On Tuesday this week, May 23, the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness held a hearing titled Reopening the American Frontier: Exploring How the Outer Space Treaty will Impact American Commerce and Settlement in Space. There were two panels, and I was on the first panel with my friends and colleagues Jim Dunstan of Mobius Legal Group and Matt Schaeffer, professor of law and co-director of the space, cyber and telecommunications program at the University of Nebraska’s law school. We were asked to address possible impacts of the Outer Space Treaty on the expansion of our nation’s commerce and settlement in outer space. My testimony is available here, and Professor Schaeffer’s is available here.
Mine is substantially similar to what I provided the House space subcommittee in March, but this time I emphasized more the importance of recognizing that the “harmful contamination” provisions of Article IX do not apply to private actors, and that human beings should not be treated as contaminants no matter how germy we are.
I found Jim Dunstan’s testimony particularly helpful and edifying, and strongly urge everyone to read the whole thing, but I want to highlight certain of his points. He makes some of the same points I have stressed in the past with regard to the import of Article VI’s call for authorization and supervision not being self-executing, but he has his own take on why the United States need not regulate more than it already does. The following outtakes highlight Jim’s perspectives:
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The “authorization” and “supervision” components of Article VI are subsidiary to the overall structure of Article VI which places both the responsibility and liability for treaty violations and damages for space activities on the nation itself. A failure to either authorize or continually supervise the activities of private nationals merely increases the risk that a country might be liable for damages;
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Article VI is not “self-executing,” meaning that the authorization and supervision language is not the “law of the land” in the United States, absent domestic legislation implementing Article VI. The case of Medellin v. Texas makes a clear distinction between treaty provisions that, by their language and nature, become the “law of the land” in the U.S., and those treaty provisions that require domestic implementation to have the force of law;
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The Tenth Amendment (echoing the Declaration of Independence) provides the required “authorization” component of Article VI for Americans;
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Congress has the discretion, as a matter of both international and American constitutional law, to decide how to implement its Article VI responsibility to provide “ongoing supervision” for private American actors in space;
With respect to Article VI and the previous administration’s report calling for the regulation of all U.S. missions in space he says:
The White House report notes, correctly, that some planned missions involve activity that is not currently regulated and then concludes, incorrectly, the U.S. is not meeting its obligations under Article VI. But Article VI does not, in and of itself, require any specific form of authorization and supervision—or that, in the absence of such, non-governmental activities are prohibited.
Interestingly, Jim ties treaty compliance to the fact that Article VI explicitly lays out the consequences for any lack of authorization and supervision:
A lack of supervision is not, in and of itself, a violation of international law; it merely raises the chances that a non-governmental activity might run afoul of the OST prohibitions and that the country responsible be held liable for consequential damages because that country’s citizens seek to engage in a behavior that is a per se violation of the OST, or creates a probability that those activities will interfere with the activities of another space activity resulting in harm (e.g., orbital collision or frequency interference). Congress now has the opportunity to decide where on that continuum of regulation it wishes to place the United States.
This might mean, as well, I’m figuring, that even a country that puts round the clock surveillance on its private actors and asks for the whole gamut of risk assessments, hazard analyses, mitigation plans, FMECAs, and FMAs before granting an authorization, may still be internationally responsible for any damage that private actor might cause. One response to this liability exposure that we’ve seen in the United States is to require launch and reentry licensees to obtain third party liability insurance under 51 U.S.C. ch. 509.
As for authorization, Jim looks to the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution:
The White House Section 108 Report also ignores the fact that in the United States, innovative outer space activities are already authorized. That authorization predates the space era by nearly 200 years. As Americans, we declared in 1776 that “[w]e hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution carries through this concept when it states that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In short, absent a constitutionally consistent law prohibiting “innovative space activities,” Americans are authorized to pursue those activities. In other words, that which is not forbidden is permitted.
The above provides real food for thought, and I applaud Jim’s insights and am very glad he shared them with the subcommittee.
I don’t agree that Article IX ‘s harmful contamination provisions are self-executing or even applicable to private actors, applying as they do to “States Parties,” but I addressed that in my own testimony, as linked above.