A Chicken Farmer Deleted a 700-Year-Old Law

In 1942, Thomas Lee Causby kept chickens on 2.8 acres outside Greensboro, North Carolina. The government leased the airfield next door for the war, and bombers began passing over his land at 83 feet — 67 feet above his house, 18 feet above his tallest tree. The noise was startling, the landing lights lit the place up at night, and his chickens panicked and killed themselves flying into the coop walls. So he sued the United States government, and the case he brought ended a principle of property law that had stood essentially unchallenged for seven hundred years: that if you own land, you own the sky above it, upward forever. The Supreme Court agreed with him, killed the doctrine in a paragraph, and then had to invent a replacement on the spot. What Justice Douglas wrote contains no number — and that missing number is why, eighty years later, nobody can tell you how high your property goes, why the drone over your garden sits in a band no federal court has defined, and why the boundary of outer space is a figure everybody uses and nothing enforces. 0:00 the chickens farmer 1:13 A marginal note about a tomb 2:02 How it reached England 2:46 Why nobody noticed for 700 years 3:36 Nobody sued a balloonist 4:13 Congress leaves a gap 4:56 83 feet 5:42 No physical intrusion 6:09 Douglas kills the doctrine 6:51 The replacement he invented 7:40 There is no number 8:17 Black's dissent 9:09 Was it ever really the law? 9:49 Causby didn't lose his sky 10:54 The English answer 11:39 A crane jib is trespass 12:11 The gap drones live in 13:24 The Drone Slayer 14:27 The largest transfer in history 15:16 Where does space begin? 15:43 The treaty that won't say 16:44 Down to hell 17:39 Refusing to draw the line Commentaries on the Laws of England (Book II) — William Blackstone (1766) Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Commentari... Sources in the pinned comment. Douglas was right to refuse. A number chosen in 1946 for propeller aircraft would have been catastrophic for everything that came after. The price of being right is that the question is still open. How high above your house do you think you own? Whatever number you pick, nobody has ever confirmed it. #law #history #drones