California's beach access law is fairly unique. Not some kind of universal human right. I'm not aware of it existing in any other jurisdiction.
Managing access to scarce resources is the primary purpose of the system of private property.
Managing access to scarce resources is the primary purpose of the system of private property.
Spain - https://www.spanishpropertyinsight.com/legal/ley-de-costas-c... Sweden - https://visitsweden.com/about-the-right-of-public-access/ Australia - https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/travellers-stor...
and so on... all but a search query away.
You're allowed to move freely on most land, and even camp there. But that right ends when you're within sight of the owners home.
https://visitsweden.com/about-the-right-of-public-access/
California law has no such exceptions. You're allowed on the beach up to the high tide level, regardless of if somebody's home is right there.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Nordic_countri...
I don't think the Swedish "Allemansrätten" would allow the public to a beach in front of someone's home, as the California rule does, and as this fight is about.
I don't know how close this specific billionaire housing unit is to the beach, so I can't speak to this case, but the Swedish rule is less permissive than the California one.
I would also observe that these "right to roam" rules work well in sparsely populated places like Scandinavia, but you won't see much of them in more dense jurisdictions.
California is pretty much the size of Sweden, but with 4x the population.
Even if we limit it to "just" restrictions on public access, I don't think there are many jurisdictions that don't have carve-outs that provides protections for public access of some sort to some private land.
The reason, of course, being that most countries have traditions of access that long pre-dates modern property law, and that had to be accommodated.
In Norway, the freedom to roam was considered so intrinsic to Norwegian culture that is was not even mentioned in law until the 1960's, because it was considered "obvious", despite the fact that the Norwegian legal system is based on codified laws with very limited use of precedents, and certainly no "common law" element. In a completely opposite way of seeing it, Sweden embedded it in their constitution, because it was considered such an innate right.
While the expansive freedom to roam of the Nordic countries, is relatively rare, ensuring public access to the shore has been considered not just an issue of leisure access, but an issue of guaranteeing economic interests and food safety for centuries in a large proportion of countries with shore lines, and so has been very widespread - countries that don't guarantee access to the "dry" part of the beach have often still guaranteed access to the tidal zone, for example, to allow for fishing, or gathering mussels etc.
The idea that some people have of property rights as something exclusive just does not match reality - there's been a very acute recognition in most legal systems that property rights restricts the freedoms of the general public, and that as a consequence some trade-off must be made. The question is generally not if one needs to be made, but how extensive the right of public access should be.
> Managing access to scarce resources is the primary purpose of the system of private property.
The purpose of private property is economic. Locke's theory of private property was that because a laborer improves nature through their labor, they are thus entitled to the fruits of said labor, with the intention that they will keep up the land better than common land. In other words, they worked hard to develop their garden, so they get exclusive management of it. The result of this work on the land was intended to result in improved economic output.
But the quality of the land, or the result of the labor of its management, is a separate concern from access. We're talking about wanting the public to have access, not for it to be kept better, or to be used as an economic tool. According to (at least one) theory of private property, an individual owner could still maintain it properly while allowing public access to it. And that's probably why a UK law allows the public to roam on private property (well, that and traditional rights).