Natural Property Rights

This book introduces a Lockean property theory and shows how that theory guides reasoning throughout property law and policy.

Eric R. Claeys (Author)

9781108844499, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 April 2025

350 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.68 kg

Natural Property Rights presents a novel theory of property based on individual, pre-political rights. The book argues that a just system of property protects people's rights to use resources and also orders those rights consistent with natural law and the public welfare. Drawing on influential property theorists such as Grotius, Locke, Blackstone, and early American statesmen and judges, as well as recent work in in normative and analytical philosophy, the book shows how natural rights guide political and legal reasoning about property law. It examines how natural rights justify the most familiar institutions in property, including public property, ownership, the system of estates and future interests, leases, servitudes, mortgages, police regulation, and eminent domain. Thought-provoking and comprehensive, the book challenges leading contemporary justifications for property and shows how property both secures individual freedom and serves the common good.

Acknowledgments
Table of Legislative Materials
Table of Cases
Table of Multiple Edition Works
Part I. Foundations: 1. Introduction
2. Natural law and rights
3. Practical reason
Part II. The Natural Right to Property: 4. Property's subject matter and interest
5. Property's element and scope
6. Property's conceptual structure
7. Property, natural law, and Nozick
Part III. Property Law: 8. Justifying ownership
9. Limiting ownership
10. Designing property rights
11. Subdividing ownership rights
Part IV. Property in Common Law and Public Law: 12. Common law, duties, and harms
13. Police regulation
14. Eminent Domain
15. Conclusion
Index.

Subject Areas: Property law [LNS]