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Scots property law governs the rules relating to property found in the legal jurisdiction of Scotland.
In Scots law, the term 'property' does not solely describe land. Instead the term 'a person's property' is used when describing objects or 'things' (in Latin res) that an individual holds a right of ownership in. It is the rights that an individual holds in a 'thing' that are the subject matter of Scots property law.
The terms objects or 'things' is also a wide-ranging definition, and is based on Roman law principles. Objects (or things) can be physical (such as land, a house, a car, a statue or a keyring) or they can also be unseen but still capable of being owned, (e.g. a person can have a right to payment under a contract, a lease in a house, or intellectual property rights in relation to works (s)he produced).[1] While this may appear to encompass a wide range of 'things', they can be classified and sorted according to a legal system's rules. In Scots property law, all 'things' can be classified according to their nature, discussed below, with four classes of property as a result:
- Corporeal heritable property (e.g. land, building, apartment, etc.)
- Incorporeal heritable property (e.g. a lease, a right in a contract for sale of a house, a liferent, etc.)
- Corporeal moveable property (e.g. furniture, car, books, etc.)
- Incorporeal moveable property (e.g. intellectual property rights, rights of payment arising from contract or delict, etc.)
Each class of property has rules concerning the real rights (or rights in rem) an individual may have in that property.
- ^ Badenhorst, PJ, Juanita M. Pienaar, & Hanri Mostert, Silberberg and Schoeman's The Law of Property, 5th ed. (Durban: LexisNexis/Butterworths, 2006), p. 9.