I had the honor of co-authoring a short story with Dragon and Prometheus Awards winner Sarah A. Hoyt of Darkship fame for an anthology of legal science fiction, Overruled. It was tremendous fun working with someone of Sarah’s caliber; and, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s pretty cool to make a sale to an anthology.
One thing we lawyers often don’t get credit for is how protective we feel about our clients. So when the secret group of settlers leaves for Mars, who stays behind to ensure they get supplies? The lawyer. License to Live is his story.
Background. License to Live looks at the Outer Space Treaty, which says that countries have to regulate their citizens in outer space. Plenty of people think this means private citizens can’t go to space without a license. The way U.S. law works, however, Congress needs to pass a law saying a particular activity needs to be regulated (and by what agency, and for what purposes) before that treaty provision applies to the private sector doing that activity. If you want to geek out, I have a brief article here which gives more detail. If you really want to go wild , the full paper is here.
A confession. When I do talks about whether and how the Outer Space Treaty applies to private activities in outer space, I use my college roommate’s story from her psych class to make a point about categories. So Judge Ney is named after J.M. Ney-Grimm.
Pick up your copy of Overruled here. It has stories by Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Correia, Larry Niven, and many more. I’m looking forward to receiving my author copies so I can start reading.
Congratulations Laura!
Thanks, Scott. Much appreciated.
Just finished reading your story.
Part of it stated that treaty law is supreme in the US. In my opinion, it is not. Constitutional amendments take precedence over any article of the Constitution. The Anti-Federalists agreed with this ( https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitutional-debates/bill-of-rights/ ).
Recently, the SCOTUS took a similar position in a case putting the Second Amendment against a UN arms treaty President Obama signed ( sorry, I can’t find the cite .. Cell phone at work … )
So, the judges question about the right to live has been answered already. Use a treaty as an excuse to violate individual rights, and you are probably wrong.
There is case law that says that treaties have to be constitutional, and certainly so with respect to the Bill of Rights. I think you are correct there.
However, when looking at whether Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty is enforceable, we have to address–and it had to be raised in the story, I felt– the fact that the Constitution itself says that “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” .” Does this mean everyone in the United States, including the executive branch, must immediately follow all treaty provisions? No, the law is much more complicated than that. As the Supreme Court has noted in Medellin most recently, only if a treaty plainly does not require implementing legislation does it operate as enforceable federal law. So, when the OST says everyone has to be regulated, the FAA has to wait on Congress to say what needs to be regulated, by which agency, and what continuing supervision look like. You might be interested in the links I provided in the post if you want to read more about self-executing treaties and the Outer Space Treaty in particular.
But I do agree with you that just like any other law, a treaty has to be constitutional. If you come up with that second amendment case, I’d be curious to read it.