Red Earth, Silent Treaties: Reimagining Legal Subjectivity and Temporal Violence in Martian Governance

As Mars colonization nears, international law remains bound to Earth-centric notions of sovereignty, temporality, and legal subjectivity.Foundational regimes-most notably the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the 1979 Moon Agreement, and related UN resolutions-are ill-equipped to handle the socio-ecological ruptures of extraterrestrial settlement.Treating Mars as a blank canvas risks repeating colonial tropes of terra nullius and the Doctrine of Discovery.This analysis asks whether the common-heritage-ofhumankind principle can be reconceived through decolonial, ecological, and Posthuman lenses to forestall capitalist appropriation and erasure on Mars.Drawing on Third World approaches to international law and critiques of linear futurism, we highlight Article II's narrow ban on national sovereignty (and its silence on corporate claims) and the Moon Agreement's weak environmental and sharing provisions.We question space law's anthropocentrism by analogy to Earth's recent environmental personhood cases, and explore whether erga omnes and intergenerational duties (evident in the Trail Smelter precedent and the Paris climate regime) might extend to space.We also scrutinize the Artemis Accords as a techno-hegemonic detour from multilateralism.Ultimately, we advance an interplanetary constitutionalism grounded in Martian humility, plurality, and justice, calling for a moratorium on mining and an Antarctic-style treaty on planetary protection that embeds equity, sustainability, epistemic justice, and Posthuman ethics in off-Earth law.