Review of A. R. Buck, 'The Making of Australian Property Law': The Federation Press, Annandale, 2006, ISBN 978186287 6347, pbk, x + 166 pp, $49.95.

In 'The Making of Australian Property Law', Andrew Buck seeks to place property and law in its uniquely Australian social and political context. Rather than Australian property law being constrained by the 'ghosts' of English feudalism and its consequential doctrines of tenure and estates, Buck asserts that the defining feature of Australian property law since the first half of the nineteenth century has been its egalitarianism.