Sarah Vanuxem's Legal Theory for the Commons and Property
= Sarah Vanuxem is a French legal scholar who works on property law and the commons.
Synthesis from Claude, prompted by Michel Bauwens, inspired by this video.
Bio
Sarah Vanuxem is a French legal scholar who works on Property law and the commons. She is a lecturer in private law (maître de conférences) at the Université Côte d'Azur, formerly Nice Sophia Antipolis, and has also worked with the French agricultural research institute INRA (now INRAE). Her work looks at how the emerging law of the environment is changing the Western legal tradition.
Source: Quæ, author biography for Des choses de la nature et de leurs droits (Place des Libraires listing): https://www.placedeslibraires.fr/livre/9782759232369-des-choses-de-la-nature-et-de-leurs-droits-sarah-vanuxem/
Her doctoral thesis (Sorbonne, 2012) was on Les choses saisies par la propriété ("Things grasped by property"). Property and, in counterpoint, the commons have been a common thread of her research ever since.
Source: Introduction to Des choses de la nature et de leurs droits (Quæ, open access edition): https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/46134/1/9782759232376.pdf
She is listed as a member of the En Communs team, and her book on land was praised by the philosopher Raphaël Larrère and the anthropologist Philippe Descola.
Source: En Communs, "Sarah Vanuxem": https://www.encommuns.net/equipe/sarah-vanuxem/ — and Wildproject, La Propriété de la terre (publisher's page): https://wildproject.org/livres/la-propriete-de-la-terre
Her central argument goes against the usual formula that property emerges from the community. She argues instead that property is already embedded in communities and in the places they live in. Three ideas recur across her work:
- Property is not a sovereign power of one person over an object.
- Things can be seen as milieux (habitats), and owners as inhabitants of them.
- Nature can be protected through the law of things, for example servitudes, without granting it legal personhood.
Publications and ideas
Les choses saisies par la propriété (doctoral thesis, 2012)
The thesis sits between property law and legal theory. It began her long-running interest in property and, as a counterpoint, in the commons. The core question is what property actually "grasps" when someone owns a thing.
Source: Introduction to Des choses de la nature et de leurs droits (Quæ, open access edition): https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/46134/1/9782759232376.pdf
Articles on the owner as inhabitant
Her publication list includes a talk titled "Du propriétaire-souverain au propriétaire-habitant" ("From the sovereign-owner to the inhabitant-owner"). An abstract there suggests that seeing owners as inhabitants of things-as-milieux could support the full recognition of co-ownership and offer a different justification for appropriating informational goods.
Source: Portail Universitaire du droit, "Vanuxem Sarah" (publication list): https://univ-droit.fr/universitaires/4618-vanuxem-sarah
In a 2019 talk she summed up the idea. Rights can be seen as "places" that people, seen as inhabitants, hold in things, seen as habitats. Property does not absorb the thing, and owners only ever hold rights over it. Property is better seen as a power to inhabit than a power to dominate.
Source: "Le droit des communs", talk by Sarah Vanuxem (Dijoncter, 2019): https://dijoncter.info/le-droit-des-communs-intervention-de-sarah-vanuxem-3765
Articles on sectional goods (2016–2020)
She wrote the chapter "Les contrefeux de l'empire : le cas des sectionaux, biens de communautés d'habitants" in the volume L'empire de la propriété, and co-wrote "La propriété sectionale : un modèle de communs pour le retour des paysans ?" with Pierre Couturier (2020).
Source: Portail Universitaire du droit, "Vanuxem Sarah" (publication list): https://univ-droit.fr/universitaires/4618-vanuxem-sarah
Sectional goods (biens sectionaux) are survivals of the old pre-Revolution communal lands, such as pastures, forests and fields. Since 2013, communities have resisted their dismantling. She describes this as a new episode of the "enclosure of the commons", carried out by public authority rather than private owners.
Source: Les Communs d'Abord, "Résistances contre le démantèlement des biens sectionaux" (from her talk at the 2016 Cerisy colloquium): https://www.les-communs-dabord.org/resistances-contre-le-demantelement-des-biens-sectionaux/
The law at issue gives ownership to the municipal legal entity and takes away the inhabitants' power to manage these goods themselves.
Source: Médias citoyens du Diois, review of La propriété de la terre (2020): https://mediascitoyens-diois.info/2020/11/lire-la-propriete-de-la-terre-de-sarah-vanuxem/
La propriété de la terre (Wildproject, 2018)
Her main argument is that property cannot be understood as the "absolute power of an individual over things". Even in modern law, the Civil Code, and its Roman and medieval roots, property is embedded in the community and things are rooted in the commons.
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, catalogue record, La propriété de la Terre: https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb45485435g
She argues that things are milieux, since one can dwell in them, and she makes room for non-humans within the community.
Source: Wildproject, La Propriété de la terre (publisher's page): https://wildproject.org/livres/la-propriete-de-la-terre
She also points to categories already in the Civil Code. "Common things" (air, the sea and its shores) escape private ownership without belonging to cities, and ownerless things such as wild animals are also outside it.
Source: Médias citoyens du Diois, review of La propriété de la terre (2020): https://mediascitoyens-diois.info/2020/11/lire-la-propriete-de-la-terre-de-sarah-vanuxem/
Des choses de la nature et de leurs droits (Quæ, 2020)
This book asks how to protect nature without giving it legal personhood. The usual assumption is that non-humans can only escape being fully available resources by becoming legal persons, which means removing them from the category of "things".
Source: OpenEdition, Des choses de la nature et de leurs droits (Quæ): https://books.openedition.org/quae/41782?lang=en
Vanuxem proposes servitudes instead. This is an old legal tool, theorised by Moses of Ravenna around 1140, for attaching rights to places rather than to people. The Civil Code keeps it as a link between things, not persons. She also reads ecological compensation as a set of relations between pieces of land, not as a commodification of nature.
Source: Veille CEP, review of Des choses de la nature et de leurs droits (2021): https://www.veillecep.fr/2021/02/des-choses-de-la-nature-et-de-leurs-droits-sarah-vanuxem/?print=pdf
The book moves from neighbouring lands (land servitudes) to environmental servitudes, ecological compensation, and communities of inhabitants.
Source: Table of contents, Place des Libraires: https://www.placedeslibraires.fr/livre/9782759232369-des-choses-de-la-nature-et-de-leurs-droits-sarah-vanuxem/
She also uses the communal lands of Article 542 of the Civil Code as an example of genuine collective property. These belong to the inhabitants and not to the commune, and cannot be reduced to individual shares as in an indivision.
Source: Introduction to Des choses de la nature et de leurs droits (Quæ, open access edition): https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/46134/1/9782759232376.pdf
The publisher describes the approach as "a-modern", because it does not rest on the split between object-things and subject-persons.
Source: LGDJ, Des choses de la nature et de leurs droits: https://www.lgdj.fr/des-choses-de-la-nature-et-de-leurs-droits-9782759232369.html
"Des entités légales de la nature avec lesquelles vivre" (2021)
A chapter in Le parlement des liens, co-authored with Camille de Toledo and Marine Calmet, on legal entities of nature.
Source: Portail Universitaire du droit, "Vanuxem Sarah" (publication list): https://univ-droit.fr/universitaires/4618-vanuxem-sarah
La tragédie des enclosures (with Antoine Constantin Caille, Les Liens qui Libèrent, 2026)
Following the poet John Clare, a witness of the English enclosures, the authors describe the loss of the commons for biodiversity and for peasant communities. They call for a "right to roam" (droit à l'errance).
Source: Les Liens qui Libèrent, La tragédie des enclosures (publisher's page): https://www.editionslesliensquiliberent.fr/livre-La_trag%C3%A9die_des_enclosures-9791020922540-1-1-0-1.html
The book takes the Scottish right to roam as a model for crossing boundaries and freeing paths.
Source: Librairie Lirandco, La tragédie des enclosures (book description): https://www.lirandco.fr/ecologie-environnement/1725605-la-tragedie-des-enclosures
The idea also appears in her 2024 presentation of four Clare poems, translated by Caille. There she reads traditional land commons as places inhabited by humans and non-humans.
Source: En Communs, "Quatre poèmes de John Clare sur la tragédie des enclosures" (22 May 2024): https://www.encommuns.net/equipe/sarah-vanuxem/
The excerpt from the book reads one poem as a renunciation of land ownership. Since every bush is inhabited by many living beings, the poet has less claim to appropriate the place than they do. It also notes that French law created an offence of trespass on rural or forest land only in 2023.
Source: Excerpt from La tragédie des enclosures (Numilog): https://excerpts.numilog.com/books/9791020922540.pdf