ABSTRACT
Air space Between 1900 and 1914 academic lawyers proposed various theories about the legal status of air space.1 But from 1914 onwards it was clear that states would be content with nothing less than complete sovereignty over their air space, unlimited by any right of innocent passage; and a new rule of customary law to that effect arose very quickly. The military potential of aircraft for bombing and reconnaissance, demonstrated during the First World War, meant that any other rule would have been unacceptable to states, on security grounds. (In fact, it was the neutral states which were most insistent on their right to exclude foreign aircraft during the First World War, in order to prevent aerial battles taking place over their terri tory.) Since then, the customary rule has been that aircraft from one state have a right to fly over the high seas, but not over the territory or territorial sea of another state.2 This rule is reaffirmed in Article 1 of the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation which states that ‘every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory’.3
