Book Forum 

# *Natural Property Rights*

Published By Cambridge University Press • 2023 

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Date and Time 

April 27, 2023 12 - 1 PM EDT 

Location 

Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 

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##### Featuring 

![e-Claeys-cropped.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2023-04/e-Claeys-cropped.jpg?itok=g0h6FTfh) 

Eric R. Claeys 

Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

[![Matthew Cavedon-cropped](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2025-11/Matthew%20Cavedon-cropped.jpg?itok=SqrUdWTd)](/people/matthew-cavedon) 

[Matthew Cavedon](/people/matthew-cavedon)

Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute

![c-Squitieri.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2023-04/c-Squitieri.jpg?itok=Jp26C9aA) 

Chad Squitieri 

Assistant Professor of Law, Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America

[![Clark Neily](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2021-01/Clark%20Neily.jpg?itok=kOJs7hwY)](/people/clark-neily) 

[Clark Neily](/people/clark-neily)

Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute

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](https://x.com/conlawwarrior) [ 

](mailto:cneily@cato.org) 

Join us for a discussion of Eric Claeys’s forthcoming book, *Natural Property Rights* (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). The book introduces and defends a theory of property relying on labor, natural rights, and traditional principles of natural law. Justified on those grounds, property rights protect individual freedom, but they also help government officials resolve the basic resource conflicts that arise in property law. *Natural Property Rights* illustrates this with examples from real estate, oil and gas, tangible personal property, water rights, government regulatory and taking powers (and constitutional limits on those). Claeys’s work in this area was recently the focus of a symposium hosted by Texas A&M University’s *Journal of Property Law*.

Matthew Cavedon will respond by commenting on the historical context for John Locke’s work, on which Claeys relies. Cavedon will argue that Spanish Renaissance scholar Francisco Suárez offers nuances regarding the relationship between natural law and property rights that correct for deficiencies in Lockean theory.

**Luncheon to follow**

## Additional Resources

- “[Natural Property Rights: An Introduction](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4345132),” by Eric R. Claeys

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