- Thanks to Indochino
for keeping Legal Eagle
in the air and helping me look fly.
Humans have been jetting off into space
since April 12th, 1961,
when Russian lieutenant
Yuri Gagarin became the first
human to orbit the Earth.
Alan Shepard became the first American
to enter space less than a month later.
Yes, that's right, the Russians
beat us to space by less than
a month, but who's counting?
We didn't wanna be first in space anyway.
It's cold and it's dark up there.
Human space travel is
just a couple of years shy
of celebrating its 60th birthday,
which means 60 years of weightlessness,
freeze-dried food, and figuring out
how to use the bathroom
without any gravity.
However, despite more than 50 years
of humans traveling to
and living in space,
NASA has never had to address
the issue of space pirates.
No, I'm just kidding, space crime.
But space crime is really
crazy and interesting, too.
What happens when a crime
is committed in space?
Who has jurisdiction?
Who are the space police?
And where is space jail?
These are the questions
we're going to answer today.
(light trumpet music)
Hey Legal Eagles, it's time
to think like a lawyer.
And today we are dealing with potentially
the first case of space crime.
Summer Worden, a former Air
Force intelligence officer,
has accused her ex-spouse Anne McClain,
a decorated NASA astronaut,
of identity theft
and improper access to
private financial records.
When Worden became suspicious of McClain,
she asked her bank to trace
the location of any computers
that had recently
accessed her bank account
using her own login credentials.
One of those computers, it turned out,
was in outer space aboard the
International Space Station.
Acknowledging that she had
indeed accessed Worden's account
while in outer space,
McClain defended her actions
and claimed that she was merely
taking care of the couple's
intermingled finances.
Nonetheless, Worden filed a complaint
with the Federal Trade Commission
and her family filed yet another complaint
with NASA's Office of Inspector General.
Both could be historic
in that they contain
the first allegation of
criminal wrongdoing in space.
So let's talk about the
history of space law.
The Treaty on Principles
Governing the Activities
of States in the Exploration
and Use of Outer Space
including the Moon and
Other Celestial Bodies,
or the Outer Space Treaty,
as it is more commonly known,
was entered into by 105
different parties in 1967.
The treaty was essentially
the Magna Carta of space law.
It established general principles
for the international use
of and exploration of space,
favored commercial activities in space,
and sought to ensure that the
exploration of outer space
could be conducted only for
the benefit of all countries.
Article six of the Outer Space Treaty
also emphasized that all
nations would, quote,
"bear international responsibility
"for national activities in space,
"whether these activities were carried out
"by governmental or private parties."
Since entering into this
international agreement,
the United States has
substantially developed
its own national space law.
Most recently, the extensive US space laws
were recodified in 2010 in
Title 51 of the US code,
which was enacted to
transfer a number of statutes
dealing with national space programs
into a single place in
the United States code.
While Title 51 addresses a
number of space-related areas,
it does not discuss
criminal acts in space.
Title 51 does, however,
contain a blanket statement
which presumably forbids any
sort of criminal activity.
Quote, "This civil space station
"may be used only for peaceful purposes."
51 USC, section 70901.
But what about the
International Space Station?
The International Space Station
was placed into orbit in
1984 by the United States,
and other nations were
invited to participate
in its development and use.
In order to facilitate cooperation
among the participating nations,
Canada, the European partner states,
Japan, Russia, and the United States,
signed the agreement
concerning cooperation
on the International
Space Station in 1998.
Article 22 of the agreement also outlined
criminal jurisdiction aboard the ISS,
and determined that each
participating nation,
quote, "may exercise criminal jurisdiction
"over personnel in or
on any flight element
"who are their respective nationals."
But what actually happens when a crime
is committed onboard the ISS?
To date, we're still not entirely sure.
But in discussing criminal
jurisdiction in space,
many scholars have equated
intergalactic crimes
with those committed
in Antarctica or at sea
in an attempt to consider
what actual development
space law would look like,
and, of course, to avoid common pitfalls.
By way of analogy, the Antarctic Treaty
was signed in 1959 by 12 nations
whose scientists had been
working on the continent.
To date, there are a total of 54 parties
to that particular treaty.
Similarly to the respective
jurisdictional rules
which govern the
International Space Station,
the Antarctic Treaty provides that, quote,
"observers, scientific personnel,
and members of the staffs
"accompanying any such persons
"shall be subject only to the jurisdiction
"of the Contracting Party
of which they are nationals
"in respect of all acts
or omissions occurring
"while they are in Antarctica
"for the purpose of
exercising their functions."
So, if you are a US national
doing research in Antarctica,
the treaty seems to imply
that you are governed
by the rules of the United States
while you are domiciled in Antarctica.
And, by analogy, if you're in the ISS
and you commit a crime, you're governed
by the laws of the United States.
Still, the drafters of
the Antarctic Treaty
left a lot of questions unanswered,
and when in 2000 an
Australian astrophysicist died
in the South Pole, the nations involved
were unsure how to confront the fact
that he was likely poisoned.
After Dr. Marks unfortunately passed away,
an autopsy was performed,
and methanol was found in his system.
For those of you who don't
have advanced degrees
in toxicology, which I
will assume is most of you,
including myself, methanol
is a colorless liquid
that smells a lot like ethanol,
otherwise known as alcohol,
but that is far more toxic.
So the question remained, did
Dr. Marks knowingly ingest
a highly toxic substance,
or was he poisoned?
The United States had an interest
in investigating the death
since Marks died on a US base
and was an employee of
an American contractor.
New Zealand maintained its own interest
in investigating Marks' death
since it considered the
location of the US base
to fall within its own territorial claim.
One officer from New
Zealand who handled the case
stated that he could not rule out
that the scientist's demise
was the direct result
of the act of another person in the base.
However, despite those suspicions,
unresolved jurisdictional questions,
competing jurisdictional claims,
and conflicting interests prevented anyone
from ever getting to the
bottom of Dr. Marks' death.
To this day, no one knows
if he died by murder,
suicide, or an unfortunate accident.
In a similar way, international waters
pose similar jurisdictional
questions and conflicts
with those raised in
Antarctica and in space.
Maybe at some point this will
have to be an additional video
because if I had a nickel
for every time a Legal Eagle
asked me to cover maritime law
and the law of the high seas,
I would be a very, very rich man.
At the United Nations
Conference on the Law of the Sea
held in 1958, certain
provisions were adopted
to regulate activities
in international waters.
Articles five and six
respectively state that, quote,
"Ships have the nationality of the State
"whose flag they are entitled to fly,
"in particular, the State
must effectively exercise
"its jurisdiction and
control in administrative,
"technical and social matters
over ships flying its flag."
And, quote, "ships shall sail."
That's so hard to say.
"Under the flag of one State
only and shall be subject
"to exclusive jurisdiction
on the high seas."
(sighs)
I'm so glad I was able
to say that correctly.
A fugitive or a criminal sailing on a ship
in international waters
is therefore subject
to the laws and regulations
of whatever country
the vessel is registered to.
The United States can also
exercise special jurisdiction
in international waters,
such as when, quote,
"Any place outside the
jurisdiction of any nation
"with respect to an offense by or against
"a national of the United
States," end quote, is involved.
Despite the uncertainty that
still surrounds space law,
however, many say that with
the onset of space tourism
we'll soon have no choice
but to expand the laws
that govern the
International Space Station.
And frankly, that's how our law
was created in the first place.
American law is a subset
of English common law,
which means that the law was created,
basically, as judges went along.
They got a new case and
when there were new facts
that had to be adjudicated
for the first time,
they just kind of made it up as they went.
In contrast to a lot of
the civil law societies
in Europe, where the law is codified
and judges just simply follow that
and they never have discretion in terms
of creating new common law on their own.
And the funny thing is that
when you're in law school,
you read a ton of railroad cases,
because in the 18th and 19th centuries,
trains were the newfangled
technology of the day
and required courts to wrestle
with new legal principles
to deal with new legal situations.
So really, when you think about it,
rocket ships and
International Space Stations
are just the trains of today.
Without wheels.
In space.
And as Mark Sundahl of the
Global Space Law Center said,
the more we go out there
and spend time out there,
all the things that we do here
are going to happen in space.
Since Worden and her family
filed their complaints
against McClain, an
investigator specializing
in criminal cases with NASA's
Office of Inspector General
has begun to look into the issue
surrounding these novel circumstances.
While no charges have been filed,
a seemingly trivial domestic dispute
could get the ball
rolling and push the US,
and presumably other space
powers, to take a hard look
at their interstellar criminal
laws, or lack thereof.
You know, before we know
it, everything that happens
down here on Earth will
eventually happen in space.
And while that may eventually
mean shopping on the moon
and yoga on Mars, it could
also very well mean crime
that's out of this world.
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So, do you agree with my analysis?
Are you worried about space crime?
Or do you think the current
laws already deal with it?
Leave your objections in the comments
and check out this playlist over here
for all of my other real law reviews
where we cover all of the
legal topics of the day
where I will see you in court.
