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Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
What Should Inheritance Law Be?
This question addresses interactions between inheritance law, religion, culture, and politics. What changes are relevant since John Locke claimed that political power should not be inheritable, while describing even private-property inheritance in terms of parents' duty to their offspring? In and through the struggles of the French Revolution, the role of the inheritor was substantially changed: interest turns away from the land estate itself in favor of the freedoms of the coming generation. The Code Napoléon, in systematizing a society importantly based on bourgeois property status, declares inheritance as a primary means of accession to that status. Now the estate must be divided among "legitimate" children of the following generation, whose rights demand limitation of parents' freedom to write "Last Wills."
Certain European states, such as Germany, Italy, and France, have struggled over the past two centuries to balance what they see as "legitimate" children's "rights" against concomitant exclusionary effects on newborn "illegitimates." A vast majority of the United States have never worked through this particular tension, since their laws imply that private property is an entirely individual right. There are virtually no restrictions on the property owner's power to write - perhaps with a certain religious fervor that is not at all incidental here - His Last Will and Testament. In the U.S. no one is protected from disinheritance, so long as property owners "retain their senses."
Does this considerable divergence between regimes, separating some of the wealthiest and most powerful states, open up other possible ways of thinking inheritance-law reform? Why should not private property be inherited by the following generation of the polity as a whole, rather than by the deceased owner's children or others specifically elected by her/him?
Information on participating / attending:
Date:
07/11/2005 20:00 - 07/12/2005 19:00
Event venue:
Zentrum für Literaturforschung
Jägerstr. 10-11
Berlin-Mitte
Raum 06
10117 Berlin
Berlin
Germany
Target group:
Scientists and scholars, Students
Email address:
Relevance:
local
Subject areas:
Language / literature, Law, Politics
Types of events:
Entry:
07/01/2005
Sender/author:
Sabine Zimmermann
Department:
Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin (ZFL)
Event is free:
yes
Language of the text:
English
URL of this event: http://idw-online.de/en/event14420
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