Leftover laws are weird things.
EDIT: PS: sadly, the legendary, obligatory archery practice - http://www.lordsandladies.org/the-butts.htm SFW ; "butt" was the name of an archery range - was removed from the law in England: https://loweringthebar.net/2010/06/do-englishmen-still-have-...
Of course, there are plenty of scammers happy to charge you £50 for insurance against an impossibility...
Charging money for insurance against an event that is impossible is, i believe, a criminal offence in the UK.
Not from as far back but my house was built in the early 1980's and my house deeds include the stipulation that I must maintain a garage attached to the property (so I can't convert it to extra living space) because the local government retain the right to convert the space into a decontamination shelter in the event of chemical, biological or nuclear attack. Had a good chuckle with my lawyer regarding it, don't think I'll be too concerned about where to keep my lawn mower if the city has been nuked.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-bunker-idUSTRE7B01R...
It helps settle minor arguments between property lines where fences existed for 50 years but the true line was not on the fence line.
Wow. I suppose that’s the same etymology for “butt” in the anatomological sense?
So there you are. Happy to be of no assistance whatsoever!
I wonder how "to expel" ends up being "a short piece of land"...
Fun fact: just like this old tax that the Italian residents are unhappy with, every single person that was old enough to vote for their representatives who then voted to ratify the income tax amendment in the USA is now dead. There is no one alive in the USA that was in any way represented in the vote for income tax; conversely everyone that is alive in the US today and is subject to it did not have any input into it: they were simply born into it, unrepresented, just as these Italians were.
There is a strong argument for all laws having an expiration date a few years past the expected lifespan of the youngest constituent of the represented population that passed it, otherwise we end up ruled primarily by those long dead, entirely unknown to us, as the laws pile up, amended in perpetuity but never aging out.
There are similar stories in other countries.
There's nothing more permanent than a temporary government plan.
In Slovakia we basically ended up with two versions of land registry (called register "C" and "E") and the ongoing effort to reconcile them. Many properties are said to be "nevysporiadané" = "not settled up" which means all the owners are not known - previous landowner died or emigrated and it waits for their descendants to claim it. It isn't possible to build anything on these lots.
In west germany, there were, originally very small, medieval fields, so a "Flurbereinigung" happened several times. This led to larger fields to work on, but below, some of them still are patchwork, paid yearly for, some only leaseholds from the church, some even still paid in natural products (deputats -> m^3 wood, grain, sugar) as per contract.
Some parts of lands have owners, but due to the exponential nature of "Erbengemeinschaften" (community of heirs), the land is splitting up more with each generation of inheritance and some of the heirs do not want to lay claim to the ever smaller pieces of land in the middle of nowhere, due to the juristic costs. Which in the long run leads to atomized "unclaimed" land.
Also the church runs alot of old folks homes, and thus persuades old people to transfer there land to the church, so in some towns, half the houses are owned by the catholic church, the children renting there parents home from them. Strange constellations.
Is the church exempt from property tax in Germany?
If so this sounds like a return to 'mortmain' principle of middle ages which caused a lot of conflict between government and church historically:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortmain
England developed quicker than the rest of Europe because the King limited the accumulation of tax exempt real estate by the church. The church was essentially largest absentee corporate land holder in Europe. It left large quantities of land vacant and did not contribute public fees towards infrastructure improvements.
It is a major factor why Blacks have lost ownership of farmland in the United States. Rather than try to explain it myself, here is an excerpt from "Mine!" by Jacob Heller and James Salzman:
> Currently, Black farmers constitute less than 1 percent of American farmers, and Black families continue to lose farms at a rate three times that of whites. The cause of this dramatic farm loss starts with inheritance law, in particular the consequences for family ownership when someone dies without making a will. Many poor Black farmers in the South were suspicious of local white lawyers, and for good reason, so they never made wills. This suspicion continues today, even among some wealthy Black people. Aretha Franklin and Prince could well have afforded the very best attorneys, yet both passed away without making wills. Overall, three-quarters of Black people do not have wills, more than double the percentage of whites.
> The result for Black-owned land in the Southeast is that over a quarter is now heir property, averaging eight co-owners, five of whom live outside the region. Amazingly, more land in Mississippi is owned by Black people living in Chicago than by those living in Mississippi itself. …
> Inheritance law imposes enormous costs on Black people—indeed, on anyone who does not write a will. When you die without a will, the state splits ownership among people the law designates as heirs, in a specified priority: spouses and children, grandchildren, parents, siblings, and then more remote relatives.
> Partition sales … are the primary way that most heir property is lost. Partition sales are not just of historical interest. Across the South, heir property currently makes up a third of remaining Black-owned farmland—roughly 3.5 million acres worth about $30 billion. …
> In 1887 John Brown bought eighty acres of land in Rankin County, Mississippi. He was part of the great wave of freed slaves who invested their life savings in farmland. … When he died in 1935, he did not leave a will. Ownership of his land split among his wife and nine children. In time they all died, also without wills, so the land was split further among grandchildren. … In 1978 Ruth Brown asked a court to divide the farm so she would own her share of the land outright—a manageable forty-five acres out of John’s original eighty. The other sixty-six Brown heirs would still co-own the balance, in shares ranging from 1/18th of the farm down to a tiny 1/19,440th. The court agreed to partition the parcel, but not by physically dividing the land. Instead, the judge ordered the entire farm sold and the money partitioned among the heirs according to their ownership fractions.
> As often happens in such forced partition sales, a single outside company was the only bidder. In Brown’s case, it was a local white-owned lumber company that wanted to cut the timber.
> Even though the family collectively valued the farm far above its auction price, neither Brown nor any other heir placed a bid. Why? Partly because state law often requires the bid to be fully or substantially paid in cash on auction day, a rule that makes bidding impossible for most ordinary owners. Partly because there was no simple way for the Brown heirs to organize a joint family bid that pulled together resources from the scattered owners. Many heirs did not even know they were owners. And no single Brown heir could top the lumber company’s lowball bid. This is commonplace. When a judge orders land auctioned on courthouse steps, the deal is final, even though the price is usually far below what is considered fair market value in an ordinary transaction.
However, Italy also abolished all noble titles with the fall of the monarchy in 1946 -- I would have also expected that fiefs and any associated claims had been extinguished at the same time...
https://www.hlidamsikatastr.cz/Katastr/Neznami-vlastnici says unclaimed land will be forfeited to the state in 2023, I guess this must be highly specific to the Czech Republic. Still surprising to me that it'd take 100+ years!
In the U.S. there is no central registrar, deeds are recorded at local level, and owners are regularly found by collecting property tax. Back tax is tracked independently of ownership so if true owner fails to pay tax within a few years there is lien or foreclosure.
I'm guessing in Slovakia they might only tax sales or income of property rather than passive enclosure? If back taxes are levied on parcel the owners should immediately make themselves known.
"The Earth belongs in usufruct to the living. The dead have neither powers nor rights over it" - Thomas Jefferson
Even in higher property value areas I would be surprised to see a tax delinquency action taken after just a few years. The administrative cost is substantial.
The chivalric court still exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Court_of_Chivalry "prior to [1954], the Court had not sat for two centuries and before hearing the case, the Court first had to rule whether it still existed"
As does the last relic of real feudal power: the House of Lords, the last of Europe's unelected legislatures outside a microstate.
Conversely there are a few recipients of ancient national debt: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-bond-still-pays-inter...
As for legal traditions, you're looking at concepts such as customs (coutumes) and seigneurial rights (banalités or bans) which varied from region to region. The former were normative and mostly local. From the 12th century onwards, Civil Law based on Roman Law started to coalesce. The major driver was monarchs gradually succeeding in centralizing and consolidating their power throughout Europe. Through violence (wars, subduing insurrections,...) and through gradual establishing a powerful administrations (typical example: the Dukes of Burgundy).
The French Revolution swept all of that away. The period between 1789 and 1830 saw a fracturing of European nobility and their power, and subsequent consolidation into nation states based on constitutional powers.
Put in a different way, if you were born in 1760 and lived to 1840 (80 years), you'd experience a "societal collapse" (to describe with a hyperbole) in which any and all "old" ways that governed life were overthrown and replaced by an entirely new way of organizing society.
There are millions dead in between the "ideals" of the Revolution and the later Republics you skipped over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Wars
>Historians have explored how the Napoleonic wars became total wars. Most historians argue that the escalation in size and scope came from two sources. First was the ideological clash between revolutionary/egalitarian and conservative/hierarchical belief systems. Second was the emergence of nationalism in France, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere that made these "people's wars" instead of contests between monarchs.[138] Bell has argued that even more important than ideology and nationalism were the intellectual transformations in the culture of war that came about through the Enlightenment.[139] One factor, he says, is that war was no longer a routine event but a transforming experience for societies—a total experience.
Also, in some of the Channel Islands, Queen Elizabeth isn't technically the Queen, but rather the Duke of Normandy (despite being female, she's called the "Duke", or "The Queen, our Duke").
> Today, the Queen still has ownership of all swans in the UK except in one small corner of the British Isles - the Orkney Isles.
> Under Udal Law, the ancient Norse system of inheritance and law, which the Viking settlers brought to Orkney, the swan is the property of the people, rather than the Crown.
> The case was proven in 1910 by a Kirkwall lawyer who, accompanied by his friend, the Procurator-Fiscal, went out to Harray Loch and shot a swan. The case went to the High Court and the Crown lost.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160725172726/http://www.scotsm...
Rather make that "no country other than the US and UK+Commonwealth countries". These two countries are probably the only ones in the world that haven't suffered any kind of comprehensive revolution in the last 100 years, and it shows.
Not just in the absurd amount of precedence cases or the existence of "case law" in general, but also in issues that directly impact the functioning of democracy (i.e. US voting being on Tuesdays because back 200 years ago Sunday was for church visits, Monday for traveling on horseback to the voting booth and Wednesday back home - made sense back then, nowadays it serves as a very effective tool to disenfranchise poor people from voting) or threaten the foundations of the existence of life (hundreds years old water claims that nowhere near closely reflect the actual cost of the water, leading to farmers and Nestle running unsustainable operations just "because they're allowed" without thinking if what they're doing can permanently destroy aquifers).
Every other country has had all that historical baggage unceremoniously dropped.
However, in most Swiss cantons, legal entities are also subject to church taxes, and get to pick neither the denomination to whom they pay, nor do they get to leave the church. It was explained to me that this was a compensation deal worked out when the state expropriated the monasteries in Switzerland in the 19th century.
This is interesting in that it isn't really "abolishing" payments in so much as you are required to establish an endowment so to speak. Really it is inflation (enabled by fiat) that allowed one to escape this duty it seems...
Not sure about the equivalent Italian law, but I would be deeply surprised if there isn't something similar.
It's actually in the constitution: hereditary titles are no longer recognized.
If I have grazing rights on land that someone else owns, but don't actually graze there for decades and a new owner doesn't know about those rights, I can't then come back mad that his new fence infringes on the right that I've never asserted and he's not aware of.
They are not peasants, as such things likely don't exist in modern Italy. So how can they owe anything?
The Swiss baron's descendants - are they still barons? Can they still hold a fief?
Perhaps the Swiss baron's lord can be convinced to levy a similar tax on them, and return the money to the town.
It's very interesting.
Apparently, the land owner has no obligations, but the lease-holder instead is bound to pay an annual canon and "improve the land", whatever that means, perpetually.
This happens in many other places in Italy. One example that comes to mind is a part of the money collected from fishing permits on Lake Maggiore (tragically famous lately for the Stress cabin disaster) going to the pockets of an aristocratic family who "owns" the lake and the fishing rights.
Disgusting to say the least, but that's law.
And I do note that there's obligation to the Baron's lord. Doing an appeal there is another route.
Because the only alternative in this case is the outright theft.
>"there is no implied right or obligation of any sort."
Sorry but there is implied obligation. I totally expect to get some services in return for money taken from me and I suspect I am not alone. For experiment try sending part of government that does actual services for constituents for a year long vacation and see what happens.
Here's an example of how the elections for Doxe de Venezia worked in the Republic of Venice[0]:
> Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine, and the nine elected forty-five. These forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who elected the doge. Election required at least twenty-five votes out of forty-one, nine votes out of eleven or twelve, or seven votes out of nine electors.
and since the thing came up: there is no such thing as prince of italy either, nor princess or queen.
and by the way, the savoia line of blood isn't even legitimate as heir to the now-nonexistant throne.
the legitimate heirs would be the descendant of Aimone duke of Aosta, which nowadays have better things to do.
But… folks never had title to their land and were effectively stuck until a law was passed in the 1960s. It’s really interesting as the effect is that many families have lived there for 400 years, and newcomers all appeared in the 1970s onward.
Those are two moments where this whole notion of feudal estates could easily have been abolished, but for some reason the new rulers decided against this.
The Dutch colonial system, continued in some form for a period of time. I’m afraid I’m ignorant of the details and complexity of land policy as the English, the pre-Constitutional US and current US government took over. Adding to the complexity, New York has had at least 4 constitutions in the post-colonial era!
There’s similar examples in the US — Baltimore has or had land rents from the British colonial era.
Personally it’s a fascinating subject to me, and if I was a history professor, I would have probably studied it! Alas, I’m not.
I grew up on land in the Bay Area that formerly belonged to the Ranchero de las Pulgas, and now I live in the east bay. I don't remember the name of the Ranchero here, but much of it had already been sold off to yankee traders before 1846. In both cases after annexation the widows controlling the remaining land were ripped-off by shyster lawyers. IIRC in one or both cases the widow's own lawyer! This despite the fact the family of Ranchero de las Pulgas had thrown in with the American cause during the Mexican American War.
Specifically regarding the current Sheikh Jarrah conflict. Who actually 'owns' the land, and what does that mean? It seems like it completely depends on what time frame you look at and what claims the winner of war has or can enforce with force.
In the US, what about the Native Nations and the canceling or flat out ignoring of past legal documents. or the land given to former slaves later taken away.
Personally I lean towards your opinions. if the ruling power won't act humanely then reparations/compensation seems like the 2nd best option.
[1]https://www.iltempo.it/attualita/2021/03/12/news/nicola-zing...
That £40 must actually cover the costs of the local church's roof.
I checked the Corriere (corriere.it), Repubblica (repubblica.it) and il fatto quotidiano (ilfattoquotidiano.it) since they're three different voices with vastly different opinions on what to report and what not to report.
interesting.
I would hope something similar would apply in Italy too.
However if they want the rights, they're possible legible also of having to pay to the tenants for all the improvements they did so far, and very likely taxes on the property.
So... Might end up a quite bad move.
For instance in the area where I grew up (Romney Marshes, Kent) a Scott tax used to be levied on local householders and landowners to help pay for the local sea defences (because: most of the Romney Marshes is below sea level). People living on land above sea level were exempt from the charge, thus 'Scott free'. The levy was paid in cash or thorn bushes; failure to pay led to an ear being nailed to the church door[1].
And the tax is still - apparently - alive today ... according to a brief report in the UK's Law Society's Gazette[2].
[1] - https://theromneymarsh.net/newhall
[2] - https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/unearthing-history/68506.a...
https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/app/uploads/2015/03/Legal_Oddities...
That seems like it would have the reverse effect of acknowledging its legitimacy, at the very least retroactively.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranchos_of_California
There was a process for them to be “registered” after the US took over. And many were split up as the owners had little cash to pay for upkeep.
But there are properties that derive from ranchos that carry on the rights. I recall on oceanside plot where beach access was not open to the public (contravening CA law) as it wasn’t a requirement in Mexican law.
Which means it was being collected even in the 1950s
Did a bookkeeper die?
I think it will be useful to know what happened back then
