ABSTRACT

When it comes to land law, the Scots and English legal systems are markedly different. The landscape of Scots property law was itself altered dramatically by the coming into force of three pieces of legislation: the Abolition of Feudal Tenure Act 2000, the Title Conditions Act 2003, and the Tenements Act 2004. Property law is the law of ‘things’. People hold rights in ‘things’, e.g. the right of ownership in a house. There are two categories of rights: real rights and personal rights. It should be noted that corporeal moveable property can become heritable by the operation of the doctrine of accession. A further distinction is between heritable and moveable property, which roughly equates to the distinction between land and everything else that is not land. Historically, Scotland had a system of feudal land ownership whereby all land was ultimately held by the Crown. The distinction between freehold and leasehold ownership has no place in the Scottish system.