Lawyer 2 Lawyer · Attorney J. Craig Williams and Legal Talk Network

Revisiting Space Law

·33 min·3 clips

Michelle Hanlon explains why there are no laws governing human activities in space—only treaties for countries.

The setup is practical. A producer ties the rerun to NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, the Boeing Starliner problem, and a rescue described as coming in February of 2025. From there, the archived episode, originally recorded in September of 2019 and titled Space Law, moves into stranger legal ground: artifacts, military interests, surveillance, and cultural memory outside ordinary national borders. The moon example does a lot of work. One guest brings up Luna 2 as the first hard landing by human material on the moon. It matters historically, but Earthbound preservation rules do not give anyone an easy playbook. Territory is the snag. World Heritage thinking depends on a site sitting inside someone's territory, while the guest keeps coming back to the awkward fact that space cannot simply be claimed that way. So even protecting treasured sites becomes a question of who would have authority, and where that authority would come from. The military section is just as careful. Asked whether Space Force means countries will be shooting lasers from space, the guest gives a cautious, hopeful no. Airspace needs consent. Outer space allows flyover without consent, and espionage can be legally permissible. The fuzzy altitude line helps explain why countries have avoided drawing a clean boundary: flexibility is useful when spy vehicles move higher or lower. The episode stays calm, but the problem is sharp. Space law is full of places where states may want rules, until uncertainty starts working in their favor.

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