The Right to Property Essay Example for Free

The Right to Property Essay Every person in this worls has the right to own a property according to availability of the same. This ownership is founded on his right to live and survive. However, the ownership of a property is subject to certain things that may be out of control of the person. These pertains to the inherent right of the government to act on every matter relating to its subjects. Based on principles and concepts, the ownership of property is very intricate as it involves complicated processes in the political system. Different countries do not have the same rules relating to property rights. As such, one rule may not be applicable to other people. However, no matter how complicated the processes may be, each individual with respect to his morals, nature, needs and other important factors may basically hamper the inherent right of every government to exercise its power. It is true that the government has the power govern the people based on the need of governmental existence, however, these right has its limitations. As every person is also entitled to his right to live a good life, these natural rights actually protect a persons property from any intervention from the government no matter what kind of intervention it may be. Ownership comprises the right to possess, the right to use, the right to manage, the right to the income of the thing, the right to the capital, the right to security, rights or incidents of transmissibility and absence of terms, the prohibition of harmful use, liability to execution, and the incident of residuarity. All these things may simply be understood on the right of every person to enjoy his property, a right to own or possess the same, the right to even destroy it and the right to exclude other people from its use in line with applicable laws. This is in line with the interplay of fact of ownership by a person and the right of the government to subject every person under the rule of law. The right to possess means the right to be put in exclusive control of a thing and enjoy the thing itself according to his will including the right to remain in control. It also include the claim that others should not without permission, interfer the exercise of ownership. The right or liberty to use at ones discretion has rightly been recognized as a cardinal feature of ownership and the fact that, as we shall see, certain limitations also occur. There is a need to follow this limitation in order to make the society harmonious. If we fail to do the same, the use of property without fundamental laws to follow will cause so much trouble in the political system. The right to manage is the right to decide how and by whom the thing owned shall be used. This decision shall rest from the discretion of the owner of the property. As such, he has the right to transfer or let other person use his own property. We should know that ownership has never been absolute. It has been subject to incidents of ownership as the prohibition of harmful use, liability to execution for debt, to taxation and to expropriation under the exercise of the inherent right of the government on eminent domain through public authority. Emphasis on the social aspect of ownership has, however, varied from age to age. Those sacred and inviolable rights, which, according to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, no one could be forced to cede except for public necessity have become, in French law for instance, liable to expropriation on grounds of public utility and subject to a general doctrine forbididng abuse. According to the liberal conception of ownership, there is a sharp distinction between 3 government and ownership. Though, in a loose sense, the said has the right to exercise the power of eminent domain over at least theland comprising its territory, this does not carry with it rights to possess enjoyment or even to alienate it, so that the sense in which the state is owner is very loose indeed. The interest of the state, according to this conception is confined to power of expropriation and a minimum of restrictive regulation, together with the expectancy of acquiring property as legally vacant or by escheat in some instances (Honore 113). This will give us the idea that the state can only hold a property of a person under the exercise of expropriation and other regulations that the government are required to implement. Another concept that is widely related to ownership and use of private property is socialism. Socialism has led to a revised view of the relation between government and ownership, at leat as regards some important types of property, such as land and business. This will mean, pertaining to practice, that the owners privileges of using and powers of managing a thing a she wishes have been curtailed and that the social interest in the productive use of things has been affirmed by legislation. In the negative, this process has meant that, in the interests of health and comfort, many substances cannot be used at all or can only be used in certain ways. For example, the sale of drugs is automatically controlled as it is harmful to the people, only smokeless fuel may be used in certain areas and garden hoses may not be used at certain periods. Such situations multiplied a thousand fold, have come to seem so natural that we hardly realize that the social interest in the use of things, the conservation of resources and in the details of manufacturing processes in a modern, though it is also a primitive, conception. 4 Now, another thing will be added to explain what has been expounded earlier. Positive control by the state shades into prohibition. The positive duty to exploit ones property in a socially beneficial way, as opposed to the prohibition of a harmful exploitation, has not been generally imposed as its implications fully worked out. It has something to do with the prohibition to use properties that may cause nuisance with other people or anyhting that will do bad things against other persons. A different form of state control is exercised by drawing a distinction between different types of ownership. The difference lies, of course, in the right of government officials to interfere in the management of the former categories and in state regulation of income rights deriving from the property, also in differing rules about alienation. In this way, the sphere of operation of ownership in the liberal sense is narrowed and a form of state participation in management substituted in the remaining sphere. These differences may be seen in the actual interplay of the implementation of property laws. Another form of social control consists in the exercise by officials of the management of things in ther private ownership of the state. Such arrangements present the form but not the substance of ownership in the liberal sense. Management and enjoyment are actually divided and political control, directly or indirectly, is exercised over the allocation of resources and the uses to which the thing owned is put. The nationalized industries in the United Kingdom folow this knid of pattern control. The next social control may be exercised by a restriction on the type of thing that is subject to ownership by persons other than the state, a sin the Russian building lease, where the building is owned by a private individual, the land remaining in state ownership. In effect, this restricts the privileges of the building owner in the general interest. 5 For us to understand the details on how government exercise of power was hampered by the natural rights of man to own different kinds of property, we will illustrate it by giving a concrete example. We will view a scenario that was given by Waldron when for instance a person owns a car. When a person owns a car, he has the legal capacity to use it in a certain way (Waldron 27). But it is true only in some circumstances. The owner of the car is not at liberty to drive it on the footpath or to drive it anywhere at a speed faster than seventy m. p. h. There is no liberty to drive it also without a license from the authorities because that would be illegal. The owner of the car has also the right not to let them use car without permission. However, the use of the car should not be a nuisance to his neighbors or should be in a good condition. As such, he may be liable to damages if it rolls into his neighbors fence. We should remember that these rights, liberties and duties are the basic stuff of ownership. But legal relations can be changed. If the person owns a car, he is in a position to change them. He has the power to sell it or give it to somebody else, in which case all the legal relations change. He has to take on the duties and limited rights of a non-owner of the car and someone else take son the rights, liberties, duties and powers of ownership. Or perhaps he lends or hires the car, that invokes a temporary and less extensive change in legal realtions. He can even bequeath the car in his will and testament so that someone else will take over his property rights when he dies. These are his powers to change his leagl situations or relations and that of others if he is the owner of the car. Finally, she may also, in certain circumstances, have his own legal position altered in relation to the car for instance, he is liable to have the car seized in execution of a judgment summons for debt.