Back to the Future of Conservation: Changing Perceptions of Property Rights & Environmental Protection
Private property has been a core American value since the nation’s inception. Property rights hold a central place in our constitutional design and provide the foundation for America’s market economy. Influenced by the writing of John Locke, who argued that the purpose of the state was to provide for the protection of life, liberty and property, the nation’s founders enshrined the protection of property rights in the Constitution. The nations’s founders saw property was among the central aims of government. James Madison, for one, argued that the very purpose of government was to protect private property and to “secure to every man, whatever is his own.”
