THE LAW OF PERSONAL PROPERTY Michael Bridge, F.B.A., Cassel Professor of Commercial Law, London School of Economics, Professor of Law, National University of Singapore, Louise Gullifer, Professor of Commercial Law, University of Oxford, Gerard McMeel, Professor of Commercial Law, University of Manchester, and Sarah Worthington, Q.C. (Hon.), F.B.A., Downing Professor of the Laws of England, University of Cambridge. Sweet and Maxwell, London (2013) cxxxvi and 1037 pp., plus 79 pp. Index. Hardback £265.

With any book on property law, the first question to ask is what the authors mean by the word “property”. In the case of personal property’s big brother, real property, so-called because a title-holder who is dispossessed can obtain an order from the court that he be put back in the possession of the land itself (the res), the word “property” is used to denote a right capable of binding third parties. Thus, a lease of land is a property right because it has the potential to bind persons to whom the landlord transfers the reversion. Whether the right is assignable is not determinative. Thus, a non-assignable lease of land is just as much a property right as is a lease without such a restriction. By the same token, a licence to use land does not become a property right merely because it is assignable. It is not a property right because of its lack of third-party effect.

One would have thought the same thinking applied in the law of personal property, the label “personal” merely denoting that, differently from real property, a person dispossessed of a thing, for example a book or a jewel, could not originally obtain at common law (the position was always different in equity, and, since 1977, common law courts have a jurisdiction to order return of the thing) an order for possession of the thing, but only that the dispossessor pay the claimant a sum of money. The crucial thing, however, was the ability of the right to bind third parties. Thus, the right of the finder of the jewel in the famous case of Armory v Delamirie (1722) 1 Str 505 was proprietary because it bound the jeweller to whom it had been given to be valued and who refused to hand it back. It was a personal property right and not a real property right, however, because the only remedy available at common law was an award of damages. On that basis, the law of personal property would exclude choses in action, eg, debts and shares, for they have no third-party effect.

However, the book under review takes the stance that the hallmark of a property right is its assignability, that exigibility against third parties is irrelevant. Given the approach taken in real property, this is odd. It is not, however, uncommon, with classics such as the much-missed Crossley Vaines’ Personal Property (5th edn, 1973) taking the same line. Consequently, included in this book are not only property rights with respect to goods, but such things as debts, shares, milk quotas and carbon trading units.

Why is such material included in books on personal property? The answer is probably a hangover from the illogical dichotomy represented by talk of choses in possession and choses in action, the word “chose” being French for “thing”. The terminology refers only to the method by which rights can be enforced. A person dispossessed of his car has the self-help remedy of simply taking it back (plus, of course, the ability to sue in conversion), whereas someone who is owed £100 cannot simply take the money from his debtor’s pocket but must bring a court “action” to recover. Such