The Commons

Reading about the Magna Carta in Peter Linebaugh's The Magna Carta Manifesto this week and especially the idea of the commons brings me back to the UN Convention on genocide to consider--what else is missing?
I think we briefly mentioned this last class but one thing missing from genocide and the destruction of a group of people is dispossession. There is nothing in the UN Convention on genocide about (re)moving people from one place to another and the trauma of being cut off from the land and the people. Dispossession goes back to the commons. Without the commons and the very earth that gives sustenance and subsistence, there can be no people. I might be using commons as a noun and not a verb here, but dispossession also involves the loss of "sharing, agency, and equality" (Linebaugh 279), since after all, "the commons is an activity and, if anything, it expresses relationships in society that are inseparable from relations to nature" (Linebaugh 279). What could be more expressive of the relationship between people and earth sustaining each other?

Linebaugh points out that the Magna Carta has been used extensively, and often for purposes that contradict the text when looking at it as a whole, or for purposes that just need an old law to back it up so we can say that it hails from tradition. But tradition, Linebaugh says, brings it back to the commons and the relationship between land, people, and their protection from greedy and domineering kings who would take away sustenance and livelihood. The Magna Carta gives back and protects the peoples right to, in essence, life, or as Linebaugh details, first economic, then political and legal rights. Bringing us back to the Magna Carta would let us reinterpret its use and evaluate its value and application today.

This leads me to some thoughts on access to a sort of commons we have today. I know that California is a bit different but in Hawai'i you are supposed to be allowed access to the beach for sustenance. Writing about this, poet Juliana Spahr says:

Public Access Shoreline Hawai'i vs. Hawai'i Country Planning Commission, 1995 WL 515898 protects indigenous Hawaiians' traditional and customary rights of access to gather plants, harvest trees, and take game. In this decision the court said about the balance between the rights of private landowners and the rights of persons exercising traditional Hawaiian culture that "the western concept of exclusivity is not universally applicable in Hawai'i" (Spahr 116)

Even if you aren't staying at the hotel, legally, all beaches in Hawai'i are public property. Supposedly, the state owns the beach up to the high water mark. However, what this means in terms of access is open to debate. [. . .] The confusion benefits property owners. (98-9)

This website explains the whole thing better than I can, but in essence, beaches are supposed to be publicly accessible. More important than recreation, it links back to a sort of commons to the beach and the ocean, a "sea of islands" (Hau'ofa) rather than suntanning.

Hawai'i's Public Trust Doctrine can be found here and California's Public Trust Doctrine can be found here (I don't expect anyone to read it, just putting links for references and just in case).

Last questions:
What, then, are the commons? Linebaugh lists several on p.239-240. Are there different types of commons for different folks? Internet commons or land commons?
If common rights are the things Linebaugh lists on p.45, how is this different from human rights? Should they be different, and why are they different? Are human rights, for example, more individual and should we perhaps think of human rights as more collective?