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Events • April 27, 2023 

# *Natural Property Rights*

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*.

[![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) 
This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). 

##### 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

[ 

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

](mailto:cneily@cato.org)