Air and Space Law Commons^™

Book Review: International Law--The Conduct Of Armed Conflict And Air Operations, Donald P. Gilmore

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Unmanned Arial Systems (Uas) In The Local Public Safety Environment: A Review, Hiram Taylor, Blount-Hill Blount-Hill, Charles R. Jennings

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Reclassifying Geostationary Earth Orbit As Private Property: Why Natural Law And Utilitarian Theories Of Property Demand Privatization, Ian Blodger

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Early Afternoon Concurrent Panel Sessions: Commercial Space Industry Snapshot: Presentation: 2015 Commercial Space Industry Snapshot As Seen Through The Eyes Of The International Symposium For Personal And Commercial Spaceflight (Ispcs), Sarah J. Nilsson Esq.

Aviation / Aeronautics / Aerospace International Research Conference

The International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) is a nonprofit independently run annual event, that has taken place these past 11 years, whose speakers capture the growth and diversification of the global commercial space industry in the form of short powerful talks. Hence, it was appropriate that a 2015 snapshot of the commercial space industry should look at this body of experience and knowledge. The key developments, the key players and an accurate state of the industry are hereby presented through the eyes of the ISPCS from this past eleventh symposium that spanned two days and was held …

An Arm And A Leg: Paying For Helicopter Air Ambulances, Henry Perritt

All Faculty Scholarship

An increase in Medicare reimbursement rates in 2002 caused the number of helicopter air ambulances in the United States to increase threefold. The vast majority of air ambulance flights are ultimately paid for through Medicare or private insurance reimbursement, although the patient often remains legally responsible for the cost of a flight. Average costs for helicopter air ambulance (HEMS) operators have increased much more rapidly than the reimbursement rate, mostly due to low utilization of the helicopters. New safety requirements imposed by the FAA, after a ten-year period of much higher accident rates for helicopter air ambulances than for the …

Report Of The 59th Colloquium On The Law Of Outer Space: Guadalajara, Mexico, 2016, Mark J. Sundahl, Kumar Abhijeet, P.J. Blount, Luis Fernando Castillo Argañarás, Christopher Johnson, R. Moro-Aguilar, Alexander Soucek, Olga Stelmakh-Drescher

Law Faculty Contributions to Books

The 2016 session opened with a keynote lecture by incoming IISL President, Kai Uwe-Schrogl, on the topic of space law and diplomacy.

The IISL is a kind of academic and quasi-diplomatic clearing house for the development of notions and ideas in space law.

Autonomy Of Military Robots: Assessing The Technical And Legal (“Jus In Bello”) Thresholds, 32 J. Marshall J. Info. Tech. & Privacy L. 57 (2016), Remus Titiriga

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

While robots are still absent from our homes, they have started to spread over battlefields. However, the military robots of today are mostly remotely controlled platforms, with no real autonomy. This paper will disclose the obstacles in implementing autonomy for such systems by answering a technical question: What level of autonomy is needed in military robots and how and when might it be achieved, followed by a techno-legal one: How to implement the rules of humanitarian law within autonomous fighting robots, in order to allow their legal deployment? The first chapter scrutinizes the significance of autonomy in robots and the …

Drone Integration: A Pilot's Solution To A Serious Entertainment Problem, 33 J. Marshall J. Info. Tech. & Privacy L. 1 (2016), Daniel Shoffet

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

This paper will explain the current state regarding the integration of commercial and recreational drones into the United States’ airspace with general aviation, as well as identify whether drones and general aviation incidents are common or are likely to occur. This paper will also analyze proposed regulations by the Federal Aviation Administration and any drawbacks that come along with them, as well as other proposed solutions to the current problem with integration of drones. Additionally, this paper will propose a solution which incorporates the use of current aviation technologies to solve the drone integration problem: mandating commercial drone operators to …

Soft Law’S Failure On The Horizon: The International Code Of Conduct For Outer Space Activities, Jack M. Beard

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

On January 11, 2007, the People’s Republic of China conducted a successful test of an anti-satellite weapon against one of its own aging weather satellites that produced a massive cloud of long-lasting orbital debris in space. The test highlighted both the growing possibility that orbital debris may ultimately render space unusable for all activities there and the reality of an increasingly militarized, contested and insecure geopolitical space environment. Largely in response to this incident, and in an effort to enhance the safety, security and sustainability of space activities, the European Union developed a draft “International Code of Conduct for Activities …

Shaking The Foundations Of The Law: Some Legal Issues Posed By A Detection Of Extra-Terrestrial Life, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

In order to properly address the legal issues posed by a proper detection of extra-terrestrial life (not just a mere serious possibility, as with the recent discovery of actual water on Mars), because of its extraordinary character it is necessary to briefly revisit the foundations of ‘the law’ as a social construct, and explore its relationship to ‘ethics’ as another social construct. The type of ‘law’ being discussed here is, of course, man-made, and made to deal with human activities, including human reactions to (other) events. Human-made law has for example been defined as “the principles and regulations established in …

Space Traffic Management: A Challenge Of Cosmic Proportions, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

Space traffic management has often, for example in the IAA Cosmic Study of 2006, been rather broadly defined as “the set of technical and regulatory provisions for promoting safe access into outer space, operations in outer space and return from space to Earth free of physical or radio-frequency interference.” Oftentimes, especially in space law literature, references or even comparisons have been made to traffic management as it has developed in aviation and (to a lesser extent) in maritime transport.

However, it should be realized that space traffic management, especially under the definition quoted, comprises a considerably larger range of activities …

Liability For Damage Caused By Small Satellites—A Non-Issue?, Frans Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

Small satellites have become a welcome addition to the existing tools to benefit from space applications—they are relatively simple and cheap to construct, and being small, relatively cheap to launch as well, as secondary payloads on launch vehicles where the primary payload may not take up all of the (often standardized) payload bay capacity. As they, moreover, usually orbit for relatively short times in low trajectories before burning up in the atmosphere, they might not seem to pose major or even merely realistic liability risks.

As a consequence, sometimes the issue of liability for damage caused by small satellites has …

Wide-Scale Small Unmanned Aircraft System Access To The National Airspace System, John Robbins, Brent Terwilliger, David Ison, Dennis Vincenzi

Publications

Expected revisions of federal policies and regulations for the operation and certification of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are anticipated to significantly increase the volume of traffic in the National Airspace System (NAS). By investigating critical needs of regulatory compliance and safety, as well as new advancements, it may be possible to identify strategies to address the most pressing concerns of sUAS integration. Findings and recommendations from this research are presented to highlight implications and possible solutions to urgent needs of UAS stakehold-ers, including industry, government, and academia.

Aerospace And Defense Industries, R. Locke Bell, Johny Chaklader, Donna A. Dulo, Priya Iyengar, Kevin J. Lombardo, Jason M. Silverman

The International Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Newsgathering Takes Flight In Choppy Skies: Legal Obstacles Affecting Journalistic Drone Use, Clay Calvert, Charles D. Tobin, Matthew D. Bunker

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines legal challenges confronting journalists who use drones to gather images. Initially, it traces the history of drones and the Federal Aviation Administration’s efforts to regulate them, as well as new state legislation that aims to restrict drones. This Article then illustrates that a wide array of legal remedies already exist for individuals harmed by journalistic drone usage, and it argues that calls for additional, piecemeal state laws to regulate drones are unnecessary and unduly hinder First Amendment interests in newsgathering and the public’s right to know. Furthermore, this Article asserts that the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy jurisprudence developed in aerial …

Protecting Tribal Skies: Why Indian Tribes Possess The Sovereign Authority To Regulate Tribal Airspace, William M. Haney

American Indian Law Review

Since the advent of human flight, lawmakers in the United States have struggled to keep pace with advancements in aviation technology. Similarly, many doctrines of federal Indian law that govern the exercise of the sovereign powers of Indian tribes in the United States are based on outmoded conceptions of the capabilities and interests of Indian people and tribal governments. For decades, tribal governments have worked to protect their sovereign interests in tribal territory from the effects of aviation activities that occur within tribal airspace. There has been no exploration of tribal airspace issues in the academic community and limited examination …

2015 Commercial Space Industry Snapshot As Seen Through The Eyes Of The International Symposium For Personal And Commercial Spaceflight (Ispcs), Sarah J. Nilsson Esq.

Publications

The International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) is a nonprofit independently run annual event, that has taken place these past 11 years, whose speakers capture the growth and diversification of the global commercial space industry in the form of short powerful talks. Hence, it was appropriate that a 2015 snapshot of the commercial space industry should look at this body of experience and knowledge. The key developments, the key players and an accurate state of the industry are hereby presented through the eyes of the ISPCS from this past eleventh symposium that spanned two days and was held …

Aviation Law-Air Services Agreement Between The United States And The United Kingdom, Patricia E. Cooper

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

One Centimeter Over My Back Yard: Where Does Federal Preemption Of State Drone Regulation Start? (With Albert J. Plawinski", Henry H. Perritt Jr.

Henry H. Perritt, Jr.

The Us Space Launch Competitiveness Act Of 2015, Frans Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

On November 25, 2015, President Obama signed into law the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (H.R. 2262). This Act encompasses four titles: I. Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship (acronym: SPACE), II. Commercial Remote Sensing, III. Office of Space Commerce, and IV. Space Resource Exploration and Utilization.

Title I amends the Commercial Space Launch Act, which comprises the licensing regime for launches, reentries, and launch port activities, including those carrying spaceflight participants on board.

Title II amends the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act, which allowed for the licensing of private commercial satellite remote-sensing operations, and essentially requires the Secretary …