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Teachers comment that there is no time in the day to cover social studies as they struggle to implement new programs designed to increase the reading levels of the students in their classrooms. Successfully adapting the project called Kids Voting USA during the fall, 2004 election helped pre-service teachers learn how to infuse civic learning goals, social studies, and voting education into the primary classroom on a daily basis. Pre-service teachers taught lessons on the voting process to students in a public school district in grades kindergarten through second, during their internship course in the fall of 2004. Students learned how their vote made a difference and discussed the issues when presented with the facts. Pre-service teachers developed a list of children’s literature to support the skills that were being taught. Data compiled at the end of the project confirmed that the students were able to use their skills across the curriculum while pre-service teachers not only increased their understanding of civic learning goal, but also increased their own knowledge of the voting process.

This paper aims to compare the law with regard to private property rights and restrictions and public controls in England and the USA, and the theoretical debates that surround them, to understand whether the private land use controls of nuisance and restrictive covenants could have a greater role to play or the public law system of planning is the best way to manage land.

This paper starts by summarising and comparing, firstly, the private laws of nuisance and restrictive covenants and then laws relating public planning, zoning and takings in England and the USA. It then reviews theoretical approaches taken in both jurisdictions to land use restrictions.

The paper concludes that private land use restrictions can only play a limited role in land management in England. Scarcity and cost of available housing necessitate a mechanism by which the state can intervene to remove or modify restrictions to enable alteration and development. The structure of freehold ownership in England and the low take-up of Commonhold as an alternative tenure mean that expansion in the use of private land use restrictions to control the use of land is unfeasible.

The value of this paper is that it seeks to provide insight into the contested relationship between private and public law and the relationship between property law and planning.