The following extracts are from the Editorial in the inaugural part of Property Law Review, the newest journal in the Thomson Reuters stable, launching this month and available in hard copy and online.

General Editors: Brendan Edgeworth, Lyria Bennett Moses and Cathy Sherry

"There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right to property" – William Blackstone, Commentaries On The Laws Of England

As editors of the Property Law Review we welcome readers to this first edition. In this editorial we explore some of the ideas that have provided the impetus for the journal. Many readers would find themselves in agreement with Blackstone’s celebrated sentiments above, while others might need convincing. This represents our first objective: to publish scholarship that explores and identifies the critical role of property law in social, economic and political life. In most legal fields there are journals dedicated to in-depth critical analysis of core issues, where a community of scholars can share ideas, concepts and values. By contrast, while the law of real and personal property is the subject of many articles, and a few journals, there has not to date been a journal focused on fundamental questions. The Property Law Review aspires to fill this void. While the journal is published in Australia, our editorial board includes distinguished members from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa and Hong Kong.

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At least four themes seem to suggest themselves as focal points for extended examination in forthcoming issues of the journal. They are: first, the definition of property, particularly in the face of technological change; second, the interaction between property law and the broader built environment; third, the impact of social and political change on concepts of property; and fourth, the value of studying property law from a range of disciplinary perspectives.

While an outsider might think that a question such as “what is property?” would be simple, the truth is that there are differing approaches to constructing a definition and even controversy around whether the attempt to do so is worthwhile. Despite this, the question remains important for a range of practical problems across jurisdictions – from the scope of constitutional or human rights restrictions on interference with “property” to the applicability of property concepts in particular contexts. For instance, questions surrounding property in trade secrets, virtual assets, human tissue including gametes (taken from living or dead persons) and even in vitro human embryos remain controversial in most jurisdictions despite their increasing relevance. In all of these cases, controversy is not the result of difficulty applying law to diverse sets of facts, but rather the lack of agreement on how property should be defined.

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The second theme, being the link between property law and the broader build environment, gains much of its significance from the fact that land and the structures on it are our means of survival.

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The role that property law plays in creating our physical landscape, particularly the landscape of cities, is an increasingly important area for research. Urban planners have long studied the effect of urban development on individual and community well-being, but the centrality of property law is often overlooked. High rise buildings and master planned communities require complex property law for their legal existence and the choices made by lawyers, developers, policy makers and governments profoundly affect the kinds of communities they create.

Large-scale master planned communities and mega-high rise buildings have become a global phenomenon. From Dubai to Shanghai, Denver and beyond, developers are creating mini cities within cities, with their own infrastructure, services and rules. Property disputes abound, with conflicts arising between residents, commercial occupants, developers and the ubiquitous management companies that have emerged to service the development’s physical structure and facilitate resident interaction.

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Regulation of land use by government has become an entire area of property practice for many lawyers and a complex field for academic research. As we write this editorial the city of Brisbane is inundated with flood waters, many houses and new apartments having been built on flood-prone land. Questions will inevitably be asked. Is this the responsibility of government, developers or merely an illustration of caveat emptor? Remediation of contaminated land in brownfields redevelopments raises similar issues. Who is responsible for righting the damage? The contaminating companies, developers who seek to make money from the land or those who wish to live or work on the land in the future? Can governments go further and compel land owners to not only remediate poisoned land but make positive changes to their land that will benefit the wider community? The interaction between property law and environmental or ecological economics is of great interest to scholars across the globe.

The third theme we have identified, the impact of social and political change on concepts of property, was brought to the fore almost half a century ago by Charles Reich. Reich identified how developments in the pattern of legal entitlements and obligations in the post-war welfare-regulatory state posed significant conceptual challenges for the traditional liberal ideals of property law (Reich CA, “The New Property” (1964) 73 Yale LJ 733). At the time of publication of his article the size and reach of governmental functions appeared to indicate that the central social function performed by private property in securing individual privacy and autonomy was under threat. ... But now, almost 50 years on, do the same questions remain relevant? After almost three decades of deregulation and privatisation that have represented an ideological and practical assault on much of the “big government” that Reich identified, is it meaningful to talk about “new property” and the proposed solutions to the problems it was alleged to create? More recently still, do the various state responses to the global financial crisis signal another shift in prevailing ideas about property?

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Finally, in order to analyse these and many other issues fully, the journal encourages inter- and multidisciplinary research. Empirical or contextual analysis in the field of property law appears to be less prominent than in other areas. Traditional doctrinal approaches have tended to dominate. While we still see the internal analysis of legal rules and principles as essential for property law scholars and we welcome such research, it is important to emphasise the value of other perspectives. The journal seeks property scholarship from economic, historical, socio-legal, ecological, anthropological and philosophical perspectives, as well as more orthodox doctrinal research.

We begin the first edition of the Property Law Review with an essay by Joseph William Singer. Singer applies a theoretical perspective that he has developed in his other scholarly writing to the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States. Singer has long argued that libertarian calls for less government regulation are untenable in communities where we routinely expect to be protected from exploitation and unfair business practices.

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Our second article by Luke Villiers and Eileen Webb is an example of the way that jurisdictionally-specific property scholarship can still speak to scholars across the globe. While Villiers and Webb are writing about retail and residential leases in the Australian context, common law countries, with our roots in the English legal system, all share a common leasehold tradition. Further, the framework that Villiers and Webb use, the relational theory of contracts, is relevant to all legal traditions.

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The final article in this first issue, by Hannah Yee Fen Lim, goes back to the first theme we introduced, namely the meaning of property and the scope of property law. Lim addresses the question of whether email accounts can be treated as objects of property, in particular in the context of testamentary disposition.

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It is with great enthusiasm that we launch the first issue of Property Law Review. We look forward to vigorous and diverse debate, disagreement and conversation within its pages and to a long, fruitful relationship with our readers and contributors in the international community of property law scholars and practitioners.

Brendan Edgeworth, Lyria Bennett Moses and Cathy Sherry

February 2011