8.2 Importance of Property

Why does virtually every legal system devote its largest and oldest body of law to property? Economic foundation and incentives. Security of property underpins production and saving: people invest in what they are assured of keeping. Clear, enforceable property rights internalize benefits and costs, encouraging investment and discouraging overuse. Credit and capital formation. Property is the bedrock of secured credit — mortgages, pledges and hypothecation convert fixed assets into working capital. Where title is undocumented, assets are "dead capital" (Hernando de Soto's celebrated analysis): a house without title cannot be collateral. This is a live issue in Nepal, where historically undocumented informal settlements and the titling campaigns of recent decades illustrate both the problem and the remedy. Personal autonomy and dignity. Property is a precondition of independent life — privacy, a home, freedom from dependence. The personhood theory gives this philosophical depth; constitutional property clauses protect it. Social order and peace. Clear property boundaries prevent violence; possessory and title remedies substitute courts for self-help. "Property is the guardian of the other rights" — free speech is worth little without a press one owns. State revenue and planning. Property taxation, land-use regulation, land reform and acquisition for public purposes all presuppose the institution of property — and the Constitution's authorization of acquisition in the public interest with compensation, land reform and…