States of Marketability
States of Marketability
The marketability of real estate could mean different things in different contexts, and nowhere was this more true than in the law, where the idea of marketability raised specific and technical issues pertaining both to the identity of land and to claims of ownership and tenure. Chapter 4 argues that these issues can be traced through the debate over title registration and the broader history of land law reform. In these debates, commercial metaphors were often used to capture what reformers like Robert Wilson and Robert Torrens saw as the essential transformation needed to make real estate a modern commodity. If land could be traded like other commodities--watches, say, or stocks--the property market could finally be made to function like any other market. The question of how best to legally configure marketable property drew in debates on colonial land ownership, in particular the Irish Land Question, and the trustworthiness of new title certificates and the state authority upon which they would be based.
Keywords: title registration, land law reform, Robert Wilson, Robert Torrens, Irish Land Question, title certificates
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
