Property’s Elements and Scope

Eric R. Claeys

doi:10.1017/9781108951395.010

5 - Property’s Elements and Scope

from Part II - The Natural Right to Property

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2025

Eric R. Claeys

Show author details

Eric R. Claeys: Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia

Book contents

Get access

Summary

This chapter studies the elements of an interest-based natural property right. To acquire a prima facie right in a resource, the claimant must use it productively and claim exclusivity to its use in terms others will understand. But the prima facie right may be overridden by either of two provisos. The sufficiency proviso limits property rights when a proprietor’s use of a resource does not leave others sufficient access to the same type of resource for their own needs. The necessity proviso limits natural rights when someone who does not hold property in a resource needs access to it to repel some serious threat to life or property. This chapter illustrates legal doctrines for capturing animals and other articles of personal property, occupying unowned land, and appropriating water flow by use. This chapter contrasts productive use with Locke’s treatments of labor, waste, and spoliation, and it contrasts claim communication with Pufendorf and Grotius’s treatments of possession. This chapter also considers familiar criticisms of rights-based property theories, involving hypotheticals with radioactive tomato juice or ham sandwiches embedded in cement.

Keywords

labor productive use claim communication possession sufficiency necessity Aquinas Locke Grotius Pufendorf

Type: Chapter
Information: Natural Property Rights , pp. 82 - 104

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108951395.010 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Angeli, Oliviero. 2015. Cosmopolitanism, Self-Determination, and Territory: Justice with Borders. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.Google Scholar

St. Aquinas, Thomas. 1485/2023. Summa Theologiae, The New Advent, www.newadvent.org/summa/ (last accessed March 29, 2023).Google Scholar

Blackstone, William. 1765–69/1979. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Buckle, Stephen. 1991. Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Claeys, Eric R. 2013. “Productive Use in Acquisition, Accession, and Labour Theory,” in Philosophical Foundations of Property Law, Penner, James E. and Smith, Henry eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 13–46.CrossRef Google Scholar

Claeys, Eric R. 2017. “Labor, Exclusion, and Flourishing in Property Law,” North Carolina Law Review 95 (2): 413–92.Google Scholar

Claeys, Eric R. 2020. “Claim Communication in Intellectual Property: A Comment on Right on Time,” Boston University Law Review Online Forum 100: 4–10.Google Scholar

Dagan, Hanoch. 2021. A Theory of Property. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Daintith, Terrence. 2010. Finders Keepers? How the Law of Capture Shaped the World Oil Industry. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Dworkin, Ronald. 1980. “Is Wealth a Value?” Journal of Legal Studies 9 (2): 191–226.Google Scholar

Ellickson, Robert C. 1993. “Property in Land,” Yale Law Journal 102 (6): 1315–400.CrossRef Google Scholar

Epstein, Richard A. 1979. “Possession as the Root of Title,” Georgia Law Review 13 (4): 1221–43.Google Scholar

Finnis, John. 1998. Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Finnis, John. 2002. “Natural Law: The Classical Tradition,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, Coleman, Jules L., Shapiro, Scott J., and Himma, Kenneth Einar eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–60.Google Scholar

Gordley, James. 2002. “Water Rights,” in Law and Justice in a Multistate World: Essays in Honor of Arthur T. von Mehren, Nafziger, J.A.R. and Symeonides, S. eds. New York: Transnational Publishers, pp. 683–703.Google Scholar

Gordley, James. 2017. “First Possession and the Origin of Property,” in Studi in onore di Antonio Gambaro, Mattei, Ugo et al. eds. Milan: Giuffre, pp. 671–88.Google Scholar

Gordley, James, and Mattei, Ugo. 1996. “Protecting Possession,” American Journal of Comparative Law 54 (2): 293–334.CrossRef Google Scholar

Grotius, Hugo. 1625/1962. De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres, Kelsey, Francis W. trans. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co.Google Scholar

Hart, H.L.A. 1955. “Are There Any Natural Rights?,” The Philosophical Review 64: (2) 175–91.Google Scholar

Helton, Taiawagi, and Rhett, Larson. 2022. “Elements of Prior Appropriation,” in aters and Water Rights, Kelley, Amy K. ed. New York: LexisNexis Matthew Bender, ch. 12.Google Scholar

Johnson, Nicole L. 2007. “Property Without Possession,” Yale Journal on Regulation 24 (2): 205–51.Google Scholar

Kent, James. 1826–30/1971. Commentaries on American Law. New York: Da Capo Press.Google Scholar

Klimchuk, Dennis. 2013. “Property and Necessity,” in Philosophical Foundations of Property Law, Penner, James E. and Smith, Henry eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 47–67.CrossRef Google Scholar

Kramer, Matthew H. 1997. John Locke and the Origins of Private Property: Philosophical Explorations of Individualism, Community, and Equality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Locke, John. 1698/1988. Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

MacLeod, Adam J. 2015. Property and Practical Reason. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Merrill, Thomas W. 1998. “Property and the Right to Exclude,” Nebraska Law Review 77 (4): 730–55.Google Scholar

Mossoff, Adam. 2002. “Locke’s Labor Lost,” University of Chicago Law School Roundtable 9: 155–64.Google Scholar

Mossoff, Adam. 2003. “What Is Property? Putting the Pieces Back Together,” Arizona Law Review 45 (2): 371–443.Google Scholar

Munzer, Stephen R. 1990. A Theory of Property. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Newman, Christopher M. 2011. “Transformation in Property and Copyright,” Villanova Law Review 56 (2): 251–325.Google Scholar

Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic BooksGoogle Scholar

Oberdiek, John. 2008. “Specifying Rights Out of Necessity,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 28 (1): 127–46.Google Scholar

Olsthoorn, Johan. 2018. Two Ways of Theorising ‘Collective Ownership of the Earth,’ in Property Theory: Legal and Political Perspectives, James Penner and Michael Otsuka eds. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 187–214.Google Scholar

Penner, James. 2018. “Rights, Distributed and Undistributed: On the Distributive Justice Implications of Lockean Property Rights, Especially in Land,” in Property Theory: Legal and Political Perspectives, Penner, James and Otsuka, Michael eds. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 138–60.CrossRef Google Scholar

Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. 1840/1994. What Is Property? Kelley, Donald R., and Smith, Bonnie G. eds. and trans. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Pufendorf, Samuel. 1688/1934. De Jure Naturae et Gentium Libri Octo, Oldfather, C.H., and Oldfather, William Abbott trans. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar

Radin, Margaret Jane. 1982. “Property and Personhood,” Stanford Law Review 34 (5): 957–1015.Google Scholar

Rasmussen, Douglas B., and Den Uyl, Douglas J.. 2005. Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar

Rose, Carol M. 1985. “Possession as the Origin of Property,” University of Chicago Law Review 52 (1): 73–88.Google Scholar

Salter, John. 2005. “Grotius and Pufendorf on the Right of Necessity,” History of Political Thought 26 (2): 284–302.Google Scholar

Shiffrin, Seana. 2001. “Lockean Arguments for Private Intellectual Property,” in New Essays in the Legal and Political Theory of Property, Munzer, Stephen R. ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 138–67.Google Scholar

Simmons, A. John. 1992. The Lockean Theory of Rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Singer, Joseph William. 2000. Entitlement: The Paradoxes of Property. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Sreenivasan, Gopal. 1995. The Limits of Lockean Rights in Property. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Tarlock, A. Dan. 2018. Law of Water Rights and Resources. Eagen, MN: Thomson Reuters.Google Scholar

Tully, James. 1980. A Discourse on Property: John Locke and His Adversaries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Van Hecke, M.T. 1954. “Injunctions to Remove or Remodel Structures Erected in Violation of Building Restrictions,” Texas Law Review 32 (5): 521–38.Google Scholar

Waldron, Jeremy. 1988. The Right to Private Property. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Widerquist, Karl. 2010. “Lockean Theories of Property: Justifications for Unilateral Appropriation,” Public Reason 2 (1): 3–26.Google Scholar

Wilson, Bart. J. 2020. The Property Species: Mine, Yours, and the Human Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar