Land Law

Land Law on the University of Cambridge Law Tripos (Part IB). Rights in and over land — how they are created, who is bound by them, and how competing interests are ranked under the registered-title system.

Estates and interests in land

Land law begins by distinguishing estates from interests, and legal from equitable enforceability.

32 min

Registered and unregistered title

Registration recasts title as an administrative question of priority, protection, and statutory risk allocation.

36 min

Priorities and overreaching

Priorities determine whose right survives; overreaching explains why occupation may still lose.

38 min

Overriding interests and Schedule 3 LRA 2002

Overriding interests are the registered system’s disciplined concession to facts on the ground.

34 min

Adverse possession

Adverse possession tests the boundary between title by registration and title by long factual control.

38 min

Co-ownership and trusts of land

Co-ownership converts shared occupation into a structured trust problem of powers, shares, sale and priority.

48 min

TOLATA 1996 and section 14 applications

Section 14 turns co-ownership disputes into discretionary orders, not mechanical sales.

38 min

Leases — creation and certainty of term

A lease is an estate only if possession and duration are legally intelligible.

45 min

Leasehold covenants

Leasehold covenants reveal how contractual promises become proprietary obligations across successive ownership.

32 min

Licences and proprietary estoppel

Licences remain personal permissions; proprietary estoppel explains when equity nevertheless binds land.

34 min

Freehold covenants

Restrictive covenants are proprietary control devices; positive covenants remain the law's unresolved anomaly.

34 min

Easements — creation, characteristics, extinguishment

Easements test the boundary between useful proprietary accommodation and impermissible private governance of land.

38 min

Mortgages — creation and priorities

Mortgages test land law’s central bargain between security, publicity, and priority.

38 min

Mortgagee's remedies and protection of mortgagors

Mortgage remedies reveal land law’s central bargain between proprietary security and equitable restraint.

35 min

Human rights and land law

Human rights qualify land law chiefly at the remedial edge, not at the proprietary core.

31 min

Reform of land registration

Registration reform tests whether conveyancing convenience can be reconciled with proprietary justice.

39 min