The Right of Passage Under the Civil Code 2015: A Qualitative Case Study in Vietnam

Abstract

The right of passage is an extremely important right stipulated in The Civil Code 2015. Accordingly, in some cases, this right becomes very necessary for people, because there will be many cases where real estate (mainly land) is surrounded by the real estate of the people or many different owners/users. The owner or person with the right to use real estate will have great difficulty in exploiting and using the real estate, or may even be unable to use the surrounded real estate, without legal intervention. Therefore, Vietnam's civil law has stipulated the right to a passageway if the real estate is surrounded by other real estate. Specifically, this issue is regulated in Article 254 of Vietnam's 2015 Civil Code. Through qualitative research method, the authors will address a number of issues such as: (i) the concept of the right of passage; (ii) Principles for exercising the right of passage; (iii) Conditions for establishing the right of passage; (iv) about the convenience and reasonableness of the passage, (v) Changes in the implementation of the right of passage. From there, the authors will point out the remaining shortcomings in Vietnam related to the right of passage and propose solutions to overcome this problem in the future.