Ownership has both personal and social aspects. One of the main justifications of personal property is that it is an essential material guarantee of a reasonable freedom and is an incentive to productive work. This is commonly called the profit-motive. Certainly what the ordinary man really wants is a fair distribution of private property and not its abolition. And it is his reasonable hope that he may be allowed to enjoy his property in his declining years and hand it on to his posterity.

The right to full ownership really includes two rights: the right of use and the right of disposal. I may use what I own, and others, without my permission, may not use it. I may sell, lend or give what I own, and so transfer to another my own right of exclusive use.

The proprietor or owner is the one who enjoys the full right to dispose of what is his in so far as it is not prohibited by law or harmful to others. It implies a claim to possess something as one’s own, as a due, and therefore imposes constraint (whether by way of forbearance, acquiescence, or active support) on the rest of the world. Thus if a man has a right to a sum of money, this means that someone has also the duty of paying it to him. The thing or object of this right of disposal is property, and the right of disposal itself is ownership. The same principles apply when property is held jointly by a public body or corporation, or by a trust.

Following the conceptions of Roman Law, Blackstone (Comm. I, 138) states that the right of property consists in the free use, enjoyment and disposal of all acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land. Ownership bestows on a person the right to dispose of a thing for his private interests as he sees fit.