Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Jankowitsch, Peter --- "The background and history of space law" [2015] ELECD 247; in von der Dunk, Frans (ed), "Handbook of Space Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) 1

Book Title: Handbook of Space Law

Editor(s): von der Dunk, Frans

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781000359

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: The background and history of space law

Author(s): Jankowitsch, Peter

Number of pages: 28

Abstract/Description:

Space law in any meaningful sense started to develop immediately following the launch of Sputnik-1 in October 1957, and ever since has presented a fascinating new body of (essentially) international law. The human space endeavour started with the two superpowers the Soviet Union and the United States, then increasingly involved other states as well. Firstly this remained confined perhaps to the European and Anglo-Saxon parts of the world (France, the United Kingdom, West-Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia), but then also industrial powers from other parts of the world (Japan, the People’s Republic of China) and finally increasingly also from major developing countries (India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria) as well as a range of smaller countries across the globe entered the arena. These developments resulted in a continuous need to extend and update relevant areas of the legal regime in order to keep abreast of those developments and ensure the continued accessibility of outer space for peaceful purposes for the benefit of mankind – in spite of all the individual military, strategic and political, and then increasingly also economic and social interests at stake. Today’s concerns regarding, for example, space debris and the long-term sustainability of space activities, and the role of private enterprise in space activities respectively themselves arose from more general geo-political and geo-economic developments, but fundamentally require being addressed by law and regulation, firstly on a global scale. Chapter 1 addresses how the overarching issues of space law arose as a consequence of this background and history of space activities and the major political, military, scientific and economic developments guiding them, taking account of the major milestones in this respect such as the first man in space, the first landing on another celestial body, the first re-usable space vehicle, the first long-term space station operations and the first space tourists. Space law, much like other branches of public international law and indeed international law itself, has its origins in the need to establish a certain number of more or less simple rules to govern relations between members of an increasingly organized international community, primarily the community of states. In this effort a widening number of areas on land, sea and finally air as well as new subjects, such as humanitarian ones, were covered by an ever larger body of law and treaties. While the human mind, science, but also early examples of science fiction turned their attention early on to the space enveloping earth, outer space, there was no legal dimension to this sphere. It was only with the appearance of new technologies, in particular the development of rocket technology from theoretical beginnings to its first use as a means of warfare during the Second World War, that the possible legal aspects of this new kind of human activity began to stimulate legal thinking on this subject. As Vladimir Kopal has pointed out, many of the early writers on space law, including the author of a first comprehensive monograph on the subject, Vladimir Mandl, had a background in air law. Mandl, however, points out in his study, published in Germany as early as 1932, that reaching outer space by rockets would raise a variety of new issues not settled by air law and therefore needing the creation of a new body of law.