A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately three million shipwrecks worldwide as of January 1999, according to Angela Croome, a science writer and author who specialized in the history of underwater archaeology.
The homestead principle is the principle by which one gains ownership of an unowned natural resource by performing an act of original appropriation. Appropriation could be enacted by putting an unowned resource to active use , joining it with previously acquired property, or by marking it as owned.
In maritime law, flotsam,jetsam,lagan, and derelict are specific kinds of shipwreck. The words have specific nautical meanings, with legal consequences in the law of admiralty and marine salvage. A shipwreck is defined as the remains of a ship that has been wrecked, whether it has sunk or is floating on the surface of the water.
Self-ownership is the concept of property in one's own body, often expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity meaning the exclusive right to control one's own body including one's life, where 'control' means exerting any physical interference and 'exclusive' means having the right to install and enforce a ban on other people doing this. Since the legal norm of property title claim incapacitates other people from claiming property title over the same resource at the same time, the right to control or interfere with one's own body in any arbitrary way is secured. Anarcho-capitalism defines self-ownership as the exclusive right to control one's body as long as the owner does not aggress upon others, leading to the concept of the sovereign individual. In Minarchism the 'exclusive right' is understood by separating the 'liberty-to' from the 'liberty-from' where for each person the 'liberty-to' is restricted by all the 'liberty's-from' of others, effectively subjecting the 'liberty-to' to the ban on the usage of force. Thereafter self-ownership means the exclusive right to control one's body insofar considering action between inhabitants and not involving the state, making it roughly a pacifist morality only among inhabitants. Self-ownership is a central idea in several political philosophies that emphasize individualism, such as libertarianism and liberalism.
Res nullius is a term of Roman law meaning "things belonging to no one"; that is, property not yet the object of rights of any specific subject. A person can assume ownership of res nullius simply by taking possession of it (occupatio). However, in ancient Rome, certain forms of res nullius could never be owned because they were considered to belong either in common to all or to the divine rather than human dominium. The use of res nullius as a legal concept continues in modern civil legal systems.
A treasure trove is an amount of money or coin, gold, silver, plate, or bullion found hidden underground or in places such as cellars or attics, where the treasure seems old enough for it to be presumed that the true owner is dead and the heirs undiscoverable. An archaeological find of treasure trove is known as a hoard. The legal definition of what constitutes treasure trove and its treatment under law vary considerably from country to country, and from era to era.
Trover is a form of lawsuit in common law jurisdictions for recovery of damages for wrongful taking of personal property. Trover belongs to a series of remedies for such wrongful taking, its distinctive feature being recovery only for the value of whatever was taken, not for the recovery of the property itself.
Unowned property includes tangible, physical things that are capable of being reduced to being property owned by a person but are not owned by anyone. Bona vacantia is a legal concept associated with the unowned property, which exists in various jurisdictions, with a consequently varying application, but with origins mostly in English law.
Lost, mislaid, and abandoned property are categories of the common law of property which deals with personal property or chattel which has left the possession of its rightful owner without having directly entered the possession of another person. Property can be considered lost, mislaid, or abandoned depending on the circumstances under which it is found by the next party who obtains its possession.
The labor theory of property is a theory of natural law that holds that property originally comes about by the exertion of labor upon natural resources. The theory has been used to justify the homestead principle, which holds that one may gain whole permanent ownership of an unowned natural resource by performing an act of original appropriation.
Treasure hunting is the physical search for treasure. For example, treasure hunters try to find sunken shipwrecks and retrieve artifacts with market value. This industry is generally fueled by the market for antiquities.
Appropriation is a process by which previously unowned natural resources, particularly land, become the property of a person or group of persons. The term is widely used in economics in this sense. In certain cases, it proceeds under very specifically defined forms, such as driving stakes or other such markers into the land claimed, which form gave rise to the term “staking a claim.” "Squatter’s rights" are another form of appropriation, but are usually asserted against land to which ownership rights of another party have been recognized. In legal regimes recognizing such acquisition of property, the ownership of duly appropriated holdings enjoys such protections as the law provides for ownership of property in general.
In law, telepossession is the right of ownership of a resource based on telepresence rather than physical proximity. The term gained importance in maritime salvage following the case of the SS Central America. In the case of the SS Central America, the Columbus-American Discovery Group Inc. won over the insurer, Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company. This case was decided in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992.
English property law is the law of acquisition, sharing and protection of valuable assets in England and Wales. While part of the United Kingdom, many elements of Scots property law are different. In England, property law encompasses four main topics:
In law, abandonment is the relinquishment, giving up, or renunciation of an interest, claim, privilege, possession, civil proceedings, appeal, or right, especially with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting it. Such intentional action may take the form of a discontinuance or a waiver. This broad meaning has a number of applications in different branches of law. In common law jurisdictions, both common law abandonment and statutory abandonment of property may be recognized.
Scots property law governs the rules relating to property found in the legal jurisdiction of Scotland. As a hybrid legal system with both common law and civil law heritage, Scots property law is similar, but not identical, to property law in South Africa and the American state of Louisiana.
Possession is nine-tenths of the law is an expression meaning that ownership is easier to maintain if one has possession of something, or difficult to enforce if one does not. The expression is also stated as "possession is ten points of the law", which is credited as derived from the Scottish expression "possession is eleven points in the law, and they say there are but twelve."
Parker v British Airways Board [1982] 1 QB 1004 is an English property law case ordered by the Court of Appeal.
Theft by finding occurs when someone chances upon an object which seems abandoned and takes possession of the object, but fails to take steps to establish whether the object is genuinely abandoned and not merely lost or unattended before taking it for themselves. In some jurisdictions, the crime is called "larceny by finding" or "stealing by finding".
Hashavat Aveda is a "positive commandment" in Jewish law that requires the return of lost property to its rightful owner.
