From Individual Rights to Goods in the Collective Interest to the Search for Commonality

The sustainability of the property rights defined in the Civil Code is in contrast with the evolution of its content. The promotion of individual interests is opposed today to protection of the public interest. If conciliation is to occur between the two in the legal field of property rights, changes to its legal regime must be considered in other ways than promoting the collectivization of property, which was historically the first proposal. It has been suggested to consider the possible articulation of the owner’s rights with those of a third party by the technique of real rights, contracts, and the allocation of goods. To overcome the problems of collective ownership in recent decades, an emphasis on special-purpose assets has been advanced with the intention of instituting and formalizing the search for commons in which owners are stakeholders alongside other rights holders.