Public Land Law

Abstract

While legislation and administrative frameworks shape how landowners own or use their land, land law continues to be understood primarily as a private law subject. Public interventions are conventionally treated as outside land law’s remit and are rarely addressed in property theorization. Responding to this absence, this article outlines the scope of public land law—understood as the governance of land by the state in the public interest—introducing the concept of property as authorized, where land ownership and use are limited by authorization. The analysis draws on examples from planning, leasehold reform, and public access legislation, alongside human rights protections under Article 1 of Protocol 1 (A1P1) of the ECHR and the newly recognized fundamental common law right to property, to show how public and private land law both constitute property. By examining these interactions in the period between the Supreme Court’s hearing of the Darwall case and its judgment, the article encourages greater engagement with public land law to understand how land law operates today.