Hugo Grotius and Private Property

Abstract

Hugo Grotius famously argued that a system of private property could only justly emerge by the agreement of those living within it. He took this view because he could not see how the supposedly primitive rights to use natural resources that each person has in a state of nature could, on their own, justify fully fledged private ownership. More specifically, the broad right to exclude others from one’s own property that he considered to be essential to private property could not be justified with the set of original rights he ascribed to persons in a state of nature. Many natural rights theorists have followed Grotius in this error. The need for communal agreement can be avoided, however, when one recognises that any use-right necessarily includes some right to exclude others. Moreover, the extensive right of exclusion that is characteristic of full liberal ownership can, in certain cases, come attached to use-rights where those uses are themselves extensive. Private property can therefore emerge through unilateral use, without recourse to communal agreement. Grotius’s account of natural rights, then, ought not be used to support social contract theoretic approaches to property and justice.

Keywords: Grotius, Property

JEL Classification: B10, B31, K11, P14, P26