The latest on Moon Law, "A Legal Regime for the Mining of Helium-3 on the Moon: U.S. Policy Options," from Richard Bilder at Wisconsin.
Moon Law
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We're mining on the moon now? I don't think this will end well….
Technically, of course, this comes under the heading of "Space Law," although the notion of Lunar Law is more provocative in this case if only because it brings to mind the word "lunacy."
Ah, yes, space law. We need a category for that here in the faculty lounge.
Space law can be considered a sub-specialty within international law but also a "capstone" course requiring students to draw upon many prior subjects studied, including torts, contracts, property, government contracting, insurance, administrative law, foreign relations law, etc. As the heaviest user of space in the military government, civil government and commercial contexts, the US is the most reliant nation on space and thus most vulnerable to risks to space assets. With growing space programs, China and India, will soon join, if they have not already joined, the list of countries that so heavily depend on space for their national security and economic well-being that they will have increased incentives to participate in protecting space. Space law also has a development dimension. For example, Remote sensing data is (can be) critical for agriculture and food supplies. For those interested in further study, the University of Nebraska has created the first space and telecommunications law LLM in the country (and the first one taught in English in the world). On November 2nd, we will host our third annual Space Law Seminar in conjunction with the Strategic Space Symposium in Omaha focusing on "Approaches to Space Security in the Transatlantic Arena." On November 19-20, we will host our Second Annual Washington, D.C. conference with space law panels on space tourism, International Space Station, Military-Civil-Commercial Cooperation, and Export Controls/ITAR. For further information, visit http://spaceandtelecomlaw.unl.edu
More on the Space Law frontier:
"Never Mind Balloon Boy, Here’s the Space Jockeys," by Chris Borgen at Opinio Juris: http://opiniojuris.org/2009/10/21/never-mind-balloon-boy-heres-the-space-jockeys/