Abstract This note returns to and revisits elaborations on the Ecological Function of Ownership Paradigm (EFOP) that were gestated over a decade ago. First, this note describes the reasons why it is possible to speak about ownership paradigms, tracing their understanding to the broader scientific and legal paradigms. In that part, the three preceding paradigms are mentioned (i.e., allocation, liberal, social function). Second, this note offers a conceptualization of the EFOP. In that part, the interplay between ownership and environment is highlighted. Finally, this note explores how awareness of the EFOP may assist to better understand the interplay of ownership and environment. In that part, the Argentine private law re-codification experience is used as an illustration of the presence of the EFOP. This note aims to trigger awareness on the malleability and resilience of ownership when facing environmental needs.
Abstract European legal systems increasingly rely on tenure diversification and intermediate forms between full ownership and renting. This article analyses Catalan temporal ownership ( propiedad temporal ) – introduced into the Catalan Civil Code by Law 19/2015- as a codified form of time-limited ownership that allocates an ownership title for a fixed term while preserving the holder’s core faculties of use and disposal and ensuring an automatic transfer to a successive holder at expiry. The article’s central claim is that temporal ownership should be treated as an autonomous, standardised property right rather than as ordinary ownership constrained by a private-law deadline. Temporal ownership demonstrates that civil-law ownership need not be conceptually perpetual in order to remain systemically compatible with European property law principles. The analysis tests the institution’s systemic fit with the core principles of European civil-law property systems, including numerus clausus and transparency, nemo dat , priority rules, and the relationship between ownership and limited property rights, and it addresses its constitutional compatibility within the Spanish legal system. The Catalan model is then situated within a broader European landscape of long-term proprietary positions by comparing it with German Erbbaurecht , Dutch erfpacht , the French bail réel solidaire , or the Anglo-American leasehold. It is also argued that the limited use of temporal ownership in practice is primarily driven by practical constraints (finance, housing culture, and professional routines) rather than by doctrinal impossibility.
Abstract The present analysis concerns what is here described as the dispositive principle of traditio, understood as a delivery-based default rule for buyer priority that may be modified through contractual arrangements allowing earlier buyer protection against the seller’s creditors. The analysis is limited to the issue of buyer priority in insolvency-related creditor conflicts and deliberately sets aside broader questions concerning transfer of ownership and ownership concepts as such. Adopting a functional and institutional perspective, the analysis examines how delivery-based and consensus-based systems operate in practice within credit relationships, financing structures and insolvency settings. The analysis suggests that the delivery default rule performs three central functions. First, it contributes to the optimisation of financing by allowing parties and creditors to allocate priority in ways adapted to the economic characteristics of different transactions. Secondly, it functions as a stable and adaptable default rule that fits the majority of transactions while permitting limited deviations where commercially justified. Thirdly, it contributes to reducing dispute costs by structuring legal uncertainty and incentivising parties to rely on relatively verifiable and predictable priority arrangements. The analysis further suggests that the persistence of delivery-based systems cannot be explained solely through doctrinal or conceptual structures concerning ownership and transfer. Rather, these systems must also be understood as embedded within broader institutional environments shaped by creditor behaviour, financing arrangements, monitoring structures and insolvency law. The analysis concludes that delivery-based systems may be understood not as rigid structures, but as institutional frameworks capable of combining stability with selective flexibility in response to differing transactional and financial circumstances.
