Stability and Change in Modern Property Law: A Comparative Approach to the Principle of Numerus Clausus

Winner of the 2026 SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship

This book examines the English and German version of the numerus clausus principle which holds that there is a closed list of permitted property rights.

It challenges recent views that the principle renders property law inflexible and unable to accommodate social and economic changes. Relying on a novel approach combining property theory and comparative research of English and German law, it argues that the restrictions the principle imposes on the creation of new property types actually does accommodate social changes through a process of 'functional transformation' of the existing property rights.

This is a fascinating, unique study, that makes a rigorous, original contribution to property law theory.

Hugh Collins is the Cassel Professor of Commercial Law at the London School of Economics, and Emeritus Vinerian Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford, UK. Previous books include Justice in Dismissal, Marxism and Law, Employment Law 2nd edn, Human Rights at Work (with Bogg, Davies, and Mantouvalou), Labour Law 3rd edn (with Ewing and McColgan), and Philosophical Foundations of Labour Law (ed with Lester and Mantouvalou).

Photo courtesy of Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.