Property Rights and the International Law System

Violations of the property rights of vulnerable and marginalized groups are ubiquitous worldwide. Although a right to property has been formulated in article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), states are reluctant to recognize the right to property under international law, since this could imply external constraints on the way they dispose of the property of individuals nationally. Also, human rights activists and theorists are unwilling to defend the idea of a right to property under international law given scepticism about the very idea of a property right.In this article, I develop a Kantian argument for property rights under international law based on Kant’s legal philosophy. While recognizing states’ right of eminent domain, Kant shows that the expansion of legal frameworks beyond domestic law is necessary for the normative possibility of a right in rem. Property rights domestically require an international property rights system, although it does not commit us to a single, monolithic conception of property, and is compatible with different ways of conceptualizing and implementing property relations.I explain how Kant understood property rights internationally, regarded both as the property of private persons under the symbolic meta-ownership of a sovereign, and as possession and control of territory by a people or group vis-a-vis outsiders. Although territory is not the private property of states, I argue that the occupation and control of territory requires us to treat national territory akin to property at the international level, due to the absence of an international legal order binding all states.