This study of the boundaries of personal property has an inward and an outward perspective, with the intellectual emphasis on the latter. The inward-looking inquiry considers shares as items of personal property. Nowadays those who think of themselves as shareholders often stand one step removed from the share itself. They hold what this book christens a sub-share. This part of the book asks in what sense shares and sub-shares can be conceived to be things, how those things are alienated, and how they are protected in litigation. The outward-looking inquiry then asks whether personal property can be contemplated as a sub-category of the law of things and, more particularly, as the law of all things locatable in space, alienable, or vindicable in court. The outward inquiry considers three boundaries. Within the law of property the line between realty and personalty proves relatively uncontroversial; the second boundary lies between property and obligations; the third between wealth...
