Northwestern University Law Review. Volume 5, Issue 2

Author: The Committee of this Book
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: In the process of China's reform, the understanding of property rights plays a crucial role, whether it concerns the rule of law, marketization, or democratization. Scholars, when discussing practical issues in China's reform, envisioning the future, or practitioners facing choices in specific reform measures, often find that the root of the complex phenomena lies in property rights. For example, when exploring corporate governance issues, people discover that state-owned equity serves as a hidden constraint; when examining the path of national transition, the Stolypin-style asset distribution raises deep concerns among scholars; people also realize that the significant differences between the transformation models of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and China's model stem from different approaches to ownership reform. During the drafting of the Property Rights Law, the ambiguity of property relationships in reality cannot be said to be a huge obstacle; even, the property distribution faced by daughters when marrying in rural areas can trigger a series of reflections on the system. "Property rights" lurk and weave through the networks of causality. A clear understanding of property rights can serve as a guiding principle in analyzing complex theoretical and practical issues. This is also the reason why this issue of the "Review" chooses property rights research as its theme. This issue's thematic research includes four articles selected from different perspectives. The article is "Hume's Theory of Property Rights" by Gao Quanxi. As the author mentions in the article, the concept of property rights in Hume's sense, as well as the property rights issues discussed by political thinkers in the 17th and 18th centuries, has gone beyond the mere level of civil rules in civil law. Instead, it explores property rights from the theoretical height of political philosophy and the close relationship between property rights and the origin and nature of human political society. The article elaborates on Hume's theory of property possession with the comparison with Locke's theory as a clue. Hume argues that property rights are not a natural right but a rule theory of political society. Genuine property rights are a crucial source of justice and a sign of humans entering political society. The author summarizes Hume's three rules of justice: stable possession of property, conditions for transfer, and the fulfillment of promises. Furthermore, the author discusses Hume's view that "property rights are a moral relationship between people and things," studying the "psychological mechanism" of property rights: the theory of property rights based on a sense of common interest is different from the contractual theory of rights; justice is not a rational logic of justice but a sense of justice; justice is not provided by reason but by a sense of common interest; justice is not based on people's concepts but on people's impressions.