Property, nature, and the freedom to roam

This paper explores if people should be able to enjoy a freedom to roam, understood as the right of every person to stay on landowners' properties, regardless of the will of the landowners. I make two interest-based arguments that tell against more exclusionary and in favour of less exclusionary property rights regimes with regard to land. The first, anti-proprietarian, argument, proposes that some, highly exclusionary proprietary preferences are problematic from a standpoint of public lawmaking, and that we ought to design laws and background institutions such that citizens will adopt less rather than more proprietarian attitudes. The second, amplification, argument, proposes that the freedom to roam serves an important interest in providing access to diverse and unique aspects of nature. These two arguments, taken together, tell against highly proprietary property rights arrangements with regards to land and in favour of less proprietary institutional arrangements. I also tackle two objections that purport that general exclusion rights to property in land are necessary for two key interests: (a) our capacity for ends-setting and (b) the preconditions of self-authorship, and that we should therefore not institute a right to roam. Both, I argue, fail.