Mills on PIL and Property in Outer Space:

Alex Mills (University College London) has posted Private International Law and Property in Outer Space: ‘Finders, Keepers’ or ‘the Province of All Mankind’? on SSRN.

The abstract reads:

This chapter considers the possible role of private international law with respect to property in outer space, with a focus on space mining activities. The law which governs a question of title to property is generally considered to be the law of the location of the thing at the time when title is claimed to have arisen. This rule provides security of title if goods cross borders, creating a form of global legal ordering. While this rule works relatively straightforwardly in most situations, distinct challenges arise where property is not located in any territorial legal order-for example, on the high seas, or in outer space. Private international law has been all but absent from discussions about international space law, but the overall argument in this chapter is that it does have an important role to play, with the precise nature of that role dependent on the wider approach which is adopted to property questions in connection with space mining. The chapter explores three models which are drawn from experience with terrestrial areas beyond national jurisdiction – unilateral, cooperative and collective approaches – and considers what role private international law might play under each approach.

The paper is forthcoming in Samantha Besson (ed), Property in Outer Space in International Law and Philosophy: the “Province of All Mankind”? (Edward Elgar).