Nationalisation And Expropriation

Most of the current discussions about the nationalisation of the banks deal with the ideology, e.g. whether governments can run banks properly, whether this is creeping socialism and the like. This is a continuation of the discussion which has been going on for a long time and which we are simply repeating.

No doubt everyone will have their views about the ideology. To a lawyer, however, nationalisation is one of the most fascinating and ancient of all legal topics. It has a history going back centuries, a history of plunder and looting, of passions, of cynicism, of hope and desperation.

The English king Henry VIII seizing monasteries and Karl Marx were only two of the leading exponents of the genre.