2 Concept of Ownership

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.The characteristics of full ownership (learn as a five-point anatomy):1. Indefiniteness of duration — ownership endures until the owner parts with it; it does not expire by mere lapse of time (contrast: lease, patent, copyright);2. Residuary character — when lesser interests carved from it expire (lease ends, easement lapses), they fall back into ownership, like streams returning to the source; ownership is what remains when every lesser right is accounted for;3. Elasticity — the same idea viewed dynamically: ownership expands and contracts as lesser rights are created and extinguished;4. Right in rem — good against the whole world, not merely against a promisor;5. Presumption of content — the…