Cracking the Citadel Walls : A Functional Approach to Cosmopolitan Property Models within and Beyond National Property Regimes

Due to its strong connection with sovereignty, territoriality and socio-economic policies, property law is traditionally considered part of the closed citadel of national law. This axiom is reinforced by private international law, where the mandatory principle of lex rei sitae acts as a barrier against the cross-fertilization of national property systems. No international treaty has ever touched the field directly; even in Europe, in spite of the interference of EU acts on national property laws, the Lisbon Treaty leaves property in the exclusive competence of Member States. It is not by accident that the majority of comparative law scholars approach the subject with a state-centric perspective, often emphasising the unbridgeable divide between different property traditions. Today the citadel is under multilateral attack. Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and other international agreements break long-lasting dogmas and extend the scope of property to cover not only intangible assets, but also contractual rights and expectations. 'Cosmopolitan' human rights courts use a sui generis comparative approach to develop a similar autonomous conceptualisation of subject matter, structure, and content of property rights, while the potential horizontal effects of their decisions nullify the traditional constitutional/private law property divide. Internet and private ordering push for the cross-border recognition of virtual or quasi-proprietary entitlements, questioning the fundamental separation between property and contract and the sanctity of the numerus clausus principle. No matter how vigorously legal formants have tried to reinforce the citadel walls, these cosmopolitan 'irritants' have already engendered several interpretative short-circuits, which a state-centric comparative analysis is unable to deconstruct and explain. To overcome the impasse, this paper advocates for the adoption of the functional method to verify the existence of a new global property model, sketch out its main characteristics, and help national legal systems embedding these new cosmopolitan elements, whether within or outside property law