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Law, Emotion and Property Relations

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Abstract

Emotion is inherent in our everyday use and ownership of property. It may drive neighbours to litigate a boundary dispute in the courts, or a first-time buyer to purchase a home that significantly exceeds her budget. It can even be seen in the delight that a child experiences when she is given a gift for her birthday. Despite this, there is relatively little scholarship on the connection between law, emotions and property theory, and this article aims to address that gap in the knowledge. Drawing on the common law tradition, it analyses different social, spatial, and material conceptions of property to explain how emotion may affect property relations, as well as the way that property may cause a person to experience particular feelings, such as anger, sadness, happiness, frustration, envy and jealousy. It argues that emotion and property law cannot be separated easily, and instead, they should be regarded as being mutually constitutive and in an ongoing dialectical relationship. For that reason, this article concludes that more attention must be given to the role of emotion in shaping property relations by lawyers, academics, and policymakers, and how this can be reflected in the design and implementation of law.

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Notes

  1. Sedleigh-Denfield v O’Callaghan [1940] AC 880.

  2. (1893) 1 Ch 316.

  3. [1936] 2 KB 468.

  4. Street v Mountford [1985] UKHL 4.

  5. Budd-Scott v Daniell (1902) 2 KB 351.

  6. In English law, pets are considered to be items of personal property.

  7. Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.

  8. s. 283 Insolvency Act 1986.

  9. Vneshprombank LLC v Bedzhamov & Ors [2019] EWCA Civ 1992.

  10. Polly Peck International Plc v Nadir (No.2) [1992] EWCA Civ 3.

  11. Royal Bank of Scotland plc v Etridge (No. 2) [2002] UKHL 44.

  12. The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act applies to all new and periodic tenancy agreements, with a term of less than 7 years.

  13. Protection of Children Act 1978.

  14. In the UK, most benefits are paid as an allowance or a tax credit. However, in certain circumstances, the state may control how these funds are spent, such as through the provision of free school meals, or the direct payment of Local Housing Allowance to landlords under r 95–96 Housing Benefit Regulations 2006.

  15. In 2020, an anonymous claimant succeeded in arguing in York County Court that a lettings agent’s policy of ‘No DSS tenants’ was indirectly discriminatory on the basis of sex and disability (Peaker 2020). She cited evidence that disabled households were almost three times as likely to rely on housing benefit as non-disabled households, while significantly more female-led households claimed government support than men. Despite this, the English Private Landlord Survey found that 44% of landlords were unwilling to let property to tenants claiming housing benefit in 2021 (DLUHC 2022: 33).

  16. s. 3(3B) Equal Status Act 2000–2015.

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  1. University of Law, 2 Bunhill Road, London, EC1Y 8HQ, UK

    Abigail Jackson

  2. Faculty of Business and Law, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK

    Abigail Jackson

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Jackson, A. Law, Emotion and Property Relations. Liverpool Law Rev (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10991-024-09365-x

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