Overview

• While individuals are free to do anything they please with their property so long as they do not violate the Legal Principle, governments properly have additional restrictions.
• These include:
  • affording due process and equal protection of the law,
  • not censoring the content of speech,
  • not discriminating based on many different characteristics (in contrast, individuals may), and
  • using the military only for national defense, not for moral goals like protecting people in other countries (individuals and private companies are free to do so).
• Unlike private property owners, when governments control public property, they are appropriately constrained to act within certain limits to avoid abuse of power. Therefore, when the government acts to restrict the use of public property, its actions must be justified by the appropriate constitutional restraints.
  • As with so many other issues, substantially reducing or eliminating the concept of public or government property would render this issue mostly irrelevant.