Lost in Space

From Res Communis to Terra Nullius

Bibliographic Data

ID6350635
AuthorsAndrew Fitzmaurice (0000-0001-9814-304X, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume53
Issue2
Pages183-214
Publication date2025-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00905917251327257
OpenAlexW4409442919
LanguageEN
References cited32

This article examines the ties between early modern natural law theories regarding property and sovereignty and contemporary debates regarding the status of outer space. It shows that the division within early modern natural law regarding the question as to whether property is created prior to or as a consequence of sovereignty is now reflected in uncertainty about the reach of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which ostensibly forbids only sovereign claims. The article locates early modern natural law arguments in the context of the imperial ambitions of European states and the Machiavellian drive for greatness, which was understood to be the means whereby to maintain a state. Natural law flourished where new space opened for these expansionist ambitions, a space where positive law had no jurisdiction. It is the renewed opening of space in which to expand the resources of states in the contemporary drive to colonize the Moon and Mars, which underpins the revival of natural law perspectives. These parallels, in both the expansionism and the natural law ideas, are made explicit by contemporary writers who draw upon the early modern understandings of both grandezza and natural law concepts such as res communis , res nullius , and terra nullius . Their arguments, however, are derivative of the early modern authors and similarly divided, whereby the most liberal position, arguing that property precedes sovereignty, is also most closely tied to imperial ambition

Political science · Space (punctuation) · Historical and Architectural Studies · Philosophy

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