The inclusion of a right to private property among formulations of human rights has not resolved uncertainties relating to private property. Questions remain both as to whether property ownership as an individual freedom in the Lockean sense or as sustaining a collective purpose represented in family or corporate ownership better expresses the idea of private property, and as to whether inheritance complements or compromises private property. In conditions of social fluidity the idea of personal freedom may prove the most practicable basis for either a human or a legal right to private property, as well as offering a possible approach to issues of distribution.