McGregor, Joan L. "Property Rights and Environmental Protection: Is this land made for you and me?" 31, no. 2 Arizona State Law Journal 391-437 (1999)

Can we provide a robust theory of private property rights that accounts for our responsibility to the social and natural community? Or are we stuck instead with the following dichotomy: either preserving absolute property rights without consideration for community interests, the interests of future generations, the environment itself; or giving up property rights as we know them, and turning over to the state control of land and natural resources, in a manner reminiscent of feudal times? This is the dilemma that the property rights absolutists would have us believe we are confronted with. This paper argues for a conception of property ownership in land and natural resources that carries with it responsibility to the present community and future community of persons that is informed by a land ethic.

McGregor contends that an "absolutist view of property rights" stands in the way of the reinterpretation of property in light of environmental concerns. Absolute property rights include exclusive use, disposition, and full alienability. This strand of thinking about property rights stretches back in the common law, and is epitomized by Blackstone’s famous statement wherein he claimed that "so great moreover is the regard of the law for private property that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the good of the whole community." McGregor points out that we also have within our tradition of property ownership the view that property rights are social conventions serving particular social goals, not exclusively aimed at individual preference satisfaction. Property rights are thus instrumentally important to achieve important social interests. Those interests can be public or political ones, such as democracy’s interest in having an independent citizenry, or individual interests—e.g., individuals’ interest in moral development and self-determination. From this perspective, for which McGregor offers historical support within the Anglo-American legal system, property exists within a social and political context and is dependent on that context for its form and existence.