Are Covenants similar to Easements??

If I said the word Covenant to you, in relation to land, what would you think of?
A few things popped in my mind. Covenants could be; either positive, negative, restrictive, equity has a role to play, promise, deed, freehold, leasehold, contract law and finally, covenants are linked to registered and unregistered land. These are obviously just key words for Covenants.. Any help or advice is much appreciated

A covenant (in the context of land law) is a promise to do or not to do something on or with your own land. A promise to do something is a "positive" covenant and a promise to refrain from doing something is a "restrictive" covenant. An easement is merely a right to use someone else's land. A common example might be a public right of way.

That's not very helpful. An easement is a right over someone else's land, as you say, but this implies a duty/covenant to allow someone to use your land in some way.

Yes, congratulations. And what is your point exactly?

You are under an obligation to observe an easement if you're the owner of a piece of land (the servient tenement) which is burdened by an easement. Non-observance of an easement is, confusingly, otherwise known as a trespass...

My point was that defining an easement as a right over another's land is unhelpful is distinguishing between an easement and a covenant.

Not really. Rather, that is the fundamental difference between a covenant and an easement. A covenant is an obligation pertaining to your own land and an easement is a right over someone else's land.

You have a rather irritating habit of criticising people for attempting to help others in, ironically, the academic help section. Yet you never really provide any constructive advice yourself. Empty vessels?

Not really. Rather, that is the fundamental difference between a covenant and an easement. A covenant is an obligation pertaining to your own land and an easement is a right over someone else's land.

You have a rather irritating habit of criticising people for attempting to help others in, ironically, the academic help section. Yet you never really provide any constructive advice yourself. Empty vessels?

But if an easement (a right over someone else's land) is identical to a covenant that the other person has to allow you to use your land then the distinction is unhelpful in explaining the fundamental difference between the two. For you every easement is a covenant but that is not true (consider how different the law is for each). On your account they are two sides of the same coin.

(If I remember correctly. That being said, I'm also the person who ended their land law paper by writing an essay saying all the fuss about the reform of easements was a waste of time and then blamed easements and all of land law on the murder of Abel in biblical times, even citing an academic to back this opinion up as valid. I'm probably not the major authority for land law...)

I'd have thought an equally important distinction is that a covenant is more contractual in nature, leading to the whole "only the burden of a restrictive covenant can run and it may only run in equity" whereas an easement is based more in property law, can be positive and still bind. Easements are also created in a larger variety of ways.

(If I remember correctly. That being said, I'm also the person who ended their land law paper by writing an essay saying all the fuss about the reform of easements was a waste of time and then blamed easements and all of land law on the murder of Abel in biblical times, even citing an academic to back this opinion up as valid. I'm probably not the major authority for land law...)

That's not an easement; that's a claim to a more intense form of land use akin, perhaps, to exclusive possession (Copeland v Greenhalf). You can't have a restrictive covenant prohibiting you from non-observance of an easement which, I think, is what you're getting at.

The owner of an easement has some sort of property right in the servient tenement. The person with the benefit of a covenant has only a contractual right against the owner of a servient tenement. I think you're over-complicating the distinction which is, perhaps, where the OP's confusion lies.

lol what? This sounds interesting...

I didn't think I was going to do well in Land Law and an essay on easement reform was the last question on the paper I could answer. Problem was I had absolutely no opinion on easement reform so I decided that this may as well be my opinion. I essentially spent 40 minutes writing "There are one or two things which could change but, otherwise, people know how it works, it's worked for 200 years and it lets lawyers get rich so why worry about it?".

I then concluded with something like "There is very little which should be reformed in easement law apart from X, Y and Z. For those who disagree, perhaps they should follow Sara's view and blame the law of easements on Cain for murdering his brother Abel in Biblical times, causing further banishment from the Garden of Eden and thus creating land which needed to be protected by the law. The rest of us will simply be content with what we have"

Worryingly, land law turned out to be my best paper...

Seriously?

That's not very helpful. An easement is a right over someone else's land, as you say, but this implies a duty/covenant to allow someone to use your land in some way.

Ok but do you accept that all easements imply some form of covenant for the person whom the easement is held against?

If you do then if A has an easement over B's land then given your definition of a covenant (an obligation relating to one's own land) the owner of B has a covenant (what it is depends upon what the easement is, if it is the right to light then B has an obligation not to block the light). So given that each entails another the definition of easement and covenant doesn't help given that there is some fundamental difference (which as I have said does in fact exist in law).

Lol. You should ask Mr Deeds what he got in his land law exam.