Readings on land ownership

Links to essays and readings from the Threadable reading circle on land ownership

These are all of the posts related to the Threadable land ownership reading circle in one place. If you’re interested in exploring these readings, they’re all open and free to share. They run from questions about the legal rights actually attained when owning private property, to enclosures of the commons in 1500s England, to the Doctrine of Discovery articulated in the 1823 U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh and the destruction it spread across the world.

I’ll add to this post whenever I come across something new (though won’t send it out; it’s just a living resource), and will leave it open to share and read.

Threadable reading circle selections:

1. Owning the Earth, by Andro Linklater
   (enclosures of the commons and resistance in 1500s England)

2. The Land We Share, by Erik. T. Freyfogle
   (law is a story that evolves; private property rights can’t be and have never been absolute)

3. The Charter of the Forest (signed in 1217) and “The Charter of the Forest: Evolving Human Rights in Nature” law article
   (commons rights to land, food, water, etc., that were once known and defended throughout Britain)

4. Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, by Simon Winchester
   (how is “reclaimed” or “new” land managed, as in the Netherlands?)

5. BONUS: Book review of Simon Winchester’s Land because I hated it so much

6. In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided, by Walter R. Echo-Hawk
   (deep dive into the 1823 U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh and how it enshrined the Doctrine of Discovery into U.S. law)

7. The three 15th-century papal bulls that comprise the Doctrine of Discovery
   (the documents showing how the Catholic Church and the 15th-century monarchs of Spain and Portugal justified theft of land, resources, and enslavement of non-Christian people across the world)

8. Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance, by Nick Estes
   (the theft of the Black Hills, and how the hunger for private property and commodification destroy both rights and relationships)

9. Progress & Poverty, by Henry George (1879)
   (private land ownership is unjust, and that injustice compounds over time)

10. Commentaries on the Laws of England in Four Books, by William Blackstone (1753)
    (one of the foundational texts justifying private property rights, but he still can’t find the basis of private ownership in land)

11. Second Treatise of Government, by John Locke (1690)
    (pretty much the same as Blackstone—doesn’t really know why we have private land ownership but is going to defend it anyway!)

12. The Book of Trespass, by Nick Hayes
    (documenting the injustices behind privately owned estates in England)

13. Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age, by Mary Christina Wood
    (treating land as a commodity is unsustainable in the long run; seeing it as a commonwealth and reinvigorating the idea of the public trust might be a better way forward)