Short answers, pulled from the story.
King Urukagina of Lagash issued a decree around the 24th century before the common era that forbade the compelling sale of property, marking the first recorded law in human history to protect ownership rights. This ancient edict established a precedent that would echo through millennia, transforming property from a mere physical possession into a legal concept enforceable by the state.
John Locke wrote the Second Treatise on Civil Government in 1690, revolutionizing the understanding of property by arguing that every man has a property in his own person. His labor theory of property became the cornerstone of classical liberalism and the justification for private ownership in capitalist societies.
British Prime Minister William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, famously declared that the poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown in 1763. This principle originated in the British legal tradition and was carried to the United States and enshrined in the Constitution through the Takings clause.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon shocked the intellectual world in 1840 with his treatise What is Property?, in which he famously declared that property is theft. He distinguished between de jure property, or legal title, and de facto property, or physical possession, arguing that the former is illegitimate when it allows one to charge others for the use of resources they did not create.
Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist, argued in his 1989 book The Other Path that the functioning of a capitalist market economy depends on the state's protection of property rights through a formal property system. He contended that without such a system, individuals lack the ability to use their assets as collateral for loans, limiting their economic potential and perpetuating poverty.