Property Rights

[Name of the Institute]

Property Rights

Introduction

The expansion of federal authority and a new environmental awareness have forced the issue of property rights into the forefront of public debate. The property rights movement contends that the exercise of freedom rests with the individual, and unless the property is used for criminal purposes, it should be free of government supervision. Opponents of this view argue that government is duty-bound to curb individual liberty whenever it disrupts the greater good of society. The debate over property rights in the United States turns on a much larger debate over the nature of federalism, constitutional government, and individual liberty.

John Locke and Property Rights

The most prominent theorist of British liberalism, John Locke's ideas of natural rights, government by the consent of the governed, social contract, the limited state, private property, and revolution greatly influenced all Modern democratic thought, especially in the United States of America. Thomas Jefferson cites Locke's ideas in the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution contains many Lockean principles (Locke, 1821).

Locke's political theory is based on materialist, scientific premises. Humans in their original condition, or state of nature, are "free, equal and independent." From this state of physical freedom, equality, and autonomy, Locke asserts that humans possess the natural rights to "Life, liberty and Estate (property)," or continued existence (self-preservation). This means that murder, theft, slavery, and kidnapping violate a person's rights, but by human reason, Locke believes, each individual knows the law of nature that, like the Golden Rule, tells people that they cannot exercise their freedom to harm anyone else's rights to life, liberty, or property. Most people are reasonable, respecting others natural rights, but some violate others' person or property in criminal ways. Such criminals can be killed by their victims as "beasts of prey" in the state of nature. However, Locke, the Calvinist Puritan, perceives a problem with individuals enforcing the law of nature themselves: human sin. This selfish sin will tend to punish transgressors of rights too harshly, unleashing retaliation and escalating violence. Our "self love" makes us incapable of being judges in our own cases. This dilemma gives rise to government, in Locke's theory.

Property Rights from 1970s to Present

The rise of the environmental movement and subsequent environmental legislation in the 1970s intensified the issue of individual rights of property and governmental regulation of property and land-usage. In 1970 President Richard M. Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which established a federal interest in protecting the environment from the adverse effects of human development. Within a few years, Congress passed all of the laws that currently form the core of American environmental policy, including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act amendments, and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act amendments of 1972, which imposed progressively more stringent requirements on industries and cities to reduce pollution; the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which earmarked money for the Federal Wilderness Service for the purpose of saving plant and animals species listed as endangered, through research and, if necessary, ...