The Definition Of Private Property In The United States

The idea of private property is linked to ideas of natural rights and natural laws. As an issue that has been debated over time, many philosophers and authors like John Locke and Thomas Aquinas, have examined the justification behind private ownership. To understand the reasoning of why private property is just and how it relates to modern natural rights and law theories, private property first must be defined and then, its relation to government powers, understood. Private property is ownership of land, items, or materials by individuals outside of the government. In the United States today, each individual has the right to private property. This right it is described as a fundamental rule within a moral civilization that entitles humans

In Locke’s book, The Second Treatise of Government, he builds up to the justification of private property through his account of man’s natural state. In the natural state, each person equally, as a group has the entitlement to resources of nature, and not one person had more ownership over the natural materials. However, this is problematic since resources are only helpful when intended for individual use. It seems that only if divided for personal use, can the resources of the earth be useful. As a human, Locke believes that we have the right to survival and the means to survival are through natural resources. Locke is able to argue that although no person can hold material, in the natural state as theirs, there is a justification for the private property. He begins connecting the two contradictory views by defining the concept of owning one’s self. Each man has the right of his body and that body and being belongs to that man, or in Locke’s words: “Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself,”(). From this idea, he branches into the idea of Labor. A man with the right of self-ownership can use labor or his abilities to make or create an object. By joining a person’s abilities and work with the resources that object of combined skills and material now belongs to the person. By putting the two things together, the material is now no longer apart of Nature and thus, no longer apart of the commonly