6 The Law of Property
Although the distinction between the law of property and that of obligations is a fundamental one, which must be recognised in any orderly scheme of classification, there is a great part of the substantive civil law which is common to both of these branches of it. Thus the law of inheritance or succession concerns all kinds of proprietary rights whether in rem or in personam. So also with the law of trusts and that of securities. In general the most convenient method of dealing with these common elements is to consider them once for all in the law of property, thus confining the law of obligations to those rules which are peculiar to obligations: just as the elements common to civil and criminal law are dealt with in the civil law, and those common to private and public law in private law.
The law of property is divisible into the following chief branches: (1) the law of corporeal property, namely the ownership of land and chattels; (2) the law of immaterial objects of property, such as patents, trade-marks, and copyrights; (3) the law of encumbrances or jura in re aliena, such as tenancies, servitudes, trusts, and securities; (4) the law of testamentary and intestate succession.