Ownership Restrictions And Social - From An Efficiency Point Of Observation

This article tries to survey the question of the limitations of ownership and its justification. And the question is viewed from efficiency perspective.The utilitarian analysis approaches in question may be classed as following types: Aristotle type, Hume type and the New institutional economics type. The new institutional economist thinks that property rights are an instrument of society and derive their significance from the fact that they help a man form those expectations, which he can reasonably hold in his dealing with others. And its primary function lies in guiding incentives to achieve a greater internalization of externalities. However, that the owner has exclusive rights to things is prerequisite for bringing the function into play.A. M. Honore has given an account of the standard incidents of ownership in his classic writing "ownership". He thinks that ownership comprises eleven incidents. But in reality legal live the limitations of private law to ownership is innumerable.How to interpret these limitations make jurists feel very puzzled. The Ownership socialization theory emerged. This theory holds that social needs or public interests have priority over individual rights in legal power. It is applied to interpret the limitations of ownership. Even some lawyers conclude that The socialization of ownership is a inevitable trend in real law. In fact , the theory is not as compelling as it asserted. First, the final results have been doomed failure because it is based on constructivist rationalism in epistemology. Second, the concept of "social interests" is very ambiguous, which is reflected directly that the object of theory is indefinite , and the law is so lack of certainty in practice as to become a instrument of rent seeking.Third, this theory has seldom practicalities in practice. Finally, its argument is also unsound.This article holds that the limitations of ownership may be interpreted from economic perspective. The nature of the limitations of ownership is institution evolving to reduce the transactions cost. The evolution makes the use of resource more efficiency. For example Coase theorem can explain Neighborly relations, and the function of inalienability system is to resolve externality and common pool resource problem.The main text comprises five sections. The first section introduces the justification of ownership. The second section demonstrates the incidents of ownership The third section demonstrates the content and form of the limitations of ownership. The fourth section criticizes the theory of ownership socialization. The fifth section interprets Neighborly relations and Inalienability by using the methods of law and economics to reveal the reasons of the limitations of ownership.