Freyfogle Publications
Selected Recent Writings.
On Private Property Rights in Nature
1. The Culture
of Owning
An article on American ideas about private property and how we might improve them,
from the March-April 2005 issue of Orion (4800 words).
2.
Owning Nature, Responsibly
An essay on what it might mean to own land responsibly, drawing upon the transformation
of the former tallgrass prairie; the essay appeared in a collection of writings,
Imagination and Place: Ownership, Kelly Barth, ed.. (Lawrence, KS: Imagination and
Place Press, 2010) (7000 words).
3.
What Is Land? A Broad Look at Private Rights and Public Power
An article offering a wide-ranging inquiry into private property, how it works,
why it exists, and why its change over time is appropriate, from the June 2006 issue
of Planning & Environmental Law and based on a talk given at the 2006
annual conference of the American Planning Association (6800 words).
4.
Correcting the Half Truths
An article that raises and critiques widely held ideas about private ownership,
its links to law and regulation, and its evolution over time. This version, which
appeared in Planning & Environmental Law, is a slightly modification
of the first chapter of On Private Property: Finding Common Ground on the Ownership
of Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007)(9800 words).
5.
Property’s Functions and the Right to Develop
An inquiry into why private property exists and how an understanding of its key
functions illuminates the critical question: Why right should landowners have to
develop? Published as chapter four of On Private Property: Finding Common Ground
on the Ownership of Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007)(7200 words).
6. Goodbye
to the Public-Private Divide
An article (based on a talk) on why we are ill served by the misleading distinction
between public property and private property, from the Winter 2006 issue of Environmental
Law, published by the Lewis & Clark Law School, Portland, OR (9000
words).
On Conservation Ideas and Writers
7. Conservation
A 2000 word summary of the subject published in an encyclopedia on sustainability
(2010)..
8. Property and Liberty
An essay on the complex links between private property and liberty, published in
the Harvard Environmental Law Review (volume 34, pages 75-118) in 2010.
9. The Land
Ethic
A 4100 word essay on the land ethic of Aldo Leopold and critical scholarship about
it, published in an encyclopedia on environmental philosophy (2009).
10. The Education
of Ada
A critical look at the best-selling agrarian novel, Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier,
probing Frazier’s visions of how nature and culture might combine in forms of right
living on the land, published as chapter three of Agrarianism and the Good Society:
Land, Culture, Conflict and Hope (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2007)
(9500 words).
11.
Wendell Berry and the Limits of Populism
A critical look at the conservation philosophy of Wendell Berry, drawing comparisons
with the populist movement in late nineteenth-century America, published in a volume
of writings on Wendell Berry (2007) (8000 words).
On Conservation Policy and Politics
12. Homeland
Health
An article on why the environment has largely disappeared as a national political
issue, from the Summer 2005 issue of the political journal Dissent (4200
words)
13.
Wanted: Environmental Leader
A vision of the kind of national leader the nation needs to address environmental
ills, presented as a mock job advertisement, originally published as chapter eight
of Agrarianism and the Good Society: Land, Culture, Conflict and Hope (Lexington,
KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2007) (4000 words).
14.
Simplicity, Community & Private Land
An essay published in New Zealand in a collection of writings on voluntary simplicity,
noting the ways that many aspects of simple living require collective efforts at
controlling local landscapes (2009) (4200 words).
15.
An Open Letter to Leaders of American Environmental Organizations
Commenting on weaknesses in the movement and what might be done about them (2006)
(4700 words).
16. A letter
to Courtney White of the Quivira Coalition
Supporting and critiquing his proposal for a land health movement, dated May 2006
(4100 words).
17. Ecology
and Salvation
A talk given in 2006 at a workshop on religion and the environment (3500 words).
18.
Better Ways to Work Together
An essay on the future of natural resources law and the need to craft better ways
of land- and resource-users, at the local level, to orchestrate their efforts to
promote ecological health and shared goals (2010) (9000 words).
19.
The American Legal Scholar
A talk on the need for legal scholars, particularly in a research university, to
retain engaged with major issues on an all-things-considered basis and to avoid
embracing fragmented disciplinary perspectives (2006) (3300 words).
20.
Conservation Biology and the Law
A brief commentary on why the law largely ignores conservation biology and how biologists
might increase its influence, from the June 2006 twentieth-anniversary issue of
Conservation Biology (1700 words)