Page:The Air Force Role In Developing International Outer Space Law (Terrill, 1999).djvu/11

 Introduction In this monograph the author describes the United States Air Force resistance to the passage of international conventions (treaties) and the general impact that Air Force opposition had on the development of international law regarding outer space. International outer space law, like other international law, is created by court decisions (international and domestic), passage (negotiation and ratification) of international treaties or conventions, and commonly accepted practices of nations, which in turn become customs. In addition, the publications by scholars of international outer space law have had a substantial impact on the evolution of this body of law. Even before space activities had actually begun, academics and jurists pushed for the early passage of certain conventions governing the use of space. The US government, encouraged in large part by the Air Force, chose to delay action until space operations had begun so that these actual activities themselves and the commonly accepted customs derived from them, rather than the theory of jurists, would drive the development of space law. The focus here is on the Air Force’s role in the evolution of outer space law primarily from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. The author then examines Air Force efforts to preclude an international agreement (treaty) defining sovereignty in outer space similar to the convention (known as the Chicago Convention) defining national airspace that was agreed  to at the 1944 meetings of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Chicago. Sovereignty and the delimitation of where airspace ends and outer space begins have been inextricably tied. Over the years, these two issues have generated much of the debate on outer space law. The first substantive treatise (published in 1951) urged that the development of outer space law focus on the sovereignty issue. Subsequently, authors of numerous articles and proposals sought to establish a clear line of demarcation between outer space and airspace. While military personnel in operational forces may have a gut feeling as to what is outer space,