Analyzing The Concepts of Ownership and Possession as Seen in A Welfare State

ABSTRACT

“Ownership” is a rudimentary juristic concept, among those that are intrinsic to every legal system in the world. Ownership as a concept, is such that it has been extensively discussed and debated upon by an overwhelming majority of legal writers prior to the concept of “possession”, though today, this cannot be considered as the apt approach to the two concepts. People first came up with the idea of possession before they came up with that of ownership. The development of both the related ideas, can be traced with that of human civilization itself, when individuals began to migrate and travel from location to location. At this juncture, it is important to note that the concepts cannot be said to have entered the picture only when people started to settle down in a single place and started to live as group whilst planting trees, cultivating arable land, utilizing the remaining land for the purpose of production and essentially living in what we call as a community, which is when the concepts of possession and ownership were brought into being. It can only be said that while the two concepts were initially not distinguished between, a clear line started to be drawn between them as civilization advanced (i.e. as humans transitioned from being huntergatherers to being cultivators).