Control of Global Business Transactions via Property? A Multi-disciplinary Approach

Regulatory property pieces together two debated issues familiar to legal scholars of all systems, i.e. the issue of what can constitute an object of property, which constantly raises new questions; and, the consequences of regulatory policies and the fundamental interconnection between private law and public policy objectives. It is a heterogeneous category and it is very difficult to create an exhaustive list of the rights involved, rights which lack explicit legislative recognition but which are the subject of relevant social and legal interests and essentially have in common the fact that they have been created to satisfy specific public policy goals. This paper analyses the role of some illustrative examples of regulatory property (such as milk quotas, emission rights, airport slots, spectrum usage rights) in the context of the modern market economy shaped by multi-level regulation, adopting a multi-disciplinary approach (private law, public law, and law and economics). The aim of this study is to verify whether the emergence of the novel rights under scrutiny – whose recognition is left to doctrine and jurisprudence so that they may benefit only indirectly from the legal protection provided by contract law and tort law – also marks a metamorphosis of property law. To this end, it focuses on the recent introduction of market mechanisms in the chosen sectors, proving the necessary complementarity between private law, public law and sector-specific legislation.