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- Info
Symposium: Land ownership and the level of regulation--the particulars of owning
| Author: |
Freyfogle, E. T. |
| Date: |
1999 |
| Periodical: |
Ecology Law Quarterly |
| Abstract: |
Property rights provide a special case, for the Constitution expressly recognizes and protects private property. If, as Jeremy Bentham concluded, private ownership rises and falls with the law, then a change in the law could not logically take a person property right. How, then, does the pervasive private ownership of land affect environmental policy, particularly with regard to the level of government that might address land use issues? Land health is a vital goal, and property law, increasingly, is used to promote it. Governments that tinker with ownership norms need to be aware of these multiple aims and not unthinkingly promote one goal at the expense of others. When anti-environmental forces unfurl the private-property banner, employing the rhetoric of individual rights in good American style, they implicitly assert that land health has become too dominant a goal. The point is of trivial practical value, but it is nonetheless worth noting that Lockes theory did not protect ownership rights in vacant land, nor did it logically protect a landowners right to shift to a different land use in circumstances where land is scarce. |
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