Legal Eagles at Pepperdine Eye the Stars

The image may be a bit far out, but one expert insists that space law is nothing if not down-to-earth.

“Space law is basically applying earthly law to the space business, meaning contracts, patents, torts and insurance,” said Daniel Byrnes, a recently retired assistant general counsel with Rockwell International and adjunct professor of law at Pepperdine University.

Lawyers and law students who want to service the $24-billion U.S. space industry and the growing international space community will find legal solutions to science-fiction scenarios such as mining minerals on Mars or space-station murders.

“Somebody’s satellite breaks and they want to sue or somebody wants to rent a rocket launcher” are examples of opportunities that the commercialization of space holds for lawyers, Byrnes said.

First in Country

A course, which Byrnes began teaching in January at Pepperdine, is the first in the country to limit itself solely to commercial space law. It stresses the application of domestic and international laws to private space industry contracts and other legal documents.

The course offers future lawyers instruction in ways to make money in the world of commercial satellites, rockets, launchers and related industries.

Although space lawyers will still be “applying the same old earthly law,” Byrnes said they will still have to learn a lot about the high-tech hardware--and a lot about the federal government.

In addition to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Defense Department, space is also the turf of the Commerce Department, which Byrnes said oversees commercial space ventures.

Students will also have to be knowledgeable about the State Department, which represents the United States in making international treaties involving responsibility for such things as a satellite re-entry that causes damage to countries other than its origin.

Although “the law is pretty much the law” in space as on Earth, Byrnes said there will be unique exceptions. In those instances, he said, international agreements, rather than courts, will likely fill the gap.

International Project

He cites the orbiting multinational space station project now planned for launch in the 1990s. Built and staffed largely by the United States, the station will include modules and crew members from Japan and a consortium of 14 European nations.

The partner nations are now developing agreements, Byrnes said, that will anticipate such legal entanglements as where crimes committed aboard the station would be tried, or how allegations of industrial theft are resolved or who gets credit for any inventions or new products developed in space.

The Challenger disaster has taken the United States out of the commercial satellite launching business for now and will delay the space station project as well. But the long-term outlook for the space “business” is still healthy, Byrnes said.

He pointed to a forecast by Aviation Week magazine predicting slowed but steady growth in commercial space sales through the end of the decade.

Future lawyers, at least at Pepperdine, appear to be bullish on the industry as well. Byrnes said that twice the expected number of students signed up for his debut session of the space-law class.