This is an impressive reference tool and a welcome addition to the field. Space law is an area with distinctive challenges of its own. It overlaps but is also separate from public international law; it is shifting from state to international collaboration; it is becoming more and more commercialized or privatized; it draws on trade and intellectual property and telecommunication (e.g. satellites and broadcasting) law; and the interpretation of legal frameworks (which have varying degrees of eligibility) is idiosyncratic, far from consensual and ever changing. As a result, a handbook that claims to be as comprehensive as this is particularly useful, above all for anyone studying or teaching space and telecommunications law, and for practitioners in areas of space activity (as here, in those interested in “space faring”, from space stations to launch-service providers and customers, from resource insurance to space tourism).
Frans von der Dunk is a well-established writer on space and related law, and he rightly highlights how space law both draws on public international law and needs to take flight in its own right. He is Harvey and Susan Perlman Alumni/Other Professor of Space Law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His fellow contributing editor, Fabio Tronchetti, is an associate professor of law at Harbin Institute of Technology in China, and another recognized expert in the field. The series from Edward Elgar Publishing already includes research handbooks on international law, international sports law, international law and migration and international law and terrorism. There is also one on international law and cyberspace (Tsagourias and Buchan, 2015), which might be regarded as complementary in some ways to the work under review. It will be interesting to compare both with two reference works promised by Routledge for 2016: a handbook of space law (Jakhu and Dempsey, 2016) and a handbook of public aviation law (Dempsey and Jakhu, 2016).
It will come as no surprise that space law is often explored and explained with reference to aviation and maritime law, as comparable legal principles and doctrines apply – such as that of peaceful and military use, public commons access and use, liability and registration and regulation. Indeed, many of the authors (including the two contributing editors here) try to tease out how – and how effectively – some of these earlier-established legal frameworks can best, if at all, be applied to the challenges presented by activity in outer space. “Outer space” as a term in itself is a matter of dispute, as an interesting chapter argues: to what extent, for instance, does an aircraft become a rocket, when does a spacecraft move from sub-orbital to a space orbit and should there be international rescue facilities if personnels going into space change from being astronauts to space tourists. Not only does the handbook discuss such issues, but also offers a thorough historical context for the issues – the role of the International Telecommunications Union with regard to satellite communication, bodies like the United Nations and committees engaged with space law regulation and how over the years international space projects like INTELSAT and UTELSAT have become privatized entities. This in its turn has posed challenges for registration, liability and insurance, as well as wider implications for international trade, the environment and international peace and war.
This approach, conscientious and thorough (with voluminous footnotes, enough to satisfy and challenge the keenest researcher, as well as providing key sources for teachers and librarians keen to build up a resource collection), does open up the context of space law clearly and well. Each chapter examines the legal framework, and discusses the ways in which, and the extent to which, it deals with current and future-likely challenges and changes. Time and time again, contributors return to central legal measures, like the Outer Space Treaty and the conventions on liability and registration, to point out how, with change, new legislation (both jurisdictional and international) will be called upon and new legal interpretations made. Exemplary areas for this include rescue, debris, partnering, patents and perhaps above all two major aspects – the relationship between national and international law (with ever more influential players such as China) and the shifting grounds arising from increased commercialization.
There are some 20 chapters in the handbook, some by von der Dunk himself (international space law, European space law, international organizations in space law, legal aspects of satellite communication, legal aspects of private manned spaceflight and international trade aspects of space services) and some by Tronchetti (legal aspects of military uses of outer space and legal aspects of satellite remote sensing and of space resource utilization). Others are by contributors like Irmgard Marboe, Lotta Viikari and Maureen Williams (the latter’s work on the Space Law Committee of the International Law Association is typical of the high-level engagement by contributors in space law). Each chapter provides extensive international legal citation – to treaties, regulations, books and journal articles. A large index will help readers correlate issues and themes like insurance, European Union, launches and launching states, product liability and satellite communications.
This is a handbook where specialists can come in at various chosen points, for instance, the telecommunications lawyer pursuing issues about spectrum allocation or the intellectual property lawyer checking up to see how patents and data sharing operate within the field of space law. It is a work likely also to interest those involved with engineering and resource allocation, as well as public international lawyers. Anyone involved in the political aspects of cyberspace and military use of outer space will find this a relevant legal account. It is an industrious enterprise, full of helpful background and context information, and for that reason very useful for teaching and using with specialist masters and doctoral students, at least in the early stage, as well as for and on more generic law courses where telecommunications and public (data) commons issues feature.
At the same time, for all its strengths in describing how we have got here and in examining how robustly current legal principles and frameworks, and current commercial and competition both influence how we move forward, this reviewer came away from the book wondering how easy it is to be retrospective in such a fast-moving field where up-to-the-minute commentary is essential. The book has been several years in the writing, and the “floruit” period for recent references seems to be 2002-2012.
Handbook of Space Law then is a title offering groundwork for serious investigation into the journals, proceedings, conferences and colloquia, as well as wider domains of international space engineering and investment. Nonetheless, it is a fine and substantial work, worth the money, with lots of leads for well-grounded research. This is a very promising series from Edward Elgar Publishing that deserves to do well. International commentary and analysis of space law is vigorous at the present time, so there are many rival sources, above all for researchers keen to examine specific projects and cases now, to ask about the extent to which legal frameworks can ever successfully shape space initiatives rather than merely play catch-up and to compare outer space with other putative legal commons like the sea and the air and Antarctica. The many unanswered questions have not so far been solved by the many debates, committees and inter-organizational bodies, and remain as challenges.
