Editors' Summary: In the United States, property has been viewed as a safeguard on individual autonomy and a necessity for personal freedom. It is therefore no surprise that property rights issues have increasingly become the center of debate, with concerns over environmental protection conflicting with economically self-interested land uses. Yet, as Prof. Francisco Benzoni explains in this Article, understandings of property often grow out of more fundamental conceptions of human nature. While the takings debate seemingly revolves around the proper interpretation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the core of the conflict lies in divergent understandings of human nature. This Article traces the two dominant understandings of human nature, the liberal and the republican, from the Founding Era through the present U.S. Supreme Court, and argues that the republican social understanding of the human as part of a broader community both clarifies the takings debate and offers a better lens through which to understand the relationship of humans and their environment.