Part of the state series of articles.
Summary
- Commonwealth property is held through competing claims between the land, the public and the steward, which are weighed in court and cannot be traded.
- In this country, land owns itself, and its claim is put by an advocate independent from both the public and the steward.
- The advocate may object to damaging use or neglect of a place but cannot claim revenue, which belongs to the public as ground rent, betterment and resource royalties.
- As such, the land’s claim provides a foundation under the other claims that does not weaken with time.
Read more: Property and Titles
Property in the Commonwealth operates through competing claims between three agents rather than binary legal ownership. In this framework, the public and steward represent the community and the person who lives or works on the land respectively. The land is more unusual here, and has a legal metaphysical personality that grants physical places rights and ownership over itself. As such, its interests have to be put in court by an advocate separate from the other two. This concept is known as the land sovereign.
No claim can be completely diminished, and instead fluctuates with time. The legal character of the land sovereign remains fairly static, since a steward’s position may change through years of occupation, labour invested, improvements made, family connection and so on. Similarly, abandonment, the needs of neighbours and public investment strengthens the claim of the public. These claims can grow to be nearly incontestable, but they remain essential to the legal conception of land and so are never completely relinquished.
The sovereign itself has a limited but stable claim, and should not be understood as a stand-in for environmentalism or preservation. In the Commonwealth conception, land can be improved, respected, undermined or assaulted. The value of that opinion, and its legal interpretation, is largely based on the history and utility of the land, as well as its surrounding context. In this sense, farmland can be interpreted to desire its continued use as farmland, or in support of a new garden, or architecture. So while it is closely associated with protection of nature, it is not simple environmentalism by another name.