ABSTRACT
It could be argued that what connects law to landscape depends upon what one means by landscape. It could alternatively be argued that what one means by landscape derives from one's conception of law. In the modern German derived sense of landscape, physical things are aggregated primarily within the space of a mappable region. Legal statues concerning landscape scenery thus also tend to involve the rights of certain property owners to a view, which can have considerable value on the real estate market. The English landscape garden, with its extensive pastoral parklands dotted with mansion and follies in the Palladian style, became emblematic of the ideals of civic humanism. The two forms of landscape, the one rooted in property and aesthetics, and the other rooted in custom and the commons, can coexist. The hidden power of custom and customary law, nevertheless, still has a significant effect in constituting and shaping a subaltern, unofficial, landscape as polity and place.
