Law Commons^™

The Cape Town Convention And The Law Of Outer Space: Five Scenarios, Mark J. Sundahl

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The adoption of the Space Assets Protocol to the Cape Town Convention marked a new era in the evolution of the law of outer space by providing the first space treaty regarding private international law. This Protocol was not created in a legal vacuum, but was drafted against the background of the existing United Nations space treaties that were drafted in the 1960s and 1970s. Although the existing UN treaties address public international law and therefore cover subject matter that is quite distinct from the private law issues addressed by the Space Assets Protocol, there are still points at which …

The Role Of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Uas) In Disaster Response And Recovery Efforts: Historical, Current And Future, Dennis Vincenzi, David C. Ison, Brent A. Terwilliger

Publications

A wide range of legislation has been proposed or put into place that restricts the use of unmanned systems. These actions by legislators and regulators will stifle the growth of this technology and the associated surrounding industry. The largest obstacle to the proliferation of UAS in the U.S. is the FAA. The FAA has designated the location of six test sites that are anticipated to allow for less restrictive and formative research to assess the technologies that the FAA has claimed need to exist in order to integrate UAS into the NAS. Further complicating the adoption of UAS for beneficent …

Developing Space: Political And Socio-Economic Rationales Of Emerging Space Programs, Sandra Cabrera-Alvarado, Sara Langston, Tanay Sharma

Publications

A presentation on developing space programs in Latin America and the need to work together cooperatively to maximize budgets to support scientific and technological research.

Sharing Public Safety Helicopters, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Drones, Henry H. Perritt Jr., Eliot O. Sprague

All Faculty Scholarship

Abstract

Drone technology is evolving rapidly. Microdrones—what the FAA calls “sUAS”—already on the market at the $1,000 level, have the capability to supplement manned helicopters in support of public safety operations, news reporting, and powerline and pipeline patrol, when manned helicopter support is infeasible, untimely, or unsafe.

Larger drones–"machodrones”–are not yet available outside battlefield and counterterrorism spaces. Approximating the size of manned helicopters, but without pilots, or with human pilots being optional, their design is still in its infancy as designers await greater clarity in the regulatory requirements that will drive airworthiness certification.

This article evaluates drone technology and design …

Keep Your Eyes On Eyes In The Sky, Hillary B. Farber

Faculty Publications

To date, eight states have passed bills regulating domestic drone use by government and private individuals. This leaves us with a question: If a city of more than 60,000 residents and a global company with a customer base in the hundreds of millions are racing to the sky, how are we as a commonwealth of 6.6 million to truly launch ourselves into the debate and protect what little privacy we have left?

Autonomous Weapons And Human Responsibilities, Jack M. Beard

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Although remote-controlled robots flying over the Middle East and Central Asia now dominate reports on new military technologies, robots that are capable of detecting, identifying, and killing enemies on their own are quietly but steadily movingfrom the theoretical to the practical. The enormous difficulty in assigning responsibilities to humans and states for the actions ofthese machines grows with their increasing autonomy. These developments implicate serious legal, ethical, and societal concerns. This Article focuses on the accountability of states and underlying human responsibilities for autonomous weapons under International Humanitarian Law or the Law of Armed Conflict. After reviewing the evolution of …

Standards, Standards Everywhere: Assessing Current Initiatives For Human Spaceflight Standards And Their Potential Effect On Future Regulations, Mark J. Sundahl

Law Faculty Contributions to Books

One of the critical questions facing the human spaceflight industry is how its activities will be regulated during the infancy of the industry. It is generally agreed that regulation is necessary to address safety risks to crew, passengers and third parties. However, there is also a concern that government agencies may over-regulate the industry in a manner that could create unnecessary administrative burdens and interfere with technological innovation. In fact, the growth of regulation over the human space industry has been quite slow. Although the United States enacted the Human Space Flight Requirements for Crew and Space Flight Participants in …

From Space Tourists To Unruly Passengers? The U.S. Struggle With "On-Orbit Jurisdiction", F. G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

With the first proper commercial sub-orbital “space tourist” flights seemingly around the corner, the need to develop a proper legal system addressing all relevant parameters, scenarios, and events also arises more visibly. This is particularly true for the United States, where so far the major developments in private manned spaceflight are concentrated, some of which may soon move from relatively straightforward up-and-down sub-orbital trajectories to longer-duration suborbital and/or orbital flights, or even long-duration presence in (potentially private) space stations. As one author succinctly put it: humans are essentially unpredictable, and the longer their flights will be, the less preordained and …

Federal Versus State: Private Commercial Spaceflight Operator Immunity Regulation In The United States, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

The 2004 Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act provided the first national statute dedicated to private commercial spaceflight, further elaborated by a Chapter in the Code of Federal Regulations. A major element of that regulation concerns the “informed consent” requirement, which constitutes the main condition upon which a private commercial spaceflight operator is allowed to fly paying passengers into the edge of outer space and back. The requirement as such does not automatically equate with a statutory waiver of passenger liability, which was a major reason for a handful of individual US states to add by way of statutes such immunity …

A Kellogbriand Pact For The 21st Century, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article briefly describes why the State parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons rejected human rights groups’ call for a ban on so called “killer robots.” This article contends that the international community resoundingly rejected this argument at the first ever experts meeting on lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) because it ignores the wide range and longstanding use of LAWS and presupposes their future development while failing to acknowledge even the possibility that LAWS may facilitate greater protection of both military and civilians.

An Inference About Interference: A Surprising Application Of Existing International Law To Inhibit Anti-Satellite Weapons, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article presents a thesis that most readers will find surprising, in an effort to develop a novel, simultaneous solution to three urgent, complex problems related to outer space. The three problems are: a) the technical fact that debris in outer space (the accumulated orbital junk produced by decades of space activities) has grown to present a serious hazard to safe and effective exploration and exploitation of space; b) the strategic fact that many countries (notably the United States, China and Russia, but others, too) continue to demonstrate a misguided interest in pursuing anti-satellite weapons, which can jeopardize the security …