2 ms·
The traditional U.S. philosophy on property tends to be skeptical of these kinds of restrictions, and a number of them aren't enforceable, though it's gotten le
by mjn 14y ago
The traditional U.S. philosophy on property tends to be skeptical of these kinds of restrictions, and a number of them aren't enforceable, though it's gotten less skeptical lately (hence the emergence of things like homeowners' associations).
European property law was full of encumbrances on property: you could own all sorts of sub-holds and fiefdoms and whatnot. Much of that was thrown out in early U.S. law, in favor of a principle that each plot of land has one owner, who owns it fully in the clear, subject only to the superior sovereignty of the governments with jurisdiction. And then that person can sell the land fully, or rent it, but can't sell the complex kinds of partial ownership and sub-ownerships that were common in the UK. That persisted for a while, until contract law reinvented some of them a century or two later.