<p>In terms of controlling principles, personal property in English law and moveable property in Scotland are markedly different. This new work presents the English position on the basis that there is an “overarching structure” to be understood as a system. This approach, the back cover blurb suggests, “enables readers to see common themes and issues and to make otherwise impossible generalisations across different contexts about the nature of the concepts English law applies.”</p>
<p>Issues of principle and structure aside, the English equivalent is more extensive in scope than Scottish moveable property. This is because development through Chancery produced a wider and more open concept of proprietary rights than the relatively self-contained Civilian model allows. The late Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, in one of his many acutely apposite observations, applied to Scottish property law Professor Barry Nicholas's “unbridgeable division” description of the Romanist distinction between real and personal rights. This controlling principle of Scots law is, of course, not an article of faith of English property – that critical difference being the reason for the <italic>Burnett</italic> litigation going to the Lords to correct the beneficial interest bridging of the division which <italic>Sharp</italic> signalled. The book under review shows how different the northern and southern mainland British legal systems are in this area.</p>
<p>The ordering of the book's fifteen chapter titles reflects the author's system. A very full introductory chapter lays the foundations of an approach of searching analysis; the tenor tends to be pedagogic, but productively so in terms of clear and accessible exposition. The first chapter is followed by five chapters concerned with different aspects of derivative acquisition, two on protection and four on different forms of security. A chapter on bailment and attornment, fitted between protection and security, shows the difficulty of a systematic structure in a system developed by long historical continuity with greater emphasis on responding to need than adherence to a controlling (and limiting) body of principle. In its treatment of the subject matter the work is consistent in maintaining an approach of including coverage of only what is seen as proprietary. To illustrate, the chapter on defective transfer considers the possible scenarios of void transfer, transfer producing a trust and voidable transfer but – because it is a personal obligation – not the possibility of effective...</p>
