Eric Freyfogle

Taken from Program - pg. 21:
"In the common understanding, public and private property rights fall into quite different categories, designed to achieve quite different aims. But differences on the surface can be misleading, particularly when we take time to dig into these arrangements and ask fundamental questions about them. Both public and private rights are defined by law, enacted by public lawmakers and enforced by agents of the state. Lawmakers, in turn, are expected to keep the interests of all citizens in mind as they go about their law-making work. Necessarily they need to ask basic questions: where does the public interest lie, and how might various property-rights arrangements foster that public interest? These days, we tend to think about private property as an individual right; as an extension of the liberty of the landowner. But to see it that way is to miss half of the story, for private property necessarily depends upon and ought to serve the interests of the public as a whole. On the other side, we tend to think that public property should serve a public interest that somehow stands apart from the private interests of individuals. But this too is simplistic, for public property can often best promote public goods precisely when it recognizes secure individual rights. When we work our way to the bottom of both arrangements, looking into their histories and probing their justifications, we find that the public-private divide is a narrow one. Indeed, it is more apt to talk, not about two distinct categories of property, but instead about the wide variety of ways that public and private interests can be merged to promote the common good. Property is a far more flexible, malleable, socially responsive arrangement than we realize, showing considerable variation over time and place. At bottom, it is best understood as a tool for society to use in achieving its chosen goals; it is a means, not an end in and of itself. Thus, the questions that we face today are necessarily the same ones that all generations face: What mixture of property rights and responsibilities would best serve our interests, given the values, circumstances, and aspirations of our day? How might we best blend public and private so as to help us inhabit our shared land in satisfying, enduring, morally righteous ways?

"Eric T. Freyfogle is the Max L. Rowe Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, where for the past 20 years he has taught courses on property, natural resources, wildlife law, land use planning, and environmental law and policy. A native of central Illinois, he has long been active in state and local conservation groups and currently serves as President of Prairie Rivers Network, the Illinois affiliate of the National Wildlife Federation. His writings include five dozen articles in scholarly and popular publications as well as several books: The Land We Share: Private Property and the Common Good (2003), an inquiry into the private ownership of nature; Bounded People, Boundless Lands: Envisioning a New Land Ethic (Island Press, 1998), which received the 1999 Adult Nonfiction Award of the Society of Midland Authors; and Justice and the Earth (The Free Press, 1993). He served as editor of The New Agrarianism: Land, Culture, and the Community of Life (Island Press, 2001), co-edited a volume of writings by Aldo Leopold on land conservation in agricultural landscapes--For the Health of the Land (Island Press, 1999); and is co-author of Wildlife Law: Cases and Materials (Foundation Press, 2002). A forthcoming book, tentatively entitled Taking Conservation Seriously: Nature, Intellect, and the Human Prospect, is being published by Yale University Press. In January 2004 Freyfogle was appointed editor of the Leopold Conservation Papers Project, an effort to edit and publish in thematic volumes the conservation writings of Aldo Leopold."