Res Communis

by Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz with the blog faculty

Download Agenda
Papers from the Summit will be published in the Journal of Space Law Volume 35, No. 2 (Winter 2009)

By Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz with the blog faculty

The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law has made some changes and updates to its website that may be of interest:

A page highlighting the Center’s work on and in China has been launched. You’ll find summaries of a variety of activities as well as some useful downloads on Chinese space law.

The agenda for  the Center’s upcoming Pacific Rim Space Law Summit is now available.

The Journal of Space Law web page has been updated with lots of new features including a growing collection of fully downloadable back issues, downloadable supplementary materials, and a free preview article from the current journal.

You’ll also find information on the Center’s partnership with an MIT space policy class.

by P.J. Blount with the blog faculty

From the University of Mississippi Newsdesk:

Archiving of Historic Papers Uncovers Signatures of Presidents, Author, Politicians
Written by Jennifer Farish
03/20/2009

OXFORD, Miss. – A project at the University of Mississippi to archive the professional papers of the late Andrew G. Haley, considered the world’s first space law practitioner, has uncovered some notable correspondence from U.S. presidents, a famous science fiction writer and well-known international politicians.

Michael Dodge, who graduated from the UM School of Law in May 2008 with a Certificate in Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law, works as an assistant research counsel with the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law at the law school. This past fall, he began organizing the boxes of Haley’s papers for archiving and creating an online finding aid for researchers.

He came across signatures from famous people such as John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. “It was exciting to discover all of the correspondence dating back decades dealing with space law,” Dodge said.

The 42 boxes of files include the late attorney’s personal, space-related correspondence and files, which were donated by his son Andrew Jr. to the late Stephen Gorove, after Haley’s death in 1966. Gorove, who taught at the UM law school from 1965 to 1988, was also among the first attorneys to tackle the issues of space law.

“The papers are a remarkable contribution to the history of space law and are in pristine condition,” said Joanne Gabrynowicz, the center’s director. “The center was fortunate to be able to bring in Dr. Stephen Doyle, who was Haley’s law clerk in the 1960s, to help establish the provenance and organization of the collection. The archive is a valuable asset for space lawyers and Cold War historians alike.”

The papers are available for searching online by visiting: http://www.spacelaw.olemiss.edu/archive/haleyarchive.htm. Their availability to the public is expected to be valuable to historians, legal researchers and scholars interested in the history of both national and international space law.

Among the many notable papers in the collection is a 1956 letter from Clarke detailing his ideas on how communications and other satellites would be used in the future.

“It’s amazing because so much of what we consider real science today was projected by Clarke years before the actual technology existed,” said Michelle Aten, the center’s assistant director. “He was thinking about the idea of geosynchronous orbits long before the first satellite was launched.”

Geosynchronous orbits enable communications satellites to remain in orbit over the same location on Earth constantly and are sometimes referred to as Clarke orbits because of his proposal of the idea.

In the letter to Haley, Clarke states that his interests lie along the lines of space-based satellite relays. The letter goes on to discuss the future of space-based systems predicting worldwide person-to-person radio communication, direct broadcasting and a position-finding system. Interestingly, Clarke closes the letter by saying, “I’ll get on with my science fiction and wait to say I told you so.”

The Haley papers also include numerous international letters such as documents from the Cold War era. One particular letter from the then-president of the International Institute on Space Law, who was Bulgarian, centers on the fact that he had been accused of spying for the United States. He was later arrested and executed. Other letters deal with the actual founding of the IISL and the American Bar Association’s acknowledgement of space law as a critical field of legal study.

For more information about the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law, visit http://www.spacelaw.olemiss.edu/ .

by Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz with the blog faculty

The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, (Center) is pleased to make available  USA-193: Selected Documents. This is the first in a new occasional series, Special Topics in Aerospace Law. The series is being offered as a supplement to the Center’s primary publication, the Journal of Space Law. The Journal of Space Law is the world’s oldest law review dedicated to space law and is available online through HeinOnLine in its Core U.S./Most-Cited Law Journals collection. USA-193: Selected Documents is a compilation of the major documents that were generated by the shooting down of the satellite USA-193 on 20 February 2008, and is being released on the first anniversary of the event.

USA-193 is, itself, an event with critical implications for space law. It is also one in a series of events that, collectively, are raising important, practical space law issues. These events include the reported Chinese ASAT test conducted against the Chinese Fengyuan 1C polar-orbiting weather satellite on 11 January 2007 and the on-orbit collision of the Iridium – 33 and Cosmos 2251 satellites on 10 February 2009. The latter event is the first known occurrence of two bona fide space objects from different Nation-States colliding into one another in open space. Among some of the issues raised by all of these events are determining liability for harm caused in space, in air and on Earth; causing harm to the space environment; and the obligation to inform or warn. Some of the most important issues specifically raised by the USA–193 event emerge from Art. IX of the Outer Space Treaty and include how to define “peaceful purposes” and “potentially harmful interference” as well as what constitutes “appropriate international consultations” before conducting an activity that has the potential for harmful interference with space activities of other States Parties. This compilation is offered to advance the understanding of these, and other important issues.

UM Space Law Students Partner with MIT Engineering Students on
Written by Jennifer Farish
02/10/2009

OXFORD, Miss. – A semester-long collaboration between University of Mississippi space law students and Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering students is helping prepare both groups for the challenges they will face in space-related careers.

The project requires the students to create a series of proposals on two different space-related issues. The idea for the collaboration originated from a conversation between Joanne Gabrynowicz, director of the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law at the UM School of Law, and Annalisa Weigel, MIT assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and of engineering systems.

The law students benefit by learning about the needs and mind-set of engineers, since some of them may end up representing space engineers in their careers, Gabrynowicz said.

“Our students will act as legal advisers to the engineering students, who have to make decisions regarding their projects involving the International Space Station and Earth observation satellites,” she said. “The idea is that space projects are impacted by the legal agreements that govern them, and the engineers carrying out the projects need to know about them.”

Weigel, who visited Ole Miss recently and spoke to the law students, said engineers often view law and policy as constraints on their work.

“They don’t tend to develop a really deep understanding of why those constraints exist,” she said, adding that this project is a unique opportunity for engineering students to get a different perspective.

“For my engineering students to have exposure to law students and to the mind-set of a lawyer will be phenomenal,” she said. “MIT doesn’t have a law school, so this is a perspective that they wouldn’t otherwise be getting on campus, but it certainly is one that they will run into in their careers, and I think it is important for them to understand that.”

Nicholas Welly of Oxford, a second-year law student in the space law program, said the projects will give him and the other law students an opportunity to see what it is like to work with a client.

“This will give us a really good opportunity to look at what requirements a client might have and help us tailor the products we make as law students to meet their needs,” he said.

Second-year law student John Wood of Atlanta, whose emphasis is in aviation law, agrees that the project is a chance to gain real-world experience.

“This field is really international, and the students we are working with will have different perspectives,” he said. “This is really a mock client-attorney relationship, and just getting to interact with them in that setting mimics real-world experience and how practicing international aviation or space law will be.”

As part of the project, Gabrynowicz plans to visit Weigel’s MIT class in March to share her knowledge of space law. The law students’ goal is to provide guidance on legal issues, while the MIT students will offer technical expertise in assessing the engineering, technical and policy issues related to their proposed scenarios.

For more information about the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law, visit http://www.spacelaw.olemiss.edu . For more information on the UM School of Law, visit http://www.law.olemiss.edu .

by P.J. Blount with the blog faculty

From the UM News Desk:

Space Law Professor is Invited Speaker At Gatherning of World Experts
Written by Andrew Abernathy
12/05/2008

OXFORD, Miss. – Space is not just for astronauts and scientists anymore. As satellite and remote sensing technology advances, the lawyers, farmers and policymakers of the future are taking notice.

As part of Statistics from Space, a recent convention of world experts on remote sensing, agriculture and space law, a University of Mississippi law professor was invited to make a presentation on current research at UM’s National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law.

Joanne Gabrynowicz, director of the center, spoke at the convention last month in Seattle, and coordinated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Her presentation dealt with the importance of archiving data collected by satellites and how that information can affect public policy and aid in planning agricultural and urban development. She used examples of data collected from irrigation systems and food producers across the world to show how they establish a basis for decision-making for agricultural planners, economists, lawmakers, industry leaders and scientists. “What I learned is that remote sensing has begun to be noticed by organizations that traditionally don’t have anything to do with space,” Gabrynowicz said.

The foundation invited several other experts in their fields, including an environmental scholar, members of a satellite mapping organization and satellite designers, as well as representatives from the European Commission, United Nations and U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The underlying purpose of the meeting was to determine how developing technologies can be used for the public good, including aiding countries that are still technologically less advanced as the world continues to transition from the industrial to the technological age.

The Statistics from Space participants established four long-term goals during the convention, according to an outline of the gathering. These goals include the “accurate and timely” monitoring of agricultural statistics, providing accurate production forecasts, monitoring food distribution and land uses, and establishing free, public access to that information.

Gabrynowicz, a graduate of Hunter College and Yeshiva University, joined the UM faculty in 2001 after being recruited from the University of North Dakota, where she was a founding member of the space studies program. She is a frequent guest lecturer on space law around the world. In 2007 she was elected to the board of directors for the International Institute of Space Law, where she advises lawmakers on the construction of space laws in developing nations.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is based in Seattle and is one of the world’s largest private foundations. According to the foundation’s Web site, http://www.gatesfoundation.org, the organization’s primary interests are the global enhancement of health care and the reduction of poverty. In the U.S., its primary focus is on educational issues and the improvement of information technology.
For more information about the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law, visit http://www.spacelaw.olemiss.edu .

by P.J. Blount with the blog faculty

Today, the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law will be featured on The Space Show. Director Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz will be joined by NCRSASL students Rebecca Beckett, Jason Crook, Erik Lundin, Nick Welly, and Nathan Wilson. The show airs at 12:30 Eastern and you can listen at www.thespaceshow.com.