This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land

The property rights “movement,” a coalition of mineral industry actors, anti-government propagandists, and local economic interests, is best viewed as a backlash aimed at regulations associated with environmental protection and public lands conservation policy. Using a combination of interviews and archival research, Olivetti and Worsham examine the interplay between attempts to set the property rights agenda in Congress, the Courts, and at the state level. They find that having failed to take control of the congressional agenda, the movement engages in a vertical shift, focusing its efforts on the states and through state level challenges, the federal courts.