Samuel Tyrer, ‘A New Theorisation of “Home” as a Thing in Property’

ABSTRACT
Laws are impacting on home in ways that undermine that experience for individuals. The implications of this are yet to be fully unpacked from a property law theory perspective. This article contributes here by theorising that laws, in impacting home, are simultaneously distributing that experience, to a greater or lesser extent, or not at all when they ought to be. To recognise this significant point-that laws are distributing home – is really to recognise that home, the experience, is a thing that is capable of being the subject matter of property. Further, it is a thing distributable by property. Theorising home in the way presented herein is not mainstream, but it is rational and justifiable. The theorisation is integral to the legitimacy of private property, based on personhood and human flourishing. It also offers a new framework for future legal scholarship to consider home – the experience – in property distributive terms. That is, to consider how laws distribute more or less of home to particular groups, thereby extending beyond a pure legal analysis of how laws impart on home.

Tyrer, Samuel, A New Theorisation of ‘Home’ as a Thing in Property, (2022) 49(2) University of Western Australia Law Review 190.

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