11.1 Meaning and Subject Matter of Ownership

Ownership is the apex right in the law of property: the fullest juridical relation a person can have with a thing. Possession is a fact, ownership is a right; possession is the body, ownership (in the jurists' old image) the soul. This unit completes the jurisprudential trilogy of property relations — property (Unit 8), possession (Unit 10), ownership — and hands its concepts over to Property Law (LAW 403), where they are tested against Nepali land statutes, registration practice and case law. Definitions: Austin: ownership is "a right, unlimited in point of disposition, and unlimited in point of duration, over a determinate thing" — the maximal right of mastery. Salmond: ownership denotes "the entirety of the powers of use and disposal which the law allows over a thing" — the residue of all rights after lesser rights (leases, easements, mortgages) are carved out of it. Digest of Justinian: ownership (dominium) is the full right over a corporeal thing, conventionally decomposed into usus (the right to use), usus fructus (the right to the fruits and income) and abusus (the right to consume, destroy or transfer) — the triad that maps onto the modern bundle of rights. Subject matter of ownership: corporeal things (land, goods, animals) and incorporeal objects (copyright, debts, goodwill, shares) — law, not nature, decides what is ownable (Unit…