First Possession Beyond the Law: Adults' and Young Children's Intuitions About Ownership

Article by Ori Friedman and Karen R. Neary

In property law, the first possessor of an object has more right to it than all others, and prior possessors have more rights than subsequent possessors. This Article reviews recent research suggesting these principles are implicit in adults' and young children's reasoning about ownership. To explain this correspondence between law and psychology, we propose that people's ownership reasoning is guided by the assumption that the first person known to possess an object is its owner.


About the Author

Ori Friedman. Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo (e-mail: friedman@uwaterloo.ca).

Karen R. Neary. MASc, Graduate Student, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo.

Citation

83 Tul. L. Rev. 679 (2009)