 As noted above, one of the key problems with Grotius’s account of territory is that it failed to explain the scope of the state. Jurisdiction was based on possession but possession was defined descriptively: a group could come to possess land through force or through public claims, but it was not clear how the scope or extent of the possession was defined normatively or how it could be limited. One of the key contemporary defenders of Grotius—Mathias Risse—attempts to update Grotius’s account by developing a principle or set of principles designed to address this problem.