Anglo-American Land Law: Diverging Developments from a Shared History - Part III: British and American Real Property Law and Practice - A Contemporary Comparison

Abstract

This series of three articles describes the history of land law shared by the British and American legal systems, and how and why these legal traditions have diverged from each other in modern times.

This Article - part 3 in this series - provides a snapshot of the principal points of land law and conveyancing in each country.

Several legal events in the twentieth century have shaped modern British and American real property law and practice. Important British statutory reforms of the early twentieth century contrast with ineffective American attempts at property law reform during the same time period. The British changes were uniform, systemic, and systematic, while the American changes were evolutionary, uneven, occasionally irrational, but nevertheless significant. This Article contains a description of the most important of these differences and some possible explanations for their occurrence. Despite the differences in property law and practice, lawyers from both jurisdictions still share a similar technical vocabulary.

The intent of this Article is to enlighten each country's property lawyers about the practices of their colleagues across the Atlantic (in anticipation of the American Bar Association Annual Meeting in London, England, in August 2000).

Keywords: Legal history, real property, land law, common law, English property rights, American real property law, Restatement of the Law of Property, tenures and estates, conveyancing, legal reform