Before Eminent Domain
Toward a History of Expropriation of Land for the Common Good
Susan Reynolds
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 03/2010
Pages: 192
Subject: Law, History
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9780807895863
DESCRIPTION
Before Eminent Domain concentrates on western Europe and the English colonies in America. As Reynolds argues, expropriation was a common legal practice in many societies in which individuals had rights to land. It was generally accepted that land could be taken from them, with compensation, when the community, however defined, needed it. She cites examples of the practice since the early Middle Ages in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and from the seventeenth century in America.
Reynolds concludes with a discussion of past and present ideas and assumptions about community, individual rights, and individual property that underlie the practice of expropriation but have been largely ignored by historians of both political and legal thought.