THERE AREN’T MANY positive depictions of property rights in our culture. Those with property are more often the villains in a story, such as greedy capitalists or uncaring elites. One reason for this storyline trope is that property rights are hard to understand and communicate, in part because they are abstract. After all, you can’t see, hear, or touch “property rights.”
But writers and filmmakers who believe in property rights often take a different tack: To show why property rights are important, don’t talk about rights at all. Instead, look at what property means to individual people—most often, that’s as a home.
Here are two examples of films that show the critical importance of home in people’s lives.
The Castle
In this 1997 film, Darryl Kerrigan is the patriarch of an oblivious, working-class family in Australia. They live in a small and ramshackle house, with some silly part of it always under construction. It’s right next to the airport, with powerlines and planes flying directly overhead. This is a comedy, and the joke is that he’s deluded enough to think that his house is paradise.
But over time, we learn Darryl is right. The house is where he’s built a life with his wife and raised his children. The property represents his family and his memories with them, which in his words, “can’t be transported from place to place.” It may not seem like a castle to most people, but it’s his castle.
When a government inspector drops by to assess the property, Darryl proudly shows him around and fully anticipates the home’s value will reflect how he feels.
What he doesn’t expect is a compulsory sale, or what in the U.S. we would call eminent domain. But Darryl doesn’t want to sell, no matter the price. For him, ownership means choice: That he’s the one who should make the decision about what happens to his house.
Darryl decides to fight back and represents himself in court, with disastrous results. His legal reasoning is nonexistent, but the moral principles he holds are solid: First, it’s not a house, it’s a home, and second, a man’s home is his castle.
The legal case turns around when he meets Australia’s equivalent of a constitutional litigator, who wins the case at the High Court. He argues: “They want to pay only for the house. But they’re taking away more than that, so much more. Sure the Kerrigans built a house, then they built a home, and then a family. You can acquire a house, but you can’t acquire a home, because a home is not built of bricks and mortar, but love and memories. You can’t pay for it, and you’re just shortchanging people if you try.”
Little Pink House
This American drama is a true story about the Supreme Court case Kelo v. City of New London, where the Supreme Court said it was OK for government to seize private property from property owners and give it to a private developer, as long as local government would get more tax revenue. But the law and legal arguments are a small part of the story. Instead, the movie focuses on Susette Kelo and what her house meant to her.
When we first meet Susette, she’s leaving a failed marriage to an alcoholic. Moving into her own house allows her independence to start a new life.
Susette meets new friends in the neighborhood. Her home becomes a location for community: a meeting space where she and her friends connect with each other.
One of those new relationships is with a man she grows to love. After he suffers a debilitating accident, Susette cares for him through a long recovery in that house.
But the local development authority wants to take the land for a hotel and won’t take no for an answer. Susette doesn’t want to start over again, so she takes a stand in court. Her property becomes a platform for keeping her dignity in the face of others who claim to have a better use for her land.
Unlike Darryl Kerrigan, Susette loses her legal battle, despite best-in-class representation from the Institute for Justice. In the end, the house becomes a site of grief when it’s finally taken away from her.
In both stories, it’s people who give meaning to these physical objects. And that meaning is unique to those individuals. Property rights are important for many reasons, but perhaps the most important reason is that property rights give the choice of how to use that property to the people for whom it matters most.