Acting Like an Owner: Land Claims and Judicial Practices in Twentieth-Century Ghana.

This article examines how transfers of landed property in Ghana during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have shaped social relationships and governance of land rights amid rising land values driven by urbanization, commercial agriculture, and resource extraction. It highlights the coexistence of plural legal systems—statutory, customary, and informal—and the simultaneous recognition of individual and collective ownership, particularly by families and stools (traditional chiefly polities), whose allodial titles remain constitutionally protected. Courts often rely on a combination of oral histories, documentary evidence, and "acts of ownership" to adjudicate disputes, thereby sustaining customary authorities and family claims alongside private ownership. The article also discusses how inheritance laws, notably the Intestate Succession Act (PNDC Law 111), interact with customary practices to influence family dynamics and property rights. Overall, the study illustrates that despite commercialization and legal reforms, collective forms of landholding and traditional authorities continue to play a central role in Ghana’s land governance and social organization.