On behalf of Dr. Getzler:

One could allow for a staged leaking of the incidents of ownership from

seller to buyer as the contract forms and proceeds through execution;

Romans did this by reserving dominium to the seller prior to delivery

but on completion of the obligations shifting risk and the interesse

which permits delictual protection of the asset to the buyer; English

law has its own rules for shifting title in sale whether legally or

beneficially which in function are not that different. But if you are

looking for a break-point in the transfer then the

abandonment/occupation model might be the only plausible model, unless

as Steve points out you end up having to adopt the whole Hegelian

apparatus of the free individual perfecting his rationality and

expressing mastery of the world by being able to transfer bits of it. A

third way is a conventionalist social contractarianism; everyone agrees

in a particular community that if you perform a causative act of such

and such a nature then property shifts.

Dr Joshua Getzler

Reader in Legal History, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford

Fellow and Tutor in Law, St Hugh's College, Oxford

mail: St Hugh's College Oxford OX2 6LE

website

email: <joshua.getzler@law.ox.ac.uk> <mailto:joshua.getzler@law.ox.ac.uk>

tel. +44 1865 274932 or 557058

fax +44 1865 274912

Jason Neyers

Associate Professor of Law &

Cassels Brock LLP Faculty Fellow in Contract Law

Faculty of Law

University of Western Ontario

N6A 3K7

(519) 661-2111 x. 88435