| Title | The COST of Joining Legal Forces on a Celestial Body of Law and Beyond: Anticipating Future Clashes between Corpus Juris Spatialis, Lex Mercatoria, Antitrust and Ethics |
|---|---|
| ID_Doc | 77171 |
| Authors | Lucas-Rhimbassen, M |
| Title | The COST of Joining Legal Forces on a Celestial Body of Law and Beyond: Anticipating Future Clashes between Corpus Juris Spatialis, Lex Mercatoria, Antitrust and Ethics |
| Year | 2022 |
| Published | |
| Abstract | The purpose of this paper is to address potential clashes in the future between different bodies of law pertaining to the space sector, such as space, commercial, competition, and transnational law, notably so within the given economic context currently characterized by the increasing privatization of space services in a "congested, contested, and competitive" space market. Furthermore, our analysis conveys rising tensions between higher ethics principles of space law -such as equality of opportunity and access to space, non-appropriation and province of all mankind -and commercial competition dynamics once the bargaining power will irremediably shift towards the private sector. This transition is already taking place, and the space domain, which used to be considered under international space law as a "sanctuary", is now gradually considered as an ecosystem filled with business opportunities. However, for this new "blue ocean" ecosystem to become sustainable, business models would have to embrace creative and innovative ways in which they would comply with space ethics. Based on the results of the analysis, this paper concludes with a roadmap leading to interdisciplinary governance and sustainable solutions to help foster growing commercial activities and ethics compliance in a similar manner that Art. VI of the Outer Space Treaty opened the gates for nascent non-state activity while complying with the essence of international space law in the 60s. Today, the challenge is to channel both the privatization of space activities and, most importantly, the privatization of space law per se in constructive ways to ensure a prosperous peaceful, ethical, and yet profitable ecosystem, and to determine whether a new "Commercial Outer Space Treaty" (COST) would help pave the way.(c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
| http://manuscript.elsevier.com/S0265964621000370/pdf/S0265964621000370.pdf |
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