Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
11.2 Rejection of the legal approach of air law
Long before the inception of the space era, which has conventionally been defined as com-
mencing at the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik I, the first space object launched in-
to orbit, in October 1957, Vladimir Mandl had already remarked, in 1928, that the special
features of outer space required basic principles devoted to ruling the activities carried out
in this area (Kopal, 1992 ). During the 1950s, the choice of possible analogies within the
already existing international law, the law of the sea and Antarctica, whose Treaty of Wash-
ington was concluded on 1 December 1959 and entered into force on 23 June 1961 (402
UNTS 71), were taken into consideration along with related implications on the future space
law legal regime. Looking at experienced antecedents can be an easier solution for law-
makers, but in any case it could not have entailed a simple process of adaptation to a new
discipline, since a number of key space-related issues required innovative solutions (Lachs,
2010 ) .
Analogies with air law might have been a natural option, since the location of the space
area is just above the air layer surrounding the Earth. Air and space areas are connected, but
there is not a physical border between them ( délimitation horizontale ), and the law did not
establish any definition accordingly.
Since air law recognizes the sovereignty of the subjacent state, air space, which falls
under national jurisdiction, a possible analogical approach to outer space would have led to
the fragmentation of the cosmic space into areas subject to different sovereignties, thus con-
ditioning the use of outer space to the express permission of the national state.
Furthermore, the political context of the Cold War played a fundamental role in the
birth of corpus iuris . Between the 1950s and 1960s, the conquest of space manifested itself
as a struggle for power among the principal antagonists of the Cold War. This situation ex-
plains why, from the beginning, by tacit agreement of both superpowers, space affairs were
dealt with by the United Nations in the framework of the debate on peaceful uses of outer
space. Military activities carried out in space, such as the deployment of rockets carrying
Search WWH ::




Custom Search