Protection from the deprivation of property without compensation : a comparative study

Abstract

The subject of the 'Protection from the Deprivation of Property without Compensation' is not only one of great academic interest but also of great practical importance in Malta today. These considerations urged me to choose the subject as the topic for my doctoral thesis; which represents the culmination or over five hard but fruitful years at the University of Malta. My objective in choosing to comparative method was to understand better our own national law and to seek ways to improve it. I must stress at the outset that this thesis is mainly concerned with constitutional concept so Although when dealing with 'property' it is inevitable to deal with a great amount of civil law, one will not find in this thesis any discussion on the particular mechanism of any expropriation law. This was beyond the scope of this thesis. Neither will one find in this thesis a discussion of each and every provision in our voluminous Statute Book which might be in violation of our constitutional protection. Any person who has the faintest idea of the Maltese system of law, will realise that such a task would not only have been dangerously subjective but would have run the risk of running into a number of volumes. What I have attempted to do in this thesis is to analyse the constitutional machinery designed to guarantee the protection from the deprivation of property without compensation in Malta especially when compared to the similar machinery in other countries and in particular India, Italy and the United States. I hope this exercise will serve as a stimulus, even faint, to make the necessary constitutional improvements, for a better guarantee of the right to property in the Maltese system of law.