§ 156 Real and Personal Property
Derived from and closely connected with the distinction between immovable and movable property is that between real and personal property. These are two cross divisions of the whole sphere of proprietary rights. Real property and immovable property form intersecting circles which are very nearly though not quite coincident. The law of real property is almost equivalent to the law of land, while the law of personal property is all but identical with the law of movables. The partial failure of coincidence is due not to any logical distinction, but to the accidental course of legal development; and to this extent the distinction between real and personal property is purely arbitrary and possesses no scientific basis. Real property comprises all rights over land, with such additions and exceptions as the law has seen fit to establish. All other proprietary rights, whether in rem or in personam, pertain to the law of personal property.
The distinction between real and personal property has no logical connexion with that between real and personal rights. There is, however, an historical relation between them, inasmuch as they are both derived from the same source, namely the Roman distinction between actions in rem and actions in personam. Real property meant originally that which was recoverable in a real action, while personal property was that which was recoverable in a personal action, and this English distinction between real and personal actions was derived by Bracton and the other founders of our law from the actiones in rem and in personam of Justinian, though not without important modifications of the Roman doctrine.424
In connexion with the distinctions between movable and immovable, and between real and personal property, we must notice the legal significance of the term chattel. This word has apparently three different meanings in English law:—
1. A movable physical object; for example, a horse, a book, or a shilling, as contrasted with a piece of land.
2. Movable property, whether corporeal or incorporeal; that is to say, chattels in the first sense together with all proprietary rights except those which are classed as immovable. In this usage debts, shares, contracts, and other choses in action are chattels, no less than furniture or stock in trade. So also are patents, copyrights, and other rights in rem which are not rights over land. This double use of the word chattel to indicate both material things and rights is simply an application, within the sphere of movable property, of the metonymy which is the source of the distinction between corporeal and incorporeal property.
3. Personal property, whether movable or immovable, as opposed to real property. In this sense leaseholds are classed as chattels, because of the special rule by which they are excluded from the domain of real property.