| A precursor to modern commercial law, the Law Merchant emphasised the freedom of contract and alienability of property. |
| What it is about the nature of goods that precludes their market alienability, or the logic of this distinction, is never made clear. |
| Of course, as the honourable member will know, alienability is a defining characteristic of a fee simple title. |
| As Margaret Radin and others have shown, however, alienability is not a necessary condition for property. |
| It emphasised contractual freedom and alienability of property, while shunning legal technicalities and deciding cases ex aequo et bono. |
| In Anglo-Saxon law this mode of justification has been less well received due to its implications for the final alienability of intellectual property. |
