This essay examines the most recent justifications for a people's (or state's) exclusive right to resources as part of a territorial right. Divided into eight parts, the discussion covers contemporary philosophical discussion regarding: the conception of natural resources, the conception of resource rights, the general form of arguments supporting resource rights, arguments from self-determination, objections to arguments from self-determination, arguments from residence, arguments from improvement, and new directions for research in the future.How can a man or a people seize an immense territory and keep it from the rest of the world except by a punishable usurpation, since all other are being robbed, by such an act, of the place of habitation and the means of subsistence which nature gave them in common? 1