Abstract

Chapter 8 concerns the property-like rights that states claim to the natural resources in and around their claimed territories. It distinguishes states’ “extended” territorial claims—to the air above, the sea around, and the subsurface domain—from their “core” claims to surface land and water. A central argument is that such extended claims cannot be justified without productive use, except insofar as certain kinds of control are required for the performance of core jurisdictional tasks. The chapter argues that the standard approaches to resource rights are, contrary to their claims, unable to justify more robust resource rights than these. It also explains and defends the position on states’ resource rights yielded by the Lockean theory that was defended in chapter 5.