Overlapping Jurisdiction

The Space Station. [Link]

If astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) run afoul of the law more than 200 miles (321 kilometers) above Earth, their fate usually depends on where in the orbital lab the incident occurred.

That legal framework will become a bit more complicated when a new European Space Agency (ESA) module becomes part of ISS this month.

The space station currently exists as a legal patchwork of about 16 sovereign territories – modules and hardware belonging to the United States, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan – joined together to form one orbital research platform. Each nation has legal authority over its part of the space station, as stated in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. But no single European nation's law will hold sway over the ESA's Columbus laboratory module, which is slated to launch into orbit aboard the space shuttle Atlantis Dec. 6, and there is no one overarching European law.

However, astronaut lawbreakers won't languish in limbo. Earlier this year, European legal experts agreed on a set of legal rules for Columbus during an conference entitled "Humans in Outer Space – Interdisciplinary Odysseys."

Should tempers flare and astronauts end up in fisticuffs inside Columbus, the perpetrator's fate would be decided by the criminal laws of his or her nation. But if the brawl occurred in an American, Russian or Japanese section of ISS, the perpetrator's fate could be decided by the criminal laws of his or her victim's nation.

We're going to need Star Cops!


Space Law is only going to become more important.