This text aims to identify the theories of property rights that are involved in the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court rulings on the issue of the allocation of private property rights on vacant lots showing their tensions and recent interactions. Then, the theories of utilitarianism and Locke’s theories initially explained are associated with the arguments reviewed in 17 judicial decisions of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court referred to writs of amparo between July 2014 and October 2016. The review shows the arguments of the Constitutional Court with the utilitarian theory that was supported by the Supreme Court, except in early 2016 when notions of Locke’s theory about property rights were accepted. In addition, attempts to abstract the discussion on vacant lots from the constitutional sphere to move it to the usual civil law scenario are being made.
