Where land law comes from | Lanbuk on the Law of Land

In simple terms

Land law was not made in one statute. Cheshire and Burn, and Megarry, both tell it as a sequence: common law, then equity, then Acts of Parliament. Sierra Leone took the English law that was in force on 1 January 1880, and then made its own.

The common law period runs from the Norman Conquest to the end of the fourteenth century. That is when the courts worked out tenure, estates and . The starting picture is feudal. All land is held of the Crown. What a person "owns" is an estate, not the soil itself.

Equity, from about 1400, filled the gaps. The use, and later the , is equity's great contribution to land law. So are the discretionary remedies: , , , .

The Statute of Uses 1535 tried to execute uses and turn them into legal estates. It did not kill the trust. By the end of the seventeenth century the trust was enforced again, and the strict settlement, which kept land in the family, took its modern shape.

Statute has been in this subject from the beginning. Quia Emptores 1290 stopped further subinfeudation. De Donis 1285 created the . The Tenures Abolition Act 1660 swept away most free tenures except . The Fines and Recoveries Act 1833 replaced the collusive lawsuits used to bar an entail. The Law of Property Act 1925 remade English land law. It does not apply in Sierra Leone. What Sierra Leone took is set out in the Imperial Statutes (Law of Property) Adoption Act, which adopts named English statutes, and in section 74 of the Courts Act 1965. The reception date is 1 January 1880. The common law, equity, and statutes of general application in force in England on that day are part of the residual law, together with Imperial legislation and Acts of the local legislature.

Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have their own reception dates. Do not borrow theirs.

The order of this chapter follows that history. Tenure first, then estates, then the equitable overlay, then the modern conveyancing statutes.

Words and Latin in this note

Specific performance: An order requiring a party to actually carry out what they promised in a contract, instead of only paying damages. Open the note.
Rectification: An equitable remedy that corrects a written document so that it records what the parties actually agreed. Open the note.
Rescission: Setting a voidable contract aside, so that the parties are put back, as far as possible, where they were before it. Open the note.
Fee tail: An inheritable estate cut down to a line of descendants, from feodum talliatum, a fee that has been cut. On failure of that line the land goes back. Open the note.
Seisin: The old common-law possession of a freehold. The person seised was the person the feudal courts treated as holding the land.
Socage: The free tenure that survived after the old military tenures were abolished. A Crown grant in socage is, in practice, the starting point of freehold ownership in the Western Area. Open the note.
Trust: An arrangement in which a trustee holds property at law but must use it for beneficiaries, or for a charitable purpose. The beneficiaries have the equitable interest. Open the note.

Memory map

Where land law comes from

Key points

Tenure and estates are common law
The Law of Property Act 1925 does not apply in…
The Sierra Leone reception date is 1 January…

Key terms

Seisin
Socage
Fee tail
Injunction

Take-home points

Tenure and estates are common law. The trust is equity. Modern title practice is statute.
The Law of Property Act 1925 does not apply in Sierra Leone. Named English statutes do, if the Adoption Act says so.
The Sierra Leone reception date is 1 January 1880.

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