ABSTRACT
The 'law of real property' (or land law) is concerned with land, rights in or over land, and the processes whereby those rights and interests are created and transferred. Generally, and with some necessary simplification for the purposes of exposition, 'proprietary rights' fall into two categories: estates in land and interests in land. Historically, the distinction between legal and equitable rights was based on the type of court in which a claimant might obtain a remedy against a defendant for the unlawful denial of the claimant's right over the defendant's land. If electronic, paperless conveyancing were ever to be introduced, it could make the distinction between legal and equitable property rights largely redundant, or certainly less significant. The ability to 'split' ownership is a distinctive feature of the English legal system and other common law jurisdictions, and has many practical applications.
