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This article argues that teachers of environmental ethics must more aggressively entertain questions ofprivateproperty in their work and in their teaching. To make this case, it first introduces the three primary positions onproperty: occupation arguments, labor theory of value arguments, and efficiency arguments. It then contextualizes these arguments in light of the contemporary U.S. wise-use movement, in an attempt to make sense of the concerns that motivate wise-use activists, and also to demonstrate how intrinsic (...) value arguments miss the mark. Finally, it offers some suggestions about further directions for environmental ethics, reasoning that there is a good deal of headway to be gained for environmental ethics by accepting that nature can be owned asproperty, but nevertheless engaging the idea ofprivateproperty critically. (shrink)

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Can the right toprivateproperty be claimed as one of the `rights of mankind'? This is the central question of this comprehensive and critical examination of the subject ofprivateproperty. Jeremy Waldron contrasts two types of arguments about rights: those based on historical entitlement, and those based on the importance ofproperty to freedom. He provides a detailed discussion of the theories ofproperty found in Locke's Second Treatise and Hegel's Philosophy of (...) Right to illustrate this contrast. The book contains original analyses of the concept of ownership, the ideas of rights, and the relation betweenproperty and equality. The author's overriding determination throughout is to follow through the arguments and values used to justifyprivate ownership. He finds that the traditional arguments aboutproperty yield some surprisingly radical conclusions. (shrink)

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Aprivateproperty right is a collection of particular rights that relate to the control of an object. The ground for such moral rights rests on the value of project pursuit. It does so because the individual ownership of particular objects is intimately related to the formation and application of a coherent set of projects that are the major parts of a self-shaped life. Problems arise in explaining how unownedproperty is appropriated. Unilateral acts with regard to (...) an object, e.g., mixing in one’s labor into it, probably don’t ground particular rights toprivateproperty. Nor do bilateral contracts since a stable pre-institutional contract with regard to appropriation is not likely to form. However, a conventional method of appropriation can allow for such appropriation while at the same time preserving the pre-institutional nature of such rights. This theory can also account for a person’sproperty rights in her own body. However, the value of project formation requires that persons have at least someprivateproperty that is to serve as the object of their projects. These positive rights toproperty undermine the libertarian claim that all non-commitment-based rights are negative. However, a further empirical argument is needed in order to justify protecting these positive moral rights toprivateproperty by positive legal rights. (shrink)

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Efforts to protect endangered species by regulating the use of privately owned lands are routinely resisted by appeal to theprivateproperty rights of landowners. Recently, the 'wise-use' movement has emerged as a primary representative of these landowners' claims. In addressing the issues raised by the wise-use movement and others like them, legal scholars and philosophers have typically examined the scope ofprivateproperty rights and the extent to which these rights should influence public policy decisions (...) when weighed against other moral considerations. Whether from an anthropocentric standpoint or from a perspective of moral extensionism, the key question seems to be the extent to which prima facieproperty rights are overridden by other moral interests, not whether such rights claims can reasonably be appealed to at all in public discussions of environmental justice. I argue, however, that a morally extensionist perspective not only introduces more potential defeaters of prima facieproperty rights, but actually strips appeals toprivateproperty rights of their moral significance. Hence, I argue on Rawlsian grounds that appealing toprivateproperty rights in the way that the wise-use movement does is unreasonable in a pluralistic society. In so doing, I show that a Rawlsian perspective may be more congenial to the interests of moral extensionists than is typically thought. (shrink)

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This article is part of a symposium onproperty-owning democracy. In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argued that people in a just society would have rights to some forms of personalproperty, whatever the best way to organise the economy. Without being explicit about it, he also seems to have believed that protection for at least some forms of privacy are included in the Basic Liberties, to which all are entitled. Thus, Rawls assumes that people are entitled (...) to form families, as well as personal associations which reflect their tastes as well as their beliefs and interests. He seems also to have assumed that people are entitled to seclude themselves, as well as to associate with others, and to keep some of their beliefs, knowledge, feelings and ideas to themselves, rather than having to share them with others. So, thinking of privacy as an amalgam of claims to seclusion, solitude, anonymity and intimate association, we can say that Rawls appears to include at least some forms of privacy in his account of the liberties protected by the first principle of justice. -/- However, Rawls did not say very much about how he understands people’s claims to privacy, or how those claims relate to his ideas aboutproperty-ownership. This is unfortunate, because two familiar objections to privacy seem particularly pertinent to his conception of the basic liberties. The first was articulated with customary panache by Judith Thomson, in a famous article on the moral right to privacy, in which she argued that talk of a moral right to privacy is confused and confusing, because privacy rights are really justproperty rights in disguise. The second objection has long been a staple of leftist politics, and is that the association of privacy withprivateproperty means that privacy rights are just a mask for coercive and exploitative relationships, and therefore at odds with democratic freedom, equality and solidarity. If the first objection implies that Rawls is wrong to think that protection for privacy can be distinguished from protection of personalproperty, the second objection implies that Rawls cannot hope to protect privacy without thereby committing himself to the grossest forms of capitalist inequality. -/- In this paper I will not discuss Rawls’ views ofproperty-owning democracy. However, by clarifying the relationship between claims to privacy and claims toproperty-ownership, I hope to illuminate some of the conceptual, moral and political issues raised by Rawls’ ideas, and by work on the concept of aproperty-owning democracy, which he inspired. As we will see, privacy-based justifications ofprivate ownership are not always unappealing, and privacy is sometimes promoted, rather than threatened, by collective ownership. The conclusion draws out the significance of these claims for the idea of aproperty-owning democracy. (shrink)

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Hegel is often read as defendingprivateproperty andproperty rights on the basis of the so-called “developmental thesis,” which holds that the institution ofprivateproperty is a necessary condition for individuals to develop the basic capabilities required for free choice. In this paper, I challenge the developmental thesis, and present my own interpretation of Hegel's justification ofprivateproperty and theory ofproperty rights. Reconstructing Hegel's theory requires that we read (...) the Philosophy of Right as a whole and consider the role ofproperty within the context of the political system that Hegel sketches there, rather than merely looking at theProperty subsection of the work in isolation, as works that argue for the developmental thesis tend to do. (shrink)

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An absolutist concept ofproperty has the power to shape and constrain the public imagination. Libertarian theorists normatively embrace this concept. Yet its influence extends far beyond these proponents, shaping the views of an otherwise diverse array of theorists and activists. This limits the ability of environmentalists, among others, to respond coherently to challenges fromproperty rights advocates in the U.S. I sketch an alternative concept--rooted in practice--that understandsprivateproperty as necessarily embedded in social and (...) ecological relations, rather than constrained by these relations. I argue that this concept can prefigure a more robust environmentalism. (shrink)

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The impending missions to exploit natural resources of celestial bodies may at some point start interfering with the scientific interests, including those of astrobiology, in these bodies. While the legal status of celestial bodies at the highest level is clear, uncertainty has arisen as to the extentprivateproperty rights over such objects or over their resources are legally acceptable, legally impossible, or potentially legal. This also provides for a considerable amount of uncertainty regarding how the legal framework (...) could or may need to be changed to accommodateprivate interests. The article analyzes the two main international treaties relevant from this perspective, as well as their backgrounds, in order to outline the current legal status of celestial bodies and the resulting legal rights and obligations pertinent to bothprivate exploitation and exploration. Based on such an analysis, it concludes by highlighting an approach that could actually incentivize theprivate sector and the science community to work together in a manner conducive to their interests in exploitation and exploration respectively. (shrink)

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La quête de ce qui est appelé de manière si erronée la justice sociale est à notre époque la principale menace à l’égard de la propriété privée. Hayek se trompait quand il concluait que l’expression “justice sociale” est “entièrement creuse et dénuée de signification”. Car ceux qu’on devrait désormais appeler les sociauxdémocrates de tous les partis, et non plus les socialistes, se trompent en maintenant qu’est “socialement” juste l’injustice manifeste consistant à s’approprier des proportions toujours croissantes de richesses et de (...) revenus acquis de manière juste par quelques individus, afin de les transférer à d’autres individus qui ne peuvent prétendre en aucune façon à leur possession.The pursuit of what is so misleadingly called social justice is in our time the main threat toprivateproperty. Hayek was mistaken in concluding that the expression “social justice” is “entirely empty and meaningless”. For what is wrong with those who should now perhaps be called not the socialists but the social democrats of all parties is that they insist on misdescribing as “socially” just the manifest injustice of seizing ever increasing amounts of the justly acquired wealth and income of some people in order to transfer it to others who have no such just claims to its possession. (shrink)

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Lithuania had a different experience in legal regulation ofprivateproperty. There were periods when right toprivate ownership was denied and on the other hand – the periods when right toprivate ownership was respected and protected. Authors wanted to review today’s status of rights toprivateproperty in retrospective. The main purpose of the article is to reveal functions ofprivateproperty in Lithuania. The article analyzes peculiarities of legal regulation (...) ofprivateproperty in Lithuania during different stages of the state’s development. The authors have analyzed the social significance of the right toprivateproperty, how it changed and how it has been reflected in Lithuanian legislation and the case law of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania, paying a particular attention to entrenchment of the right toprivateproperty in the Constitution of Lithuania. The authors evaluate the compliance of the national legal regulation and Article 1 of the First Protocol with the European Convention on Human Rights, and the case law of the European Court of Justice. (shrink)

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No one would deny that sustainability is necessary for individual, business, and national survival. How this goal is to be accomplished is a matter of great debate. In this article I will show that the United States and other developed countries have a duty to create sustainable cities, even if that is against a notion ofprivateproperty rights considered as an absolute. Through eminent domain and regulation, developed countries can fulfill their obligations to current and future generations. (...) To do so, the governments must reject perfectly competitive free market capitalism and the absolute right toprivateproperty, and more fully adopt social welfare capitalism as their economic system. The result will be a sustainable society that balances democracy, individual rights and individual flourishing with the community’s flourishing. (shrink)

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Forprivateproperty to be legitimately recognized as a universal human right, its meaning should pass the test of self-imposability by an end. In this Essay, we argue, negatively, that the prevailing understanding ofprivateproperty cannot plausibly meet this demanding standard; and develop, affirmatively, a liberal conception which has a much better prospect of meetingproperty’s justificatory challenge.Privateproperty, on our account, is an empowering device, which is crucial both to people’s (...) personal autonomy and to their relational equality. The liberal conception of the human right toproperty has both vertical and horizontal significance — it implies respect from both the public authority and other individuals — which means that it is thoroughly political but not necessarily statist. Our account generates important implications, both domestic and transnational. Domestically, it implies that whereas someproperty rights should be subject to strong constitutional protection, state law should facilitate other types ofprivate and non-privateproperty institutions, and theseproperty institutions may well be subject to non-owners’ claims to access and, more broadly, to being treated respectfully. Furthermore, our conception of the human right toproperty requires that everyone have the unusual authority typical of full-blownprivate ownership. Transnationally, our analysis highlights a freestanding dimension of relational justice, which is relevant across borders even given that our distributive obligations are statist. This injunction of relational justice in transnational interactions brings into question the adequacy of the current state of the law, according to which these interactions are mainly governed by choice-of-law rules that conceptualize them as wholly subsumed under the capacities of the parties as citizens of their respective polities. (shrink)

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The impending missions to exploit natural resources of celestial bodies may at some point start interfering with the scientific interests, including those of astrobiology, in these bodies. While the legal status of celestial bodies at the highest level is clear, uncertainty has arisen as to the extentprivateproperty rights over such objects or over their resources are legally acceptable, legally impossible, or potentially legal. This also provides for a considerable amount of uncertainty regarding how the legal framework (...) could or may need to be changed to accommodateprivate interests. The article analyzes the two main international treaties relevant from this perspective, as well as their backgrounds, in order to outline the current legal status of celestial bodies and the resulting legal rights and obligations pertinent to bothprivate exploitation and exploration. Based on such an analysis, it concludes by highlighting an approach that could actually incentivize theprivate sector and the science community to work together in a manner conducive to their interests in exploitation and exploration respectively. (shrink)

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The Origin of the Family,PrivateProperty and the State (1884), was a provocative and profoundly influential critique of the Victorian nuclear family. Engels argued that the traditional monogamous household was in fact a recent construct, closely bound up with capitalist societies. Under this patriarchal system, women were servants and, effectively, prostitutes. Only Communism would herald the dawn of communal living and a new sexual freedom and, in turn, the role of the state would become superfluous.

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Legal Self–Help onPrivateProperty in Classical AthensMatthew R. ChristA remarkable feature of litigation in classical Athens was the high degree of responsibilityprivate citizens bore for initiating, conducting, and executing the judgments of legal actions.1 In the absence of a public prosecutor or an active police force, Athenians engaged in a level of legal self–help that would shock most modern Westerners. While Athenians strongly preferred (...)private to public initiative in legal matters, aspects of legal self–help troubled even them. I focus here on contemporary tensions surrounding the use of legal self–help onprivateproperty, whether carried out by the master (kurios) of a household defending his realm or by outsiders crossing onto others'property under the authority of the city's laws. Legal self–help of either sort raised questions for Athenians concerning the boundaries, both spatial and conceptual, betweenprivate and public spheres. In particular, to what extent did a household and itsproperty, including land and home—all of which could be subsumed by the word oikos—constitute an inviolable state within the state?2Discussion in these pages explores the legal regulation of self– help onprivateproperty and the social attitudes towardprivate space that determined how, and even whether, legal rules were enforced by courts. We begin with evidence that the Athenians granted considerable license to a kurios to exercise legal self–help in defense of his oikos. We may then consider how the authority granted by the city to outsiders exercising legal self–help to cross the boundaries of thisprivate realm represented a problematic challenge to the ideal that the oikos should be inviolable under the democracy.Legal Self–Help in Defense of the OikosIn classical Athens, as in many societies, a man was permitted to defend his home from intruders, even up to the point of exercising lethal force.3 This license of a kurios to use force in his own realm, which scholars sometimes describe as his "Hausgewalt," was not formally articulated as a right in Athens.4 Its reasonable exercise was, however, consistent with both legal regulation and community norms.Although Athens' laws did not, as far as we know, specifically address defense of the home from intruders, they allowed the use of lethal self–help in two circumstances, theft and moicheia, that could well involve incursion upon a man'sproperty (cf. Lys. 1.36). In the case of theft, one law stated, "If a man should steal anything whatsoever at night, it is permitted that his victim in pursuit, kill him, wound him, or lead him by apagōgē to the Eleven if he wish" (Dem. 24.113). According to another law, "If one kills immediately in defense of one'sproperty a man carrying or leading it away by force and unjustly, he is killed with impunity" (Dem. 23.60). Although both laws could apply outside, as well as within, the boundaries of a man'sproperty, MacDowell is probably right that the first law would apply especially to housebreakers, "who would not necessarily use force and so would not be covered by the second law."5An Athenian might also legally kill an intruder caught in illicit sexual relations (moicheia) with one of his female dependents: "If a man should kill another... in intercourse with his wife, mother, sister, daughter, or concubine kept for procreation of legitimate children, he shall not go into exile as a manslayer on that account" (Dem. 23.53; cf. [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 57.3; Lys. 1.30).6 Although this law, like the laws permitting the killing of a thief, did not limit the exercise of this license to the bounds of the home, a man was most likely to discover and take [End Page 522] vengeance on a moichos here. If he did not wish to kill a moichos caught in his home, he could restrain and even abuse and humiliate him until receiving recompense or promise of it.7 This license to restrain even a citizen in one's home for an indeterminate length of time constituted a striking exception to the general rule under the democracy that imprisonment of... (shrink)

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I develop an account ofprivateproperty that preserves public participation and access. A focus on the initial state of common ownership, labour, and the proviso reveals that standard Lockean defences ofproperty ignore important common interests. In consequence,property rights over environmentally significant goods must be less strong than full liberal rights, and I show how these will be designed.

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My aim in this essay is to explore the nature and force of “original-acquisition” justifications ofprivateproperty. By “original-acquisition” justifications, I mean those arguments which purport to establish or importantly contribute to the moral defense ofprivateproperty by: offering a moral/historical account of how legitimateprivateproperty rights for persons first arose ; offering a hypothetical or conjectural account of how justifiedprivateproperty could arise from a propertyless condition; or (...) simply defending an account of how an individual can makeprivateproperty in some previously unowned thing . The “original acquisition” to which such justifications centrally refer, then, may be either the first instance of legitimateprivateproperty in human history , or only the first legitimate acquisition of some particular thing . But in either case, the justification will involve or entail the defense of one or more moral principles specifying how unowned things can become privately owned — that is, the defense of the kind of principles Robert Nozick has called “principles of justice in acquisition.”. (shrink)

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In this paper I explore the limitations of liberal political theory in relation to the notions of publicproperty and public interest. I argue that the fundamentally atomistic and individualistic ontological foundations of the liberal tradition preclude any coherent notion of public goods and public interest.

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This article offers three reflections on the nature of the metaphysical ‘wall’ erected between the ‘Included’ and the ‘Excluded/Other’ by the concept ofprivateproperty and its implementation in a state’s legal apparatus. The first reflection explores the reality of the concept ofprivateproperty, using Louis Althusser’s conception of ideology, in order to demonstrate that the liberal conception ofprivateproperty masks power operating on two levels: the formal, repressive state apparatus, and the (...) deeper, the personal, the real, the actual level, which allows the Included to act upon ego in ways that negatively affect the Excluded/Other found in the ideological state apparatus. The second argues that the masked power that isprivateproperty permits war to be waged by the Included as against the Excluded/Other at two levels: intra-state and inter-state. This reveals a paradox in the distinction between Included and Excluded/Other: while the distinction demonstrates the allocation of power over resources, the reality is that every individual on earth is both Included and Excluded/Other. The final reflection briefly considers what could replaceprivateproperty as a means of allocating goods and resources within a society. (shrink)

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The “private” dimension of social life is problematic, posing conceptual, political, and ecological challenges. Some of these problems arise from the very nature ofprivateproperty as it is enshrined in social life, which demands special privileges be granted to “private” matters on the grounds that these areprivate, because the predominant representation of the involved rights is that they reflect claims of the holders, rather than legitimate claims of society as a whole in allocating (...) responsibilities, benefits, and duties. The claim to the rationality of allocations ofproperty rights, this article argues, must be questioned in light of the kind of commonality that is revealed in a striking manner by environmental issues (although it is not restricted to environmental matters). This questioning makes sense in relation to an analysis of social interactions, beyond the problematic opposition between theprivate sphere and public life. (shrink)

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Suppose libertarians could prove that durable, unqualifiedprivateproperty rights could be created through 'original acquisition' of unowned resources in a state of nature. Such a proof would cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of the modern state. It could also render the approach toproperty rights that I favour irrelevant. I argue here that none of the familiar Lockean-libertarian arguments for a strong natural right to acquisition succeed, and that any successful argument for grounding a right (...) to acquire would have to use my favoured approach toproperty rights - the 'vector-sum' approach. I conclude with some doubts about original acquisition theory and naturalproperty rights. (shrink)

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Is the institution ofprivateproperty part of the natural law? Leo XIII seems to say simply that it is, and many modern Catholic thinkers have followed suit. Aquinas presents a more nuanced view. On the one hand, he denies that the institution ofprivateproperty is “natural” in the strict sense—unlike the ordering of physical goods to general human use. On the other hand, he maintains thatprivateproperty does belong to the ius (...) gentium, which is founded directly upon natural law in the strict sense. I argue that this relegation ofprivateproperty to the ius gentium is necessary in order for Aquinas to coherently maintain that it is licit to “steal” when in dire need, but that this relegation nonetheless does not depriveprivateproperty of the kind of “natural” character which Leo XIII ascribes to it. (shrink)

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The article argues that persons should be conceived as self-owners and entitled to acquireprivateproperty within justifiableproperty conventions because they should be able to live as project pursuers. This is the ‘project pursuit argument’. It leads to a conception of self-ownership that is stringent, but weaker than standard libertarian notions of self-ownership, and to an understanding ofprivateproperty as a convention that has to meet a sufficientarian threshold in order to be justifiable.

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The proposed justification avoids problems that invalidate the familiar entitlement, utility, and interest-based justifications; interpretsprivateproperty as necessary for controlling resources we need for our well-being; recognizes that the possession, uses, and limits ofprivateproperty must be justified differently; and combines the defensible portions of the familiar but unsuccessful attempts at justification with a more complex account that combines the defensible portions of previous justificatory attempts with a new pluralistic approach that treats the right (...) toprivateproperty as a conventional, defeasible, but indispensable right. (shrink)

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In this short essay I argue that the main insight of Murphy and Nagel’s book, The Myth of Ownership, that people have no right to their pre-tax income, is not supported by their claim that the right toprivateproperty is not a natural right. The non-naturalness of the right toprivateproperty, I argue, is irrelevant to their moral argument. The plausibility of their moral conclusion derives from the thesis that people have a right to (...) the fruits of their labor, maintaining, however, that there is no possible conception, morally speaking, of what the fruits of one’s labor are, independent of a system of legal and social norms that constitute the terms of fair bargaining, pricing, etc. People can only have a right to a fair assessment of the added value of their labor, and the latter cannot make any sense independent of the entire system of norms prevailing in the relevant society. I argue that this last conclusion is not affected by the nature of the right toprivateproperty. (shrink)

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The positions onprivate landownership of two libertarian scholars thought to have a wide following in that movement are examined The libertarians —Murray Rothbard and Robert Nozick—hold positions which are untenable. Rothbard's theory is almost indistinguishable from John Locke's and rests on the labor theory of ownership and the admixture theory of labor; standards which are too vague. Nozick believes that making something valuable gives a right of ownership, but again the standard is too ambiguous. And it is necessary (...) to appropriate a thing before one can improve it. The value added theory permits a utilitarian justification of landownership involving the payment of compensation to non-owners. (shrink)

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