 In dealing with the pros and cons of private property as an institution, it has sometimes been suggested that the general justification of private property and the distribution of particular property rights can be treated as separate issues, rather in the way that some philosophers suggested that the general justification of punishment can be separated from the principles governing its distribution (Hart 1968, p. 4; see also Ryan 1984, p. 82 and Waldron 1988, p. 330). In neither case, though, is the separation complete: it holds for some general justifications and not for others. In the theory of punishment, a retributivist will believe that the principles governing punishment in general necessarily also regulate its particular distribution. And there are analogues in the theory of property. Robert Nozick (1974) argued that a theory of historical entitlement, along Lockean lines, provides both a complete justification of the institution and a set of strict criteria that govern its legitimate distribution. Property rights, according to Nozick, constrain the extent to which we are entitled to act on our intuitions and theories about distributive justice. Consequentialist theories, however, may be able to separate the institutional and distributive issues in this way, and some theories of liberty may be able to do this also (though the distribution of liberty is itself something about which most libertarians have firm—and egalitarian!—views). As we assess various distributive arguments, then, it is a good idea to keep in mind the question of whether or not they have direct or indirect distributive implications.