Finders, keepers, sometimes extended as the children's rhyme finders, keepers; losers, weepers, is an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
adage with the premise that when something is unowned or abandoned, whoever finds it first can claim it for themself permanently. The phrase relates to an
ancient Roman law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
of similar meaning and has been expressed in various ways over the centuries. The 1982 English
Court of Appeal case ''
Parker v British Airways Board'' expanded the phrase, with the judgement of
Donaldson L.J. declaring "Finders keepers, unless the true owner claims the article".
[Parker v British Airways Board (1982) 1 All ER 834](_blank)
/ref> Difficulties arise when exploring how best to define when exactly something is unowned or abandoned, which can lead to legal or ethical disputes, especially as jurisdictions often differ in their approach.
Application
*One of the most common uses of "Finders, Keepers" involves shipwrecks. Under international maritime law, for shipwrecks of a certain age, the original owner may have lost all claim to the cargo. Anyone who finds the wreck can then file a salvage claim on it and place a lien on the vessel, and subsequently mount a salvage operation.
*Philosophies, such as anarcho-capitalism, that advocate a right to own land and other natural resources often appeal to the doctrine of finders keepers in the case of claiming ownership of what was previously unowned (see Terra nullius
''Terra nullius'' (, plural ''terrae nullius'') is a Latin expression meaning " nobody's land".
It was a principle sometimes used in international law to justify claims that territory may be acquired by a state's occupation of it.
:
:
...
).
*In the United States, the Homestead Act
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than of public land, or nearly 10 percent of t ...
allowed people to claim land as their own as long as it was originally unowned and the property was then developed by the claimant.
* In the field of social simulation, Rosaria Conte
Rosaria Conte (14 April 1954 in Rome – 5 July 2016 in Rome) was an Italian social scientist. She was the head of the Laboratory of Agent Based Social Simulation at the ISTC- CNR in Rome, which hosts an interdisciplinary research group working at ...
and Cristiano Castelfranchi
Cristiano Castelfranchi (born 1944 in Rome) is an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Psychology of the Italian National Research Council. He teaches Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Siena. In 2003, he w ...
have used "finders, keepers" as a case study for simulating the evolution of norms in simple societies.Nicole J. Saam and Andreas Harrer: Simulating Norms, Social Inequality, and Functional Change in Artificial Societies
/ref>
See also
* Homestead principle
* Bailment
Bailment is a legal relationship in common law, where the owner transfers physical possession of personal property ("chattel") for a time, but retains ownership. The owner who surrenders custody to a property is called the "bailor" and the ind ...
* Lost, mislaid, and abandoned property
Lost, mislaid, and abandoned property are categories of the common law of property which deals with personal property or chattel which has left the possession of its rightful owner without having directly entered the possession of another person. ...
* Adverse possession
Adverse possession, sometimes colloquially described as "squatter's rights", is a legal principle in the Anglo-American common law under which a person who does not have legal title to a piece of property—usually land ( real property)—ma ...
(" possession is nine-tenths of the law")
* Uti possidetis
''Uti possidetis'' is an expression that originated in Roman private law, where it was the name of a procedure used in litigation about land. It came from a praetorial edict that could be abbreviated "As you possess, so shall you possess". La ...
* ''Usucapio ''Usucapio'' was a concept in Roman law that dealt with the acquisition of ownership of something through possession. It was subsequently developed as a principle of civil law systems, usucaption. It is similar to the common law concept of adverse p ...
''/ Usucaption
* Theft by finding
Theft by finding occurs when someone chances upon an object which seems abandoned and takes possession of the object but fails to take steps to establish whether the object is genuinely abandoned and not merely lost or unattended. In some jurisdi ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Finders, Keepers
Property law
Legal idioms