Christos Kyritsis (University of Mississippi – School of Law) has posted Sovereignty By Proxy: The End of Territorial Sovereignty and the Rise of Proxy Power in Outer Space on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is often treated as the legal end of sovereignty beyond Earth. It is not. Although the Treaty prohibits territorial appropriation, it does not eliminate the legal structures through which authority continues to operate. Jurisdiction, supervision, registration, responsibility, and operational control remain central features of the legal architecture governing outer space. As extraterrestrial activity evolves from symbolic exploration toward permanent presence and technologically indispensable infrastructure, authority increasingly migrates away from territorial possession and toward proprietary systems, operational dependency, and technologically mediated control.
This article advances the concept of sovereignty by proxy to describe that transformation. Drawing upon the Montevideo Convention, the Outer Space Treaty, the law of the sea, Antarctic governance, and intellectual property jurisprudence, it argues that the prohibition of territorial sovereignty does not eliminate sovereign functions; it redirects them into proprietary technological architectures. Intellectual property rights, trade secrecy, operational exclusivity, and legally protected technological systems may generate exclusionary structures functionally resembling sovereignty while remaining formally consistent with the non-appropriation principle of the Outer Space Treaty.
The article further argues that validity of law is not identical to enforceability of law. Even where terrestrial intellectual property rights become difficult to enforce directly in outer space, their continuing legal validity may nevertheless structure conduct, justify operational exclusion, and generate dependency relationships around indispensable infrastructure. Through the hypothetical lunar-energy corporation ExMoon, the article demonstrates how technologically indispensable systems interacting with extraterrestrial natural phenomena may gradually produce legally structured operational environments functionally indistinguishable from sovereign authority despite the formal prohibition of territorial claims.
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