Law Commons^™

Armed Conflicts In Outer Space: Which Law Applies?, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

International Law Studies

So far, outer space has merely become involved in terrestrial armed conflicts as part of the supportive infrastructure for military activities. Unfortunately, the risk that this changes is considerably growing, and it can no longer be excluded that (armed) force will become used in outer space, either directed towards Earth or within outer space itself.

This raises serious issues in the legal context, where space law so far has been premised on the hope that armed conflicts in outer space could be avoided whereas the law of armed conflict was not required so far to deal with the use of …

Innovative Thinking: Modernizing Outer Space Governance, Diane M. Janosek

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Space security is essential to global safety and prosperity. International treaties should modernize and reflect the world’s innovation in space and governance needs. One must look back to 1967 for the inaugural “Outer Space Treaty,” the first and only binding multilateral agreement for peaceful space use and exploration. In 50 years, technologies and space capabilities have evolved; an updated global treaty and agreement should be developed and evaluated. Both China and Russia have demonstrated their capability to degrade and/or destroy adversaries’ satellites in space. Space wars are no longer a hypothetical. The future once discussed and anxiously anticipated after Sputnik …

Nebulous Law: Using Soft Law To Give Structure To The Amorphous Rpo Industry, Kylie Mclaughlin

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Imagine looking down at your smartphone and realizing that you cannot make phone calls or access the internet. A communications satellite enabling these functions on your cellphone has just been struck by a piece of uncontrolled space debris. Now, imagine being in the aftermath of a natural disaster, and search and rescue teams do not know you and your family are missing or in distress. A satellite within the International Satellite System for Search and Rescue has just run out of fuel. Finally, imagine trains, planes, and ships remaining in their stations, gates, and ports because each has lost …

The Regulation Of Space Tourism, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

Space tourism has to be regulated as a subset of private spaceflight activities, whereby humans are sent to outer space in a fundamentally private context. In addition to space law, air law would be relevant for addressing private spaceflight, but neither regime has at the international level regulated relevant activities to any appreciable extent. They provide little more than a set of guiding overarching principles. Much of the onus of future regulation will fall on the shoulders of individual states, most notably the United States. In the more distant future, this may result in a special international regime, using elements …

Space Law And Gnss—A Look At The Legal Frameworks For “Outer Space”, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), obviously, make crucial use of satellites operating in an area commonly known as “outer space,” raising issues regarding which specific body of law might rule the operations of such satellite systems. Though the “horizontal” boundary between outer space and the underlying area of airspaces has never been authoritatively defined, it has generally been agreed that those two areas differ fundamentally as to the legal regimes ruling them, giving rise indeed to a specific body of “space law.”