Property in The Realm of Rights

Abstract

In The Realm of Rights2 Judith Jarvis Thomson presents a detailed analysis of various sorts of rights. Her book is a paradigm of careful thought and meticulous attention to detail, and I think that her analyses warrant careful study with an eye toward further application. Unfortunately, Thomson says some things about property rights that she is not entitled to, and moreover which seem to me to be false. Specifically, I take issue with both justification and truth of her claim that there are no natural rights to property. After arguing persuasively that to own an object is to have a cluster of various sorts of rights with respect to that object, Thomson asserts that the world was not created with its contents already owned: ownership has to be acquired in some or another way. [p. 324]. She says that this view is accepted by most contemporary philosophers, and I have no wish to dispute that view is correct. Given that it takes something to make it case that a thing becomes someone's property, natural question to ask is what sort of events are sufficient to engender ownership. It is clear that ownership can result from certain events when there is prior ownership; you might come to own a typewriter because prior owner gives it to you: or you might come to own typewriter because you made it from and with things that you owned. But under supposition that all ownership results from some event, sufficient conditions for ownership which require prior ownership leave much that is unanswered. They provide no explanation of any instance of ownership that originates in an event which does not itself presuppose that there is ownership.3 What is wanted are sufficient conditions for ownership which do not themselves pre-suppose prior ownership, and which can account for actual instances of ownership.