owners, which culminated in the codification of imperial property law. It demonstrates that the post-revolutionary government—having been concerned with the credibility of the empire in European credit markets for new loans to sustain the empire in fiscal crisis—desired the restoration of the order that the çiftlik owners insisted upon, and which the circuits of global capital required. This article ultimately offers a fresh and radical history of the Ottoman 1908 revolution and counter-revolution, suggesting a novel perspective to understand the modes of protest of the dispossessed in response to the imperatives of global capital.

Possession of a chattel is sufficient to create a title to it. This article considers the nature and justification of these titles. It argues that popular justifications of possessory title fall short and offers a more appealing justification. The article then seeks to resolve, in light of that justification, three ongoing doctrinal controversies about a possessory title’s nature: whether it continues to exist after possession of the chattel is lost; whether it is transferable; and whether it includes a right that others not interfere with a possessor’s use of the chattel.

The South African case, Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution and Others v Ingonyama Trust and Others (CASAC) concerned a dispute between customary law communities and the Ingonyama Trust (the Trust). The Trust, which holds the land for the benefit and welfare of its communities sought to unilaterally convert customary land tenure to common law leaseholds. The communities successfully challenged this decision before the Kwazulu-Natal High Court and, in this case note, I appraise the court’s reasoning. Although the order was progressive, there remained space within its reasoning to affirm customary law tenure on its own accord. Instead, the CASAC court restrained the development of customary law by employing other sources of South African law – including statutory law, the common law and the Constitution – to explain and give meaning to customary law land rights. Courts must exercise caution in engaging the plurality of land tenure in post-colonial contexts: although well-intentioned, the judicial reasoning in CASAC marginalized the application and development of customary land law.

Tokens can serve as containers for rights, thereby facilitating the transfer of such rights. On tokenisation platforms, especially in the context of decentralised finance (DeFi), it is assumed that when a token containing a right is transferred, the right itself is transferred as well. This paper uses the “token container model” as a conceptual framework to examine whether European private law frameworks on transfers of rights are compatible with such token-based transfers. Specifically, it explores the rules on the transfer of rights in movables, the rules on the transfer of rights in immovables, and the rules on assignment of claims. This analysis reveals substantial legal obstacles to the use of tokens in transferring absolute rights or claims.

Cases across the common law world have recognised digital assets as property, but the question of how such assets should be protected against interferences remains contested. At present, the “chattel torts” (conversion, trespass and reversionary injury) do not cover digital assets, leaving a gap in protection in respect of digital assets. There have been suggestions that the tort of conversion should be extended to cover digital assets, but this article argues that this extension would be undesirable for two reasons. First, there are fundamental differences between physical and digital assets, meaning that the concepts and thresholds used in the chattel tort context generate uncertain results (and create substantial risks of incorrect results) in the digital asset context. Second, the rules governing the chattel torts are unsatisfactory and contain many negative characteristics, and so extending the chattel torts to digital assets would replicate the same negative characteristics in the digital asset context.

This special issue aims to unravel the deeply intertwined dialectics between property and sharing. We do so by examining the paradoxes thrown up as legal forms of property interact with the emergent economic activity of sharing, and investigating how these may be resolved by designing institutional frameworks to better align their values. These paradoxes are sometimes productive, driving property and sharing forward to produce new configurations of use and privilege; sometimes disruptive, as sharing throws new light on how property orders economic and social relations by pushing against the boundaries of established property forms. But they are always revealing.

How does the understanding of law among individuals involved in the crypto phenomenon originate, and how does it impact the trajectory of this innovation? This article examines the legal consciousness of crypto industry participants and state actors, exploring their ideologies on law, property and innovation through extensive document and archival research. It highlights the interplay between the crypto industry’s perception of crypto-assets’ possessing dynamic and self-regulating qualities beyond traditional legal boundaries and the increasing willingness of state actors, despite their reservations, to utilise law as a flexible tool to embrace innovation and promote economic competitiveness. By employing Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis, this article contextualises such legal consciousness within the financial system and contends that collective legal consciousness and associated behavioural dynamics substantially shape state–industry interactions, with the potential to destabilise the financial system. This article sheds light on the challenges presented by crypto-assets and the intricate interplay between law and technological advancements.

This article explores how the risk structure currently adopted by the sharing economy, in particular the highly formalised and contrived systems of contract constructed by platforms, is largely constituted by the rules of property law. This effectively ties sharing activities to the old model of private property and its accompanying boundaries of privatised risk and value and undermines the efforts of collaboration to supersede those boundaries through peer-to-peer co-production of value. This article aims towards presenting an alternative model of risk distribution for the sharing economy that is more reflective of its collaborative nature. To this end, I will draw on ideas from commons and mutualism and propose the possibility of creative use of contracts to stipulate positive duties and obligations between collaborative partners as a device to construct a collective and/or mutual risk system.

This article evaluates statutory provisions and case law regarding a mortgagee's rights to exercise its statutory power of sale over the matrimonial home in Nigeria. It reveals that no statute protects the rights of family members, particularly wives and children, in the mortgaged home. The mortgagee must grapple with the reality of ownership, as wives often resort to litigation to set aside sales, on the ground that they are joint owners with their husbands. Ironically, some Supreme Court decisions, while protecting the interests of other family members (contrary to the established principles of property law), have tended to ignore the mortgagee's power of sale over the mortgaged matrimonial home, thus making it unattractive to lending institutions as collateral. This article recommends that all parties’ interests should be set out in a legal framework, as in England, where a non-owning spouse's right of occupation must be registered with the land registry.