John Locke - Private Property

 

In chapter 5, section 27, of the Second Treatise of Government, Locke describes private property as follows:

Though men as a whole own the earth and all inferior creatures, every individual man has a property in his own person [= ‘owns himself’]; this is something that nobody else has any right to. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are strictly his. So when he takes something from the state that nature has provided and left it in, he mixes his labour with it, thus joining to it something that is his own; and in that way he makes it his property. He has removed the item from the common state that nature has placed it in, and through this labour the item has had annexed to it something that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour is unquestionably the property of the labourer, so no other man can have a right to anything the labour is joined to—at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

This interested me as I thought of The Takings Clause in the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This is known as Eminent domain, which allows the state or federal government to appropriate one’s private property for the public’s use such as government buildings, public utilities, highways and railroads, with or without consent. However, the government may only exercise this power if they provide just compensation to the property owner. If you refuse to sell, the government will file a court action to seize your property through an Order of Taking.  The governments argument is that it attempted to purchase your land for a fair price, you declined, hence justifies the seizure for public use.   

Let’s say I own a historical property and the state imposes a restriction on the use of my property. They allow me to occupy the property however I wish (i.e. as my personal home, a commercial storefront, etc.) but restrict me from changing the exterior as it will compromise the historical aesthetics of the neighborhood.  What if I purchased the property with intentions to knock down the building and build a hotel, office building, or residential towers?  This restriction has not only imposed a loss but also revoked my degree of freedom over my private resources.  In this framework, one truly does not acquire their bundle of rights which includes: The right of possession, the right of control, and the right of exclusion.

Almost a decade after the adoption of the Fifth Amendment, James Madison, whom had similar Lockean views, wrote an essay and quoted, “That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest” The National Gazette, The Papers of James Madison 266 (1983). I strongly concur with this view.