We consider the problem of producing an impure public good in various jurisdictions formed through the strategic decisions of agents. Our environment inherits two well-known problems: Under individual decisions, there is a tension between stability and efficiency; Under coalitional decisions, stable jurisdiction structures may fail to exist. The solution, we propose is the use of membership property rights: When a move among jurisdictions is subject to the approval of the agents whom it affects, coalitionally stable jurisdiction structures (...) coincide with those which are efficient. (shrink)

In many countries and resource sectors, the state is devolving responsibility for natural resource management responsibility to ``communities'' or local user groups. However, both policymakers and researchers in this area have tended to ignore the implications of gender and other forms of intra-community power differences for the effectiveness and equity of natural resource management. In the irrigation sector, despite the rhetoric on women's participation, a review of evidence from South Asia shows that organizations often exclude women through formal or informal (...) membership rules and practices. Women may have other ways to obtain irrigation services, but even if they are effective, these other informal ways of obtaining irrigation services are typically less secure. As resource management – and rights to resources – are transferred from the state to local organizations, ensuring women's participation is essential for gender equity in control over resources. Greater involvement of women can also strengthen the effectiveness of local organizations by improving women's compliance with rules and maintenance contributions. Further detailed and comparative research is required to identify the major factors that affect women's participation and control over resources, if devolution policies are to be both equitable and sustainable. (shrink)

Although sovereign jurisdictional authority is not itself a kind of property right for Hobbes, it is the object of the sovereign’s (not the state’s) proprietary rights. Jurisdictional authority for Hobbes is foundationally over persons rather than territory, so that the sovereign’s territorial jurisdiction is parasitic on jurisdiction over persons. Territory nevertheless plays a significant role in determining subjects’ political obligations because the sovereign’s ability to protect subjects is necessary for such obligations, and control over space is necessary to (...) protect subjects. Yet Hobbes shows why the modern ideology of the state does not univocally posit the state as an intrinsically territorial entity. There are two traditions here: The Lockean one that, in grounding jurisdictional authority in private dominion over things, portrays the state as intrinsically territorial, and the Hobbesian one that, in deriving property rights from jurisdictional authority, does not. (shrink)

Özkal-Sanver (Theory Decis 59:193–205, 2005) studies stability and efficiency of partitions of agents in two-sided matching markets in which agents can form partitions by individual moves only, and a matching rule determines the matching in each coalition in a partition. In this study, we present the relationship between stability and efficiency of partitions that is analyzed for several matching rules and under various membership property rights codes, now allowing coalitional moves.

We define two versions of stability and efficiency of partitions and analyze their relationships for some matching rules. The stability and efficiency of a partition depends on the matching rule φ. The results are stated under various membership property rights axioms. It is shown that in a world where agents can freely exit from and enter coalitions, whenever the matching rule is individually rational and Pareto optimal, the set of φ-stable and φ-efficient partitions coincide and it is (...) unique: the grand coalition. Then we define a weaker version of stability and efficiency, namely specific to a given preference profile and find some negative results for stable matching rules. (shrink)

This article deals with the conceptual features and the rational justification of moral rights. For this purpose, the author starts with a common classification of rights, i.e., the distinction between rights in rem and rights in personam. He argues that rights of the first kind can be justified by a two‐fold application of the principle of universalizability, while the latter are based on moral rules concerning special social relations, rules which themselves are founded on the (...) principle of universalizability. This distinction, however, does not suffice to cover a further category of rights that play a very important role in social life, namely the rights of community membership, i.e., the particular rights that exist between the members of a social community. These rights cannot be derived from universalizability alone, but, instead, are based on the idea of social justice. This paper provides a short account of the main principles of social justice, and tries to apply them to property and welfare rights. (shrink)

Translator's Abstract: The right to have rights was never a right to be had. Hannah Arendt's famous formulation of the most elementary right of all, the right to participate in the definition of rights, is not a description of a given right that belongs to one or the other form of law, but an indictment of a deficit in the construction of legality on the basis of the right to withdraw legal protection from members of a community, and (...) therefore to refuse rights. The one and only human right thus turns out to be ungrounded in anything but the idea of its being had: a " property right " that traces back to the legal, philosophical and linguistic definitions of " one's own " since antiquity. Only the gift of the incalculable and of that which cannot possibly be legitimated can ground the autarchic self-relation of having: ungrounded in the rationally organized nature of any given, possessing the right to membership in a political community turns out to be permission to freely transfer this possession to another, without expectation of a return. (shrink)

This article argues against the view that affirmative action is wrong because it involves assigning group rights. First, affirmative action does not have to proceed by assigning rights at all. Second, there are, in fact, legitimate “group rights” both legal and moral; there are collective rights—which are exercised by groups—and membership rights—which are rights people have in virtue of group membership. Third, there are continuing harms that people suffer as blacks and claims (...) to remediation for these harms can fairly treat the (social) property of being black as tracking the victims of those harms. Affirmative action motivated in this way aims to respond to individual wrongs; wrongs that individuals suffer, as it happens, in virtue of their membership in groups. Finally, the main right we have when we are being considered for jobs and places at colleges is that we be treated according to procedures that are morally defensible. Morally acceptable procedures sometimes take account of the fact that a person is a member of a certain social group. (shrink)

This paper addresses the rights-ascription problem—the problem of determining what properties or characteristics one must have to qualify for fundamental rights. As argued here, one traditional response to this problem—the “humanity standard”—fails because rather than recognizing the problem as one of moral predication regarding actual individuals, it accepts nominal membership in a vaguely defined class (e.g., “humanity”) as adequate grounds for ascribing these rights. This failure encourages the hypothesis pursued here, viz., that qualifying for fundamental (...) class='Hi'>rights is a matter of whether, given their specific nature, certain individuals (whether human or not) can benefit from the distinctive normative benefits of the fundamental rights ascribed to them. The paper uses a significantly modified rendition of Feinberg’s analysis to argue that only individuals who have or are capable of having certain interests, those that are for their own sake as is their due, qualify to make fundamental rights-claims. Of paramount importance here is the relationship between having such interests and having a “transitive due”; i.e. the psychological capacity to benefit from the moral respect and deference afforded oneself by others when asserting or exercising one’s fundamental rights. (shrink)

This book develops an “idiomatic” foundational theory of the self and its moral obligations. It then employs this theory to answer a variety of questions about legal obligation, political authority, community, and international justice. It argues that we ought to obey a particular community’s laws and government commands, so long as our government restricts itself to protecting classical liberty and individual property rights under the rule of law. It further argues that people today should ideally live in confederated, (...) legally sovereign nation-states or nation-unions. Finally, it suggests that we have greater obligations to our compatriots than we do to foreign citizens, although we will often have pressing moral reasons to obey foreign laws while abroad, grant citizenship to outsiders who wish to join us, and help relieve foreign people’s misery. (shrink)

The global distributive implications of automatically allocating political membership according to territoriality (jus soli) and parentage (jus sanguinis) principles have largely escaped critical scrutiny. This article begins to address this considerable gap. Securing membership status in a given state or region--with its specific level of wealth, degree of stability, and human rights record--is a crucial factor in the determination of life chances. However, birthright entitlements still dominate both our imagination and our laws in the allotment of political (...) membership to a given state. In this article we explore the striking conceptual and legal similarities between intergenerational transfers of citizenship and property. The analogy between inherited citizenship and the intergenerational transfer of property allows us to use existing qualifications found in the realm of inheritance as a model for imposing restrictions on the unlimited and perpetual transmission of membership--with the aim of ameliorating its most glaring opportunity inequalities. (shrink)

A common view of politics is that it is reducible to applied ethics. If politics, in a classic phrase, is about “who gets what, when, and how,” then the task of normative political theory would simply be to tell us who is morally entitled to get whatever the “what” is in that statement.This view, however, can easily reduce politics to a dizzying vortex of actions to assess from an ethical perspective. And while the task of moral philosophy may be precisely (...) to articulate principles by which to pass such judgment, the focus of political theory lies elsewhere.To study and assess politics means attending to the institutional frameworks and structural conditions that enable or constrain human action to begin with. The question for normative political theory, in other words, is whether the organizational structure of a given society—embodied in its decision-making procedures, its distribution of power, and its defining patterns of production, reproduction, and distribution—is defensible or not.This question of justice in the institutional makeup of society has not been entirely ignored in animal rights literature. Animal advocates have always been clear about the massive societal ramifications of dismantling the speciesist order. Likewise, rights theorists and activists have often proposed concrete legal measures for improving the protection of animals, be it by piecemeal welfare reform in animal agriculture, by the abolition of specific practices in biomedical research, or by seeking the equivalent of human rights for select species like great apes or dolphins. The field has also seen fierce debate among animal advocates about the appropriate strategies for engaging with the state and the legal system.Nonetheless, most discussions have been about what it means to treat individual animals with respect, and not about what is required of a political order aspiring to just treatment of all species. In fact, it is only in the last decade that the issue of political justice has taken up a place at the center of animal ethics.Though the field is still developing, we may take it as a sign of maturity that it can now sport its first “short introduction” book: Alasdair Cochrane's Should Animals Have Political Rights? (2020). Its appearing as part of the Polity Press series Political Theory Today further attests to the book's timeliness.The starting point of Cochrane's book—and of political animal studies in general—is that political relations between humans and other animals are not optional but inevitable. Other animals live among us, and the way we organize our societies has a massive impact on the lives of other sentient animals both inside and outside the borders of our human communities. Assuming that these creatures possess intrinsic value as experiencing individuals with morally relevant interests, the question seems inescapable: What kind of polity can accommodate for the multispecies character of our communities and embody justice for all sentients? Cochrane's answer is largely the same as the one he offered in his previous book, Sentientist Politics: A Theory of Global Inter-Species Justice (Oxford University Press, 2018), where he laid out his full vision of a postnational and species-neutral “cosmozoopolis.”The present book is much more concentrated and written as an accessible introduction for readers new to the field. Over seven short chapters, Cochrane reconstructs his argument for an interspecies democracy by assessing a series of arguments and propositions drawn from previous literature on the topic.The first notion to be scrutinized is the popular idea that animal welfare legislation is enough to secure respect for animals. Here, Cochrane acknowledges that welfarism goes some way toward safeguarding animal interests, but he also stresses that its historical record has been disheartening. Welfarism protects animals only insofar as their protection coincides with human interests, and this is far from enough to ensure respect for the animals’ intrinsic value.The second line of argument tries to push beyond welfarism by claiming constitutional protection for animals. By this move, reformers hope to place animal interests on an equal footing with human interests and prevent the overriding of the former in the name of human entitlements (to property, artistic expression, freedom of science, and so forth). Looking at real-world cases, however, Cochrane finds that these constitutional provisions tend to be sidelined when they come into conflict with the interests of big agribusiness.Noting that more than constitutional protection is needed, Cochrane turns to a third set of arguments about legal personhood for animals. Winning personhood for animals would certainly constitute a radical step toward equalizing the interests of different species. Nonetheless, Cochrane argues that personhood alone would be insufficient. Intrinsic value, to him, cannot be fully respected unless animals win the political right to have their interests factor into society's articulation of the public good. As sentient beings, we can all make a claim on the political communities we are part of to not only recognize us as members but furnish us with the means to live well.The fourth and final step for Cochrane is to argue that democratic representation for animals is necessary for realizing these political membership rights. Without representation, he contends, political rights risk being watered down, leaving animals with much less than they are entitled to as sentient beings. Cochrane critically discusses several different models for how this representation could be organized. While he is partial to a system where specially trained human representatives are tasked with voicing the animals’ interests in the legislative process, he leaves many of the practicalities open for future experimentation.Readers familiar with the field of political animal studies will find little new in Should Animals Have Political Rights? For students new to the field, however, Cochrane's book does an excellent job introducing the main issues in a very accessible format. Students of “regular” political science will also benefit from the book's fresh challenge to the discipline's understanding of “the political” as well as its important insights into the relationship between individual and political rights. (shrink)

We examined attitudes as one potential influence on the behavioral intentions of three stakeholder groups commonly in conflict. Business managers (n = 97), government environmental regulators (n = 69), and active members of pro-environmental groups (n = 49) were surveyed to assess the differences among these groups in their attitudes toward property rights, environmental regulation, and technology. We compared the influence of these attitudes and stakeholder group affiliation on intentions to engage in pro-environmental behavior. The attitudes measures explained (...) a significant amount of the variance in behavioral intention, even after group membership was controlled. Theoretical implications of these findings for stakeholder theory are discussed along with some practical applications of these findings for stakeholder negotiations and management practices. (shrink)

This paper examines how the intercultural conception of human rights, fueled by the modes of reciprocal recognition associated with Hegel’s social philosophy, draws on traditional understandings of human dignity while avoiding the essentialism associated with those understandings. Part 1 summarizes core elements of an intercultural theory of human rights while addressing the general question of how that theory accommodates an understanding of the relationship of human dignity and human rights. Part 2 presents the intercultural approach as committed (...) to a view of human dignity focused on the intrinsic worth of individuals, but understood, not—with Kant—as an anthropologically inherent property, but as one forged in relations of intersubjective recognition. Part 3, critically engaging arguments of C Beitz and J Habermas, claims that an intercultural approach entails a status-based conception of human dignity, one that construes the latter, not as a metaphysically conceived inherent quality, but as a function of membership in a social order supportive of both liberal right claims and a republican commitment to rights systems generally. Drawing on the work of Hegel and critically engaging the position of A Sangiovanni, Part 4 construes human dignity in terms of a doctrine of human rights expressive of a common humanity, one understood, however, not as an essential attribute of human beings, but in terms of a globally realized legal-political order whose members are dispositionally committed to the worth of all members of the human community and the value of human community itself. Critically appropriating the work of H Arendt for the intercultural theory, Part 5 considers the centrality of actual politics to a dignitarian account of human rights. Part 6 construes human dignity, again with Kant, in terms of the principle of autonomy, but one understood, not abstractly, but—engaging Pico della Mirandola—as the fallibilistically conceived process of social learning on the part the members of the human community. Part 7 considers how the intercultural view, with the idea of social practice expressive of collective human agency, accommodates a concept of human dignity understood as the “foundation”—nuanced and variegated—of human rights. Part 8 details the specific normativity of an intercultural conception, asserting that despite and even because of its attention to the empirical realities of social, historical, and political life, that conception remains committed, as with essentialist views, to context-transcending norms capable of calling into question actual practices and policies. Here, recourse is had to a concept of recognition understood both as a principle of evaluation and as a social practice encompassing the activity of individuals and groups engaged in the discourse on human rights. (shrink)

_Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations,_ first published in 1977, comprehensively examines the general justifications for systems of private property rights, and discusses with great clarity the major arguments as to the rights and responsibilities of property ownership. In particular, the arguments that hold that there are natural rights derived from first occupancy, labour, utility, liberty and virtue are considered, as are the standard anti-property arguments based on disutility, virtue and inequality, and the belief that (...) justice in distribution must take precedence over private ownership. Lawrence Becker goes on to contend that there are four sound lines of argument for private property that, together with what is sound in the anti-property arguments, must be co-ordinated to form the foundations of a new theory. He therefore expounds a concise but sophisticated theory of property that is relevant to the modern world, and concludes by indicating some of the implications of his theory. (shrink)

Introduction : doing the right thing -- Utilitarianism -- Libertarianism -- Locke : property rights -- Markets and morals : surrogate motherhood, military service -- Kant : freedom as autonomy -- Rawls : justice as fairness -- Distributive justice : equality, entitlement, and merit -- Affirmative action : reverse discrimination? -- Aristotle : justice and virtue -- Ability, disability, and discrimination : cheerleaders and golf carts -- Justice, community, and membership -- Moral argument and liberal toleration -- (...) Morality and law : same-sex marriage, for and against. (shrink)

The traditional Lockean justification of property rights has been argued to be no longer valid in a world in which much wealth does not derive from acquisitions of natural resources, and in which much property, such as money, is intangible. This means that libertarians need to reconsider whether and why property rights are justified for objects that fall outside of the scope of the Lockean justification. This paper gives a justification of property rights (...) in relation to modern money, which uses the self-ownership principle as its central premise. Since modern money is a form of credit, I start with a justification of credit property rights. I then consider both money under gold convertibility and present-day fiat systems, showing that the justification of credit property rights remains valid under these conditions. (shrink)

In the first part of the text the distinction between first- and second-order impartiality, along with Brian Barry?s thorough elaboration of their characteristics and the differences between them, is examined. While the former impartiality is related to non-favoring fellow-persons in everyday occasions, the latter is manifested in the institutional structure of society and its political and public morality. In the second part of the article, the concept of public impartiality is introduced through analysis of two examples. In the first example, (...) a Caledonian Club with its exclusive membership is considered as a form of association which is partial, but nevertheless morally acceptable. In the second example, the so-called Heinz dilemma has been reconsidered and the author points to some flaws in Barry?s interpretation, arguing that Heinz?s right of giving advantage to his wife?s life over property rights can be recognized through mitigating circum-stances, and this partiality can be appreciated in the public sphere. Thus, public impartiality imposes limits to the restrictiveness and rigidity of political impartiality implied in second-order morality. (shrink)

The dominant approach to environmental policy endorsed by conservative and libertarian policy thinkers, so-called “free market environmentalism”, is grounded in the recognition and protection of property rights in environmental resources. Despite this normative commitment to property rights, most self-described FME advocates adopt a utilitarian, welfare-maximization approach to climate change policy, arguing that the costs of mitigation measures could outweigh the costs of climate change itself. Yet even if anthropogenic climate change is decidedly less than catastrophic, human-induced (...) climate change is likely to contribute to environmental changes that violate traditional conceptions of property rights. Viewed globally, the actions of some countries—primarily industrialized nations—are likely to increase environmental harms suffered by other countries—less developed nations that have not made any significant contribution to climate change. It may well be that aggregate human welfare would be maximized in a warmer, wealthier world, or that the gains from climate change will offset environmental losses. Yet such claims, even if demonstrated, would not address the normative concern that the consequences of anthropogenic global warming would infringe upon the rights of people in less-developed nations. As a consequence, this paper calls for a rethinking of FME approaches to climate change policy. (shrink)

Western attempts to obtain Chinese compliance with intellectual property rights have a long history of failure. Most discussions of the problem focus on either legal comparisons or explanations arising from levels of economic development (based primarily on the example of U.S. disregard for such rights during the 18th and 19th centuries). After decades of heated negotiation, intellectual property rights is still one of the major issues of misunderstanding between the West and the various Chinese political (...) entities. This paper examines the sources of this problem from the standpoint of traditional Chinese social and political philosophy (specifically Neo-Confucianism). It points out that the basic assumptions about the nature of intellectual property, which arose during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe, are fundamentally at odds with the traditional Chinese view of the role of intellectuals in society. It suggests that policies which do not take these differences into account, but which attempt to transfer Western legal concepts without the underlying social constructs are responsible for much of the lack of success in the area of intellectual property rights. (shrink)

This book presents a theory of habitat rights for wild animals, positioning animal property rights within the existing institution of property and discussing the practical implications of giving property rights to animals.

Property rights of personal data have been advocated for some time. From the perspective of economics of law some argued that they could lower transaction costs for contracts involving personal data. This may be the case, but new transaction costs are introduced by propertization and the issue has not been settled. In this paper, I focus on a different and potentially more important aspect. In the actual situation, data collectors externalize costs and internalize benefits. An ownership regime that (...) enables every citizen to hold a personal data account, like a bank account, and that gives people ownership rights over secondary use of personal data could correct these misallocations. I hope to shed new light on the normative implications of the issue by offering normative justifications for property rights of personal data (Sections 2–4). Secondly, I present fundamental goals and building blocks of a property regime of personal data (Section 5) and, thirdly, I illustrate how income from personal data ownership could for instance contribute to financing pensions under proper regulation (Section 6). (shrink)

Property rights of personal data have been advocated for some time. From the perspective of economics of law some argued that they could lower transaction costs for contracts involving personal data. This may be the case, but new transaction costs are introduced by propertization and the issue has not been settled. In this paper, I focus on a different and potentially more important aspect. In the actual situation, data collectors externalize costs and internalize benefits. An ownership regime that (...) enables every citizen to hold a personal data account, like a bank account, and that gives people ownership rights over secondary use of personal data could correct these misallocations. I hope to shed new light on the normative implications of the issue by offering normative justifications for property rights of personal data (Sections 2–4). Secondly, I present fundamental goals and building blocks of a property regime of personal data (Section 5) and, thirdly, I illustrate how income from personal data ownership could for instance contribute to financing pensions under proper regulation (Section 6). (shrink)

In “Property Rights and the Resource Curse” Leif Wenar argues that the purchase and sale of resources from certain countries constitutes a violation of property rights, and the priority in reforming global trade should be on protecting these property rights. Specifically, Wenar argues that the U.S. and other western liberal democracies should not be complicit in the trade of so-called cursed resources, and the extant legal system can be used to end the trade in (...) cursed resources by prohibiting the importation of cursed resources, litigating against companies that operate in resource-cursed countries, and imposing trade tariffs on third party countries’ exports if they trade in cursed resources. In this paper, I show that while Wenar is correct that the trade in cursed resources is morally objectionable and therefore creates additional moral obligations for participants in that trade, his normative assessment fails to take account of the complexity of the resource curse and his prescriptive proposal for clean trade will not reduce harm in resource-cursed countries. I suggest that the reduction of harm, rather than the enforcement of property rights, should be the normative and practical focus in evaluating and reforming trade in natural resources. (shrink)

In “Property Rights and the Resource Curse” Leif Wenar argues that the purchase and sale of resources from certain countries constitutes a violation of property rights, and the priority in reforming global trade should be on protecting these property rights. Specifically, Wenar argues that the U.S. and other western liberal democracies should not be complicit in the trade of so-called cursed resources, and the extant legal system can be used to end the trade in (...) cursed resources by prohibiting the importation of cursed resources, litigating against companies that operate in resource-cursed countries, and imposing trade tariffs on third party countries’ exports if they trade in cursed resources. In this paper, I show that while Wenar is correct that the trade in cursed resources is morally objectionable and therefore creates additional moral obligations for participants in that trade, his normative assessment fails to take account of the complexity of the resource curse and his prescriptive proposal for clean trade will not reduce harm in resource-cursed countries. I suggest that the reduction of harm, rather than the enforcement of property rights, should be the normative and practical focus in evaluating and reforming trade in natural resources. (shrink)

Should property owners have a unique right to express their opinion just because they own property? While current law recognizes owners’ rights to express their voices in certain instances, it does not provide comprehensive and coherent answers to this question. This article provides an analytical framework for recognizing the owners’ right to voice as an independent property entitlement within the owners’ property bundle of rights and delineates its boundaries. Yet even when the owners’ voice (...) is property-dependent, there is a difference between voice that facilitates the realization of another property entitlement (such as the right to exclude, use, or trade) and voice that is constitutive to ownership in and of itself. Only the latter instances justify recognition of the owners’ right to a voice as an independent property entitlement. By examining different branches of both tangible and intellectual property law, such as inheritance law, eminent domain, homeowners’ association law, zoning law, and copyright law, this article demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed analytical framework in explaining certain parts of the current law and suggests modifications of other parts. (shrink)

The primary theme of this paper is the normative case against ownership of one's genetic information along with the source of that information (usually human tissues samples). The argument presented here against such “upstream” property rights is based primarily on utilitarian grounds. This issue has new salience thanks to the Human Genome Project and “bio-prospecting” initiatives based on the aggregation of genetic information, such as the one being managed by deCODE Genetics in Iceland. The rationale for ownership is (...) twofold: ownership will protect the basic human rights of privacy and autonomy and it will enable the data subjects to share in the tangible benefits of the genetic research. Proponents of this viewpoint often cite the principle of genetic exceptionalism, which asserts that genetic information needs a higher level of protection than other kinds of personal information such as financial data. We argue, however, that the recognition of such ownership rights would lead to inefficiency along with the disutility of genetic discoveries. Biomedical research will be hampered if property rights in genes and genetic material are too extensive. We contend that other mechanisms such as informed consent and strict confidentiality rules can accomplish the same result as a property right without the liabilities of an exclusive entitlement. (shrink)

A private property 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 unowned property is appropriated. Unilateral acts with regard (...) to an object, e.g., mixing in one’s labor into it, probably don’t ground particular rights to private property. 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’s property rights in her own body. However, the value of project formation requires that persons have at least some private property that is to serve as the object of their projects. These positive rights to property 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 to private property by positive legal rights. (shrink)

The preservationist duties that conservationists would lay upon landowners to protect the natural environment obviously interfere with what those people do with their land. That is often taken to be an equally obvious ? albeit possibly justifiable ? violation of their rights in that property. But to say that, as landowners often do, would be to imply that property rights somehow embrace a ?right to destroy?. Closer inspection suggests that they do not. That would be a (...) further right, additional to and independent of all the component rights standardly associated with the right to private property. A right to destroy is implicit neither in the concept nor in the justifications of property rights, as they are standardly conceived. Conservationist policies cannot, therefore, properly be opposed on the grounds that they would necessarily violate people's property rights. (shrink)

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 extent private property 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 accommodate private 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 both private exploitation and exploration. Based on such an analysis, it concludes by highlighting an approach that could actually incentivize the private sector and the science community to work together in a manner conducive to their interests in exploitation and exploration respectively. (shrink)

Efforts to protect endangered species by regulating the use of privately owned lands are routinely resisted by appeal to the private property 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 of private property 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 facie property 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 facie property rights, but actually strips appeals to private property rights of their moral significance. Hence, I argue on Rawlsian grounds that appealing to private property 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)

Eighty percent of (commercial) genetically engineered seeds (GES) are designed only to resist herbicides. Letting farmers use more chemicals, they cut labor costs. But developing nations say GES cause food shortages, unemployment, resistant weeds, and extinction of native cultivars when “volunteers” drift nearby. While GES patents are reasonable, this paper argues many patent policies are not. The paper surveys GE technology, outlines John Locke’s classic account of property rights, and argues that current patent policies must be revised to (...) take account of Lockean ethical constraints. After answering a key objection, it provides concrete suggestions for implementing its ethical conclusions. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Corporate property rights present an interesting challenge to the liberal conception of property rights, for it is unclear that the self-respect of individuals is promoted by the existence of a system of property rights for corporations. I argue that it is difficult even to identify who the individuals are who are the owners of large corporations, and why these individuals should be given the same claims, protections and immunities as other property rights (...) holders since the liabilities of corporate property rights holders are not the same as of those, for instance, who own their own homes. In this paper I first try to understand who it is who owns the large corporation. Secondly, I show that the limited liability of these corporate property owners makes the justification of corporate property rights quite difficult, from the classical liberal perspective. I end with a few brief remarks on changes in legal policy which would be consistent with my arguments on the nature and justification of corporate property rights. (shrink)

The paper argues that members of future generations have an entitlement to natural resources equal to ours. Therefore, if a currently living individual destroys or degrades natural resources then he must pay compensation to members of future generations. This compensation takes the form of “primary goods” which will be valued by members of future generations as equally useful for promoting the good life as the natural resources they have been deprived of. As a result of this policy, each generation inherits (...) a “Commonwealth” of natural resources plus compensation. It is this inherited “Commonwealth” which members of that generation must then pass on to members of the next generation. Once this picture is accepted, the standard bundle of property rights is problematic, for it takes the owner of a constituent of the Commonwealth to have the right to “waste, destroy or modify” that item at will. This paper therefore presents a revised set of property rights which takes seriously the idea that each generation has an equal claim on the resources that nature has bequeathed us, whilst allowing certain effects on those natural resources by each generation, and a degree of exclusive use of those natural resources owned by an individual. (shrink)

‘It is much more difficult than is often admitted to make a strong case for the ownership of computer software.’ This closely argued study of the strengths and weaknesses of the case for intellectual property rights and against software piracy is based on material contained in the author’s joint work with Douglas Adeney, Computer and Information Ethics, Greenwood Press, an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, INC., Westport, CT, forthcoming May, 1997. The author is a member of the School (...) of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University, PO Box 588, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2650 Australia; tel 61 69 33 2372; fax 61 69 33 2733; email [email protected] wishes to acknowledge the contribution to this paper of Douglas Adeney of the University of Melbourne. (shrink)

The ultimate aim of this dissertation is to determine whether libertarian theories of property can be adequately grounded in Locke's theory of natural rights. I defend the thesis that Locke's theory has no room for a fundamental commitment to natural rights, including property rights. ;In the first three chapters, I challenge each component of the dominant interpretation of Locke's theory of property in this century, viz., that of C. B. Macpherson. In Chapter One, I (...) criticize Macpherson's claim that Locke's view allows unlimited appropriation. In Chapter Two, I agree with Macpherson that Locke defended a state in which the franchise was restricted to those who held significant property, viz., land. However, this can be reconciled with an initial contract into civil society that meets certain standards of rationality and fairness. Thus, while political power is not equally distributed in the state Locke describes, that is not necessarily inconsistent with a rational, free, and voluntary social contract. This shows that we need not see Locke as committed to the interests of the wealthiest members of society. In Chapter Three, I agree with Macpherson that Locke's view is that the purpose of contracting out of the state of nature is the protection of one's property. But I briefly argue that Macpherson does not take seriously Locke's concept of property right and the wide range of objects that count as property. If we pay careful attention to Locke's terminology, we can see that although the purpose of the state is the protection of property, that does not guarantee greater protection for the wealthy than it ensures the poor. ;In Chapter Four, I challenge a quite different thesis. James Tully has argued that Locke did not defend private property at all, but attacked it. I criticize this interpretation on the grounds that Locke explicitly allows certain practices that Tully takes to be violations of the law of nature as Locke construes it. I also criticize the claim that certain developments in a commercial economy, such as the consumption of valuable land, necessarily violate the law of nature. In addition, I argue that the idea of conventionally established property rights is inconsistent with Locke's account of how and why government comes to be established. ;In Chapter Five, I provide an account of the principles underlying Locke's account of rights, both within and without civil society. I argue that Locke's view is improperly construed as a view which gives pride of place to rights. Rather, rights are almost always derivative from duties, and in those cases where they are not derivative, they are subordinate to certain primary duties that oblige us in virtue of our status as God's creations. (shrink)

This paper argues that intellectual property rights are incompatible with Rawls’s principles of justice. This conclusion is based upon an analysis of the social stratification that emerges as a result of the patent mechanism which defines a marginalized group and ensure that its members remain alienated from the rights, benefits, and freedoms afforded by the patent product. This stratification is further complicated, so I argue, by the copyright mechanism that restricts and redistributes those rights already distributed (...) by means of the patent mechanism. I argue that the positions of privilege established through both the patent and the copyright mechanisms are positions that do not “allow the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all.” They do not “benefit the least advantaged.” Nor are they “open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.” In making this argument I critically assess the utilitarian defense of intellectual property rights and find it insufficient to respond to the injustices manifest in our current arrangement for the protection of intellectual property rights. (shrink)

Property rights are important institutions that influence economic performance and reflect the historical, cultural, and political realities of particular societies. Drawing on a variety of concepts from legal and economic studies, a framework for explaining the origin and evolution of property rights is developed and applied to the specific case of changing ground water rights in Nebraska. The Nebraska case is an interesting example of reliance on local control in regulating water use. Despite the importance (...) of local initiatives in ground water management, this case also illustrates the need for external support from the judicial and legislative systems. The evolution of ground water property rights in Nebraska, as in other parts of the United States, has been conditioned by historical circumstances and changing values and attitudes as well as by economic and political forces. (shrink)

Two ethical frameworks have dominated the discussion of organ donation for long: that of property rights and that of gift-giving. However, recent years have seen a drastic rise in the number of philosophical analyses of the meaning of giving and generosity, which has been mirrored in ethical debates on organ donation and in critical sociological, anthropological and ethnological work on the gift metaphor in this context. In order to capture the flourishing of this field, this article distinguishes between (...) four frameworks for thinking about bodily exchanges in medicine: those of property rights, heroic gift-giving, sacrifice, and gift-giving as aporia. These frameworks represent four different ways of making sense of donation of organs as well as tissue, gametes and blood, draw on different conceptions of the relations between the self and the other, and bring out different ethical issues as core ones. The article presents these frameworks, argues that all of them run into difficulties when trying to make sense of reciprocity and relational interdependence in donation, and shows how the three gift-giving frameworks (of heroism, sacrifice and aporia) hang together in a critical discussion about what is at stake in organ donation. It also presents and argues in favour of an alternative intercorporeal framework of giving-through-sharing that more thoroughly explicates the gift metaphor in the context of donation, and offers tools for making sense of relational dimensions of live and post mortem donations. (shrink)

Stealing from someone is not as bad as torturing, killing or raping them. But is the difference between theft and these fundamental violations simply a difference in degree (of severity)? I begin this article by outlining several ways in which the moral grounds for property rights differ in kind from those for basic human rights, differences that underpin and explain the difference in severity. I go on to ask whether, despite these differences, there might be some (...) class='Hi'>property rights that we should still classify as basic human rights. (shrink)

Supports Ernest Barker's interpretation that Aristotle offers a ‘vindication of the right of private property.’ Although Aristotle emphasizes the common interests of the citizens, he also provides a place for private property in all of his constitutions, including the best constitution. The chapter argues that Aristotle gives a basic account of property ownership that is similar to modern concepts of property rights. He offers justifications of private property, states conditions under which property may (...) be justly acquired, defends private property against Plato's communism, and argues that property is indispensable for the exercise of citizenship. (shrink)

This paper applies aspects of Hugo Grotius's theologically informed theory of property to contemporary issues concerning access to the human DNA sequence and patenting practices. It argues that Christians who contribute to public debate in these areas might beneficially employ some of the concepts with which he worked--notably "common right," the "right of necessity," and "use right." In the seventeenth century, wars were fought over trading rights and access to the sea. In the twenty-first century, information and intellectual (...) property are the issues of the day. Grotius's writings serve to correct the overemphasis in modern liberalism on individual rights, and have practical application to the debate concerning the reduction of the human genome to the status of private property. (shrink)

forthcoming in Philosophy & Public Affairs [2008].

‘It is much more difficult than is often admitted to make a strong case for the ownership of computer software.’ This closely argued study of the strengths and weaknesses of the case for intellectual property rights and against software piracy is based on material contained in the author’s joint work with Douglas Adeney, Computer and Information Ethics, Greenwood Press, an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, INC., Westport, CT, forthcoming May, 1997. The author is a member of the School (...) of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University, PO Box 588, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2650 Australia; tel 61 69 33 2372; fax 61 69 33 2733; email [email protected] wishes to acknowledge the contribution to this paper of Douglas Adeney of the University of Melbourne. (shrink)