By: P.T. Babie*
Abstract
This article engages in a brief thought experiment. It assumes that private property can be applied to ownership of the Moon. It assumes that there is a nation with a legal system that can enforce that property. Assuming all of that, it asks: Why should my rights prevail over any others? In any system of law the content of private property—the bundle of rights of use, exclusion, and alienability—is only one half of what a system of property creates. The other half asks “why”—why is it just that I should have private property in that resource while others do not? What a nation creating private property in the Moon would need to do, then, is justify its existence. The primary focus of this article, therefore, concerns ownership—private property—in the Moon from the perspective not of possibility, but of justification. For, in the final analysis, there is little doubt that a regime of private property can and very likely will be established in the Moon. But can it be justified? That is the question that must be asked, and which this article explores.
* Bonython Chair in Law and Professor of Law, Adelaide Law School, The University of Adelaide.
Suggested Citation: P.T. Babie, Beautiful Craterfront Property for Sale! A Thought Experiment on the Justifications for Private Property in the Moon, 130 Penn St. L. Rev. Penn Statim 15 (2025).