Origins and Meaning of the General Definition of Ownership in the Western Legal Tradition
The legal institution of ownership, despite its central place in private law system, saw the first attempt to formulate its definition relatively late – at the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries. The definition was not needed by the Romans, whose approach to law seemed to be characterized by the far-reaching pragmatism being in stark contrast to the more dogmatic medieval scholars’ way of thinking. The first attempts to formulate a comprehensive, positive definition of ownership can be attributed to glossators and conciliators. Their achievements were creatively developed by scholars from the school of legal humanism and the law of nature, but were rejected as inconsistent with Roman law by the pandectists, who promoted negative definition of property. Nowadays, for instance in the Polish Civil Code, a partial return to a positive definition of ownership can be observed.
