Modern property rights conceive of ownership and possession as belonging to legal individuals, even if the legal individual is not a real person. Corporations, for example, have legal rights similar to American citizens, including many of their constitutional rights. Therefore, the corporation is a juristic person or artificial legal entity, which some refer to as "corporate personhood".
Property rights are protected in the current laws of states usually found in the form of a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. The fifth and the fourteenth amendments to the United States constitution, for example, provide explicitly for the protection of private property:
The Fifth Amendment states:
Nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The Fourteenth Amendment states:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Protection is also found in the United Nations's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17, and in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Article XVII, and in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Protocol 1.
Property is usually thought of in terms of a bundle of rights as defined and protected by the local sovereignty. Ownership, however, does not necessarily equate with sovereignty. If ownership gave supreme authority it would be sovereignty, not ownership. These are two different concepts.
Traditional principles of property rights includes:
control of the use of the property
the right to any benefit from the property (examples: mining rights and rent)
a right to transfer or sell the property
a right to exclude others from the property.
Traditional property rights do not include:
uses that unreasonably interfere with the property rights of another private party (the right of quiet enjoyment). [See Nuisance]
uses that unreasonably interfere with public property rights, including uses that interfere with public health, safety, peace or convenience. [See Public Nuisance, Police Power]