ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to open field to the viability of Appropriative Powers by confuting all qualms arising from their status as Duty Imposing Powers. Natural rights theories supporting private property rights put forward 'Principles of Justified Acquisition'. Such principles grant humans Appropriative Powers. An important set of rights-based arguments arrayed against Appropriative Powers focuses on their possession of one ostensibly acrimonious feature, in typical cases Appropriate Powers involve the unilateral imposition of new duties upon the entire world's people. The cogency of Duty Imposing Powers, as a broad class of rights, has come under sustained fire in the philosophical literature. H. L. A. Hart once observed that, 'to some philosophers the notion that moral phenomena, rights and duties and obligations, can be brought into existence by the voluntary action of individuals has appeared utterly mysterious'. Jeremy Waldron's critique of this feature of Appropriative Powers was lynchpin to his larger argument in The Right to Private Property.
