Public Ownership in Law and Society

Citation

Radvan, M. (2009), "Public Ownership in Law and Society", International Journal of Law and Management, Vol. 51 No. 6, pp. 457-458. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijlma.2009.51.6.457.1

Petr Havlan, associate professor at the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, is one of the most important authors in the area of ownership, especially public ownership. He is not only theorist, but in his text there are many practical aspects reflecting his many years in practice.

Havlan's newest book Public Ownership in Law and Society develops ideas already mentioned in his former monograph State Ownership (Masaryk University, Brno, 2000) and it is the result of his long‐term research and practical experience. There are not many other authors dealing with such a difficult, but very important and useful theme. We should mention only Pliva and Mikule at this place.

Havlan's publication is the combination of a legal‐historical, theoretical and comparative approach and critical and systematic analysis of the present positive law. It offers basic orientation in the development of key terms (ownership, public estate, corporation, etc.) using the ideas of the most important Czech legal theorists (Randa, Tilsch, Heyrovský, Krčmárˇ, Sedláček, Knapp) and central European legal theorists (Savigny, Ihering) in given area in nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As we can see, Havlan is very well educated in theory and methodology, he is able to analyze specific question with ease.

To tell the truth, Havlan analyzes public ownership not only from legal‐positive or legal‐historical, comparative view, he is able to see and describe all the problems from philosophical and cultural perspectives.

For readers having no experience with law and typical local (Czech) problems in the area of public ownership, the legal discretion about property restitutions could be very interesting (p. 100 et sequentia). In many central and eastern European countries the need existed to give back the property confiscated by communist party after 1948 to the former owners. There were of course many theoretical and practical problems in making decisions on how to do that. Many of restitution cases were judged by the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. We should mention one of them (Pl. US 16/93):

Legal effects of restitution occur ex tunc, legal effects of expropriation occur ex nunc. Restitution is not forced withdraw of ownership, but it is duty to restore original legal situation. Legal regulation of restitution can however in specific situations exclude claims on property … The reason is the purpose of restitution acts: to mitigate (not to remove) several (not all) injustices committed during the period 1948‐1989.

Within the text of the book can be found a number of comments and observations producing a book for the “general” readers as well as a technical book for “better orientated” and advanced reader. These comments are usually very useful if we want to know the way of author's thinking and his associations.

Petr Havlan's book Public Ownership in Law and Society has a great potential to be accepted in the whole legal community. It has ambitions to offer an insight into the system and the structure of change in this area. It combines legal theory, legal history and civilization context with positive law, and because of that it has sustained value, for those seeking to understand the development and reach of law.