A law-and-community approach to compensation for takings of property under the European Convention on Human Rights

Studies of takings of property highlight the increasing penetration of state power into private life. Controversies regularly surround compensation provisions. Many academic analyses and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights have supported the proposition that market value offers the best approximation of just compensation. However, full market value compensation may not be guaranteed if the taking of property fulfils certain legitimate objectives of the ‘public interest’. To unpack the complexity surrounding compensation provisions under the European Convention on Human Rights, this paper adopts and develops a ‘law-and-community’ approach – an important dimension, not previously investigated in the study of takings of property – which sees ‘community’ as networks of social relations, and views law as not only grounded in community but also existing to regulate communal networks. This paper then identifies the limits of both Art 1, Protocol 1 of the ECHR and the current approaches to compensation in the light of this law-and-community approach. In so doing, the paper makes a distinctive contribution by offering a new socio-legal interpretation of controversies surrounding compensation for takings of property beyond the private/public divide and by proposing an alternative framework of engaging law and regulation in wider social life.