November 18th, 2021 |
By Sofia Gonzalez
As of late September of 2021, a team at BE has begun working in partnership to create a legal review on the necessity of an international space arbitration system. Earlier this year, Sean Hadley, Esquire, initiated his research in the legal conflict resolution management opportunities available to the space community. Seeing a gap in the legal realm when it came to space conflict management resolution practices, the BE team has been hard at work in creating a project that will innovate the way the world manages international aerospace conflict management.
The biggest detriment to this system however is that there is not an established international space arbitration court dedicated to aerospace matters solely. In opposition to mostly having government intervention as the option to solving international space disputes, which are not confidential and can end with the termination of licenses and heavy court fees with no way of knowing if the judge with the case has the necessary expertise in the field, many new privatized aero-space companies are weary of taking their matters to state courts and having these factors damage their companies reputation and funding.
In an effort to add to the scholarly literature on legal space conflict resolution methods, Hadley, a JD professor at Rutgers University, looked into the system and decided to create a legal review detailing why it is vital to have a privatized international space arbitration system. The project is currently underway and the research that has been conducted has been both a working structure of the legal review as well as research surrounding the space arbitration community.
The Space Court Foundation recently released a seminar series detailing the history and necessity of the establishment of an international arbitration court system. Much of the research that has been done, has been conducted by renown professors, lawyers, government agents and international companies which are all interviewed in this series to discuss the plausibility of an international aerospace arbitration. With their perspective, they bring to light the necessity of an international arbitration court as well the benefits of their creation, which is what the legal review that the BE team will focus on progressing.
As of this November, the team at BE spearheading the legal review, is working to create a case by case basis as to why it is absolutely necessary to establish an international aerospace arbitration court. This would allow for companies to have non-binding options which would encourage issues to be solved in new and innovative ways, have the ability to choose their arbitrator to be an expert in their field (so that the ruling and final decisions are just and well understood), have the privacy not given by state courts to make arbitrate, pay less money in fees involved with working solely out of state led courts, and have a neutral court set up in neither of the parties jurisdictions for the utmost fair and just decisions and trials. The examples listed are only the tip of the iceberg as to why these court systems need to be established as the international space community continues to grow.
With the hard work from the BE team, this project will help to spearhead the international movement to institutionalize the use and establishment of an international aerospace arbitration court for an ever growing privatized space industry and community. This project is going to be one of many projects currently being worked on at the Beyond Earth Institute, a leader for innovation and change in space.
Sofia Gonzalez is a senior at the University of Texas at Austin studying International Relations and Global Studies with a minor in anthropology. She is currently working at Beyond Earth to help Sean Hadley with a project on international space arbitration and the creation of a legal review. In her spare time Sofia enjoys spending time outdoors and playing the piano.
