Who Owns the Sky?

The Struggle to Control Airspace from the Wright Brothers On

Stuart Banner

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Hardback

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English

Harvard University Press
30 November 2008

Aviation law; Aerospace & aviation technology

In the summer of 1900, a zeppelin stayed aloft for a full eighteen minutes above Lake Constance and mankind found itself at the edge of a new world. Where many saw hope and the dawn of another era, one man saw a legal conundrum. Charles C. Moore, an obscure New York lawyer, began an inquiry that Stuart Banner returns to over a century later: in the age of airplanes, who can lay claim to the heavens?

The debate that ensued in the early twentieth century among lawyers, aviators, and the general public acknowledged the crucial challenge new technologies posed to traditional concepts of property. It hinged on the resolution of a host of broader legal issues being vigorously debated that pertained to the fine line between private and public property. To what extent did the Constitution allow the property rights of the nation's landowners to be abridged? Where did the common law of property originate and how applicable was it to new technologies? Where in the skies could the boundaries between the power of the federal government and the authority of the states be traced?

Who Owns the Sky is the first book to tell this forgotten story of elusive property. A collection of curious tales questioning the ownership of airspace and a reconstruction of a truly novel moment in the history of American law, Banner's book reminds us of the powerful and reciprocal relationship between technological innovation and the law-in the past as well as in the present.

By: Stuart Banner
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: Abridged edition
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 552g
ISBN: 9780674030824
ISBN 10: 0674030826
Pages: 360
Publication Date: 30 November 2008
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Further / Higher Education , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Stuart Banner is Norman Abrams Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews for Who Owns the Sky?: The Struggle to Control Airspace from the Wright Brothers On

[An] engaging book...Historically, British and then US common law declared that property in one's land extended from the center of the earth to the heavens. Yet ownership of the sky was all but impossible until the inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries made it accessible. At the very moment that ownership was possible, laws recognizing that property right were challenged. Banner narrates a terrific story, discussing how technology, first with the balloon and then other air travel, challenged the law and eventually changed it. The book weaves together the Wright brothers, legal scholarship, the emergence of the airline industry, and eventually the Supreme Court, offering fascinating details about the law on airspace. These changes climax first in a landmark decision by the Supreme Court clarifying airspace property rights, and then the 1967 Outer Space Treaty declaring the universe a common heritage beyond ownership...This is a fun, well-written, and informative book. -- D. Schultz Choice (06/01/2009)

Nominated for David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History or Biography 2008
Nominated for Herbert Jacob Book Prize 2009
Nominated for Littleton-Griswold Prize 2009
Nominated for Pfizer Award 2010