The U.S. Congress has directed the United States Secretary of Transportation, in consultation with the aviation industry and Federal agencies that use unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), to develop a comprehensive plan to integrate UAS into the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS). The plan must address a wide variety of subjects including, but not limited to, definition of acceptable standards; requirements for operators and pilots; and a realistic time frame for UAS integration into the NAS. Integration is required “no later than September 30, 2015”.
Consequently, there is currently a robust debate about how this plan should be formulated and what it should ultimately contain. Although there are many important aspects to the debate, two of the central issues are safety and privacy. Safety issues include incorporating aspects of the Visual Flight Rules including “see and avoid” into the UAS plan. The U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Aviation Administration has a long track record regarding promulgating and implementing safety regulations. It is reasonable to expect a successful continuation of that record. However, privacy is new. Privacy promises to raise novel issues of great interest to professionals and the public alike. Commentators on the political right and left and in the technology community are already engaged in vigorous discussion. Any issue addressed from so many diverse quarters portends to be a major one.
The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law offers this publication as a service to inform the debate. It contains a variety of documents including a number of pending bills intended to address various aspects of UASs. It should be anticipated that going forward, many of the documents in this publication will either change or become obsolete. Nonetheless, they represent the state of the art of the current dialogue and will provide the reader with an entry position to this fast-paced, dynamic subject.
Volume 38 No. 1 of the JOURNAL OF SPACE LAW is now available. This volume of the JOURNAL OF SPACE LAW has a memorial to the late Carl Q. Christol and features members of the new generation of space lawyers addressing long-standing questions in space law. It also has articles explaining two of the most recent developments in space law: the establishment of the Mexican Space Agency and the the Permanent Court of Arbitration Optional Rules for Arbitration of Disputes Relating to Outer Space Activities. The later is was written by H.E. Judge Fausto Pocar of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. To learn more about the volume’s contents, please read the Foreword.
The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law is pleased to make available, without charge,Space Law: Selected Documents 2011, Vols. 1 and 2 . Volume 1 includes national space law documents and Volume 2 includes international space law documents. They are a compilation of space law documents from the year 2011 that were gathered primarily from postings placed on Res Communis from 1 January through 31 December 2011. The postings are supplemented with materials from other sources that were also published in 2011. The compilation is a special supplement to the Journal of Space Law, the world’s oldest law review dedicated to space law. The Journal of Space Law, beginning with the first volume, is also available on line through HeinOnLine.
Volume 37 No. 2 of the JOURNAL OF SPACE LAW is now available. The subject of this volume is comparative law as applied to the law of commercial human space flight. It features articles that compare the Death on the High Seas Act to commercial space flight accidents and a comparison of international air and space regimes as applied by five States with an interest in conducting commercial human space flight. As always, this volume contains an aviation and space law bibliography of recent publications. Reviews of three recent space law books are also part of this volume. To learn more about the volume’s contents, please read the Foreword.
Article IX is the longest article in the Outer Space Treaty. It encompasses several principles of international law and space law. This publication, A Chronological Survey of the Development of Art. IX of the Outer Space Treaty, is based on an Article IX analysis provided by Professor Sergio Marchisio of the University La Sapienza of Rome in the Cologne Commentary on Space Law. A chart was created by distinguishing the four main legal elements in Article IX that were identified by him: international cooperation, due regard, harmful contamination, and international consultations.
The information provided in the survey lists in chronological order the summarized statements and declarations that each Nation – State or nongovernmental organization made to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Legal Subcommittee during the drafting years. The legal questions raised in these records of negotiation concerning Article IX began with “principle 6” of the Soviet Proposal for a Declaration of the Basic Principles Governing the Activities of States pertaining to the Exploration and Use of Outer Space in early 1962. This proposed principle evolved into “Principle 6″ of the Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space unanimously adopted by the General Assembly in 1963. Further negotiations in the Legal Subcommittee led to early elements of the principle being contained in “Article VIII” of the revised Soviet Draft Treaty Governing the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, The Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, and “Article 10” of the U.S. Draft Treaty Governing the Exploration of the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, submitted in 1966. Eventually these draft articles were consolidated by the Legal Working Group L.9 and adopted, thus establishing Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty.
The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law is pleased to make available, without charge, Space Law; Selected Documents 2010, Vols. 1 and 2. Volume 1 includes national space law documents and Volume 2 includes international space law documents.They are a compilation of space law documents from the year 2010 that were gathered primarily from postings placed on Res Communis from 1 January through 31 December 2010. The postings are supplemented with materials from other sources that were also published in 2010 . The compilation is a special supplement to the Journal of Space Law, the world’s oldest law review dedicated to space law. The Journal of Space Law, beginning with the first volume, is available on line throughHeinOnLine.
Volume 37 No. 1 of the JOURNAL OF SPACE LAW is dedicated to the historic enactment of Title 51 of the United States Code: National and Commercial Space Programs. Title 51 is the positive law codification of all U.S. national space law promulgated since 1958. It is the intention of the JOURNAL OF SPACE LAW to serve the space law community by making this dedicated issue a complete reference work for Title 51. For this reason, the JOURNAL OF SPACE LAW is, for the first time, making an entire volume available at the time of its publication at no cost. To learn more about the volume’s contents, please read the Foreword. The entire volume may be downloaded at the Journal website.
The new website also includes many new features. The most important of these is the Center’s Space Law Archive. Now, researchers can access the papers of early space law pioneers Andrew G. Haley, Eilene M. Galloway, and Stephen Gorove. Other new features include an Air and Space Law Calendar and a Did You Know? feature that serves up random important facts about air, remote sensing and space law.
Finally, the website is completely social network enabled with Digg, Facebook, Google, Myspace, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and many more options. We are offering this website to the community as a public service. If you have any ideas or comments about how to improve it for your use, please let us know.
This volume of the JOURNAL OF SPACE LAW contains most of the papers presented at the Earth Observation, Environment, Space, and Remote Sensing Law in the Pacific Rim: Meeting and Live Blogcast (Meeting) hosted by the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law (Center) and held in Hawaii, U.S., on June 16 – 18, 2010.
The purpose of the Meeting was to build upon the success of the first Pacific Rim National Space Law Summit (Summit) hosted by the Center in 2009. The 2009 meeting focused on the national space laws of Pacific Rim nations. The 2010 meeting addressed the law of Earth Observation, the environment and related topics of various Pacific Rim nations. Like the first event, this meeting also provided a forum for an in-depth experience in which the participants had the opportunity to learn from one another and to discuss, in detail, remote sensing and related law and their developing features in the Pacific Rim. As with the original Summit experts from Australia, China, Hong Kong, (special administrative region of China), Japan, Korea (South), the United States of America and, the United Nations participated. New to this year’s gathering were scholars from the Group on Earth Observations, Colombia, and Mexico. The private bar was represented as well this year with practitioners from the Hawaiian, U.S. and Sydney, Australia bar. Also new this year was an interdisciplinary paper addressing both science and law.
Foreword. – Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz
Articles
Japanese Law and Regulations Concerning Remote Sensing Activities – Setsuko Aoki
What Lawyers Need to Know About Science to Effectively Make and Address Laws for Remote Sensing and
Environmental Monitoring – Fermín Romero Vázquez and Sergio Camacho Lara
Sensing a Change? The Re-Launch of Australia’s Space Policy and Some Possible Legal Implications – Steven Freeland
Remote Sensing Issues as They Relate to Korea. – Jae Gon Lee
Remote Sensing Data Distribution and Application in the Environmental Protection, Disaster Prevention, and Urban Planning in China – Yan Ling
Legal Aspects of Reducing Green House Gases Emitted by Aircraft Registered in Korea: A Ripple Effect of EU Initiatives -
Won-hwa Park
The Moon Agreement in the 21st Century: Addressing its Potential Role in the Era of Commercial Exploitation
of the Natural Resources of the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies – Fabio Tronchetti
Regulation of Remote Sensing Activities in Hong Kong: Privacy, Access, Security, Copyright, and the Case of Google – Yun Zhao
Commentaries Environmental Monitoring Cooperation Paves the Way for Common Rules on Remote Sensing
Activities Among the Pacific Rim – Ikuko Kuriyama
Earth Observation, the Environment, Space, and Remote Sensing Law in the Pacific Rim:
Meeting and Live Blogcast Presented by the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air,
and Space Law (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, June 16-18, 2010) Reviewer’s Comments – Masami Onoda
The U.S. Congress has directed the United States Secretary of Transportation, in 
consultation with the aviation industry and Federal agencies that use unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), to develop a comprehensive plan to integrate UAS into the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS). The plan must address a wide variety of subjects including, but not limited to, definition of acceptable standards; requirements for operators and pilots; and a realistic time frame for UAS integration into the NAS. Integration is required “no later than September 30, 2015”.
