Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos
Early versions of the maxim have been traced to the 13th-century Italian jurist Accursius, and is said to date in common law to the time of Edward I.
It was more recently promulgated, in broad form (air above and ground below) by William Blackstone in his influential treatise Commentaries on the Laws of England (1766).
The principle was firmly established in common law by Edward Coke in Bury v. Pope (1587),[8][9] which gives the first statement in English law of the principle, writing (Liber 1, section 1, page 4, section "Terra" (earth)):[10] And lastly, the earth hath in law a great extent upwards, not only of water as hath been said, but of aire, and all other things even up to heaven, for cujus est solum ejus est usque ad coelum, as it is holden.The reporter's note to this case[8] ascribes the maxim to the time of Edward I, which accords with the attribution to Accursius (father and son).
[10] The phrase appears in Blackstone's Commentaries, Book 2, Chapter 2, p. *18: Land hath also, in its legal signification, an indefinite extent, upwards as well as downwards.
Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum, is the maxim of the law, upwards; therefore no man may erect any building, or the like, to overhang another's land: and, downwards, whatever is in a direct line between the surface of any land, and the center of the earth, belongs to the owner of the surface; as is every day's experience in the mining countries.
In American law, the formulation Ab orco usque ad coelum "from Hades all the way to Heaven"[13] by Louis Brandeis is also found.
Jurists occasionally invoked aerial-balloon trespass as an example of a trivial injury for which the law wouldn't provide redress, and it appears that no one ever sued a balloonist just for flying over.
The rights of landowners to the airspace immediately over their land were affirmed in England and Wales in Kelsen v. Imperial Tobacco Co.[15] where a sign erected on a building that overhung the plaintiff's property committed the tort of trespass, even though no harm or nuisance was caused by it.
It is an imperfect guide, as it has ceased to apply to the use of airspace above a height which may interfere with the ordinary user of land [cf Bernstein, above]".
This was passed as a statutory alienation of rights over freehold registered land that proprietors have to facilitate 'fracking', and would have permitted some (though not all) of the intrusions in the Bocardo case.
The court noted that ad coelum "had no meaning in the modern world", while also holding that "if the landowner is to have full enjoyment of the land, he must have exclusive control of the immediate reaches of the enveloping atmosphere.
A review of modern American jurisprudence demonstrates that the theory is more poetic hyperbole than binding law, and that broadly speaking, the deeper the disputed region, the less likely courts are to recognize that the surface owner holds subsurface title.
[21] With the advent of space exploration, the upper limits to the "ad coelum" doctrine now include issues of national sovereignty.
[22] Article II of the treaty notes that "Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation."
