In this concise history of expropriation of land for the common
good in Europe and North America from medieval times to 1800, Susan
Reynolds contextualizes the history of an important legal doctrine
regarding the relationship between government and the institution
of private property.
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.