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Who Owns The Sky?: The Struggle To Control Airspace From The Wright Brothers On

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.

Hardcover: 360 pages

Publisher: Harvard University Press; abridged edition edition (November 30, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0674030826

ISBN-13: 978-0674030824

Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.1 x 8.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #402,555 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #13 in Books > Law > Specialties > Air & Space #94 in Books > Law > Business > Property #468 in Books > Law > Legal History

Each book Stuart Banner writes seems better than the last. And even his very first book, on property and territorial conflicts in late colonial and early republican Missouri, was terrific. But this book is among my very favorites by any legal historian in the past several years. It is delightfully written, well researched, and has ongoing relevance for issues such as climate change. For anyone interested in combined issues of property, sovereignty,regulation, and the commons, this book belongs in your collection.

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