First Possession Beyond the Law: Adults' and Young Children's Intuitions About Ownership
12 Pages Posted: 15 Mar 2009
Date Written: March 14, 2009
Abstract
In property law, the first possessor of an object has more right to it than all others, and prior possessors have more rights than subsequent possessors. This Article reviews recent research suggesting these principles are implicit in adults' and young children's reasoning about ownership. To explain this correspondence between law and psychology, we propose that people's ownership reasoning is guided by the assumption that the first person known to possess an object is its owner.
Keywords: psychology, cognitive development, property law, first possession, ownership
JEL Classification: K1, K11
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Friedman, Ori and Neary, Karen, First Possession Beyond the Law: Adults' and Young Children's Intuitions About Ownership (March 14, 2009). Tulane Law Review, Vol. 83, 2009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1359453
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