Mr Locke's enclosure: the uncommon law of property in the Second Treatise.

This article examines how John Locke’s property theory, which largely omits common rights, diverged from the seventeenth-century English common law of property that centered on protecting such rights, and how this divergence influenced colonial American property law. Unlike the common law, which recognized strong common rights and legal defenses against enclosure, Locke adopted reformist arguments favoring enclosure as a means to improve “waste” land, redefining waste to exclude improvements and requiring only tacit consent for enclosure. Locke’s theory sought to justify private property’s origin from common land, promoting enclosure as beneficial both to the poor—through limits on vast estates and land reforms in Virginia—and to the wealthy, by establishing clear, absolute title to land. The article situates Locke’s uncommon property theory within its legal, historical, and ontological contexts, highlighting how it shaped the modern private property regime while contrasting it with an alternative common law tradition that emphasized communal rights.