The Land Laws

As the settler state of Canada expanded into Indigenous lands, two traditions clashed in a bruising series of asymmetrical encounters over land use and ownership. One site of conflict was Kahnawà:ke. The Laws and the Land delineates the establishment of a settler colonial relationship from early contact ways of sharing land; land practices under Kahnawà:ke law; and ultimately the Canadian invasion in the guise of the Indian Act, private property, and coercive pressure to assimilate. This meticulously researched book is connected to larger issues of human relations with environments, communal and individual ways of relating to land, legal pluralism, historical racism and inequality, and Indigenous resurgence.

In Lands, Laws, and Gods, Daniel Gargola examines the formulation and implementation of laws regulating the use of public lands, including the establishment of colonies, in Republican Rome (509-27 B.C.). During this period of territorial expansion, the Romans developed the basic legal forms by which they governed captured land, and they constructed the processes and ceremonies by which those forms were translated into practice. Using agrarian law as a case study and focusing especially on rituals that both validated and gave structure to the administrative process, Gargola demonstrates the fundamental connections between religion, law, and government. Essential acts in the administration of agrarian legislation, such as the transfer of land from one party to another and the granting of contracts for public works, depended upon ritual formulas and gestures, often within the context of religious ceremonies. By recovering these formulas and their larger significance, Gargola reconstructs an important dimension of Roman life. Originally published in 1995. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

"Land Law Reform examines the wide-spread efforts to reform land law in developing countries and countries in transition, drawing in particular upon the experience of the World Bank and the Rural Development Institute. The book considers the role of land law reform in the development process and analyzes how the World Bank has sought to support these legal changes in client countries. It reviews the experience with reform of laws affecting land access and rights in achieving gender equity, identifies opportunities for reinforcing environmentally sustainable development through land law reform, and examines from both growth and poverty alleviation perspectives the effectiveness of reforms to formalize property rights and liberalize land markets. The concluding chapter recommends some basic priorities for land law reforms. John W. Bruce is a senior counsel in the Legal Vice-Presidency of the World Bank, and a former director of the Land Tenure Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published extensively on land law and land policy in developing countries. Renee Giovarelli, David Bledsoe, Leonard Rolfes, and Robert Mitchell are staff attorneys with the Rural Development Institute of Seattle, Washington, a nonprofit organization that promotes and advises on land-related policy and legal reform in developing and transition countries. All have done fieldwork and advised extensively on land law reform and have published widely on this topic."

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of land law for Arab Palestinians under Israeli law. Land is one of the core resources of human existence, development and activity. Therefore, it is also a key basis of political power and of social and economic status. Land regimes and planning regulations play a dynamic role in deciding how competing claims over resources will be resolved. According to legal geography, spatial ordering impacts legal regimes; whilst legal rules form social and human space. Through the lenses of international law, colonisation and legal geography, the book examines the land regime in Israel. More specifically, it endeavours to understand the spatial strategies adopted by Israel to organise the entire territorial expanse of the country as Jewish, while also excluding Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of East Jerusalem from the landscape. The book then details how the systematic nature and processes of marginalisation are mapped out across the civil, political and socio-economic landscape. This monograph will be of interest to international legal theorists, legal geographers, land lawyers and human rights practitioners and students; as well as to international scholars, NGOs and others focusing on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

When it comes to urban planning, to what extent and under what conditions should the community’s interest prevail over the rights of private property owners? Public Interest, Private Property addresses this question at a time when pollution, urban sprawl, and condo booms are forcing municipal governments to adopt prescriptive laws and regulations. Case studies focus on spheres in which public values and private property rights collide – expropriation law, natural resources regulation, green development, and water provision – laying the groundwork for more active debates on the issues currently shaping our cities.