The relationship between a conveyance's validity and its underlying contract has been a classic but unsettled topic for comparative private lawyers over the past three decades. This paper attempts to add positivist and normative observations drawn from property transfer theories and practices in English and Chinese law. A jurisdiction adopting an ‘intent plus’ model does not necessarily recognise a separate intent to convey distinct from the intent in the underlying contract, as exemplified by Chinese law, while a jurisdiction adopting the ‘intent alone’ model does not necessarily deny the separate intent to convey, as exemplified by English law. One advantage for a jurisdiction that takes the separatist approach is its flexibility, so that it can still choose between pure causality, pure abstraction, or context-based abstraction at a later stage. Recent developments show that English and Chinese law are moving towards this approach. As to whether flaws in the underlying contract infect the validity of the conveyance, the English position depends on vitiating factors, whereas the mainstream Chinese judgments tend to be pro-causal. Justifications favouring causality provided in the English and Chinese academia are different, though neither can stand up to scrutiny. The detecting opportunity argument submitted in this paper helps to justify abstraction.

This article considers the legal institution of mahr in Islamic family law from three research perspectives in order to provide insights into the phenomenon's complexity, particularly with regard to current legal practices. In particular, emphasis is placed both on countries where family law is shaped by Islamic traditions (e.g., Morocco) and on countries whose legal traditions do not have a mahr counterpart (e.g., Germany). First, the social and economic function of dower will be described. As a special form of property transfer, mahr will be analyzed in its historical and present shape in theory and practice. Second, the legal conceptualization of mahr in the German legal context will be discussed. The example of Morocco serves to illustrate the changes with regard to mahr because of the process of incorporation of Islamic legal concepts into a national statutory law system. Given the Muslim diaspora, these insights are important contributions to the legal intepretation of mahr in a transnational context.