The Original Acquisition of Property: a New Reading of Locke and the Possibility of an Autonomous Concept of Private Law

Abstract

The paper proposes a theoretical research on the possibility of an autonomous concept of private law from contemporary reinterpretations of philosopher John Locke’s works, especially his theory of original acquisition of the property. Based on the provocation of Ernst Weinrib, which supports the autonomous character of private law as one of its intrinsic characteristics are evaluated successively the theory of John Locke on the acquisition of property and the intrinsic limitations to its acquisition and then two versions of contemporary reinterpretations of the doctrine, namely, the one proposed by Robert Nozick, sustained in the famous "Anarchy, State and Utopia" and the other by Clark Wolf, in an article published in Ethics review. In conclusion, it seems that modern reinterpretations of Locke, faithful to its liberal assumptions, are able to justify the restriction of rights acquired originally from an evolution of the concepts of limitation on acquisition exist in the original Lockean theory, without appealing to a funcionalist vision of private law. The methodology is deductive, starting from the original Locke theory towards their contemporary reinterpretations, and the technique, a review of the contemporary literature.