There are many laws which have been enacted which affect the way commons are accessed as well as their status. Examples of such legislations are: Wild Life Protection Act, Forest Rights Acts, PESA, Forest Conservation Act, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Biological Diversity Act, Marine Fisheries Regulation Act, CRZ and IPZ, Inland Fisheries Acts, etc.

The term tenure refers typically to the nature of the human relationship with the land, this may refer to an individual as well as to a community or a social group's relationship; the land includes what exists on the land – grass, soil, crop, trees, orchards, water, tuber, fruits, leaves, etc., some tenurial relationships also refer to what is beneath the land. Tenure arrangements are types of ownership systems that vary from region to region in the country and affect the functioning of commons directly and indirectly. There is a plethora of land classification systems that significantly impact the outcomes of common property resources and community control. Variations in tenure systems such as Rayatwari, Mahalwari and Zamindari shape the viability and legitimacy of commons across the country. While in modern land tenure systems, a tenure is conceptualized in five dimensions – access, withdrawal, management, exclusion, and alienation, in reality, tenurial relationships are even more complex. Further, the tenurial relationship may be seasonal, spatial and intermittent. The word tenure refers not only to a codified legally established relationship; but to all relationships that are socially or otherwise considered as legitimate. Discussions on both formal and customary tenurial relationships, which are fluid in nature, may be taken up here.