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How Not to Deal with Murder in Space (2020)

126 points by Hooke 6y ago

cosmojg 6y ago
> "inevitable murder in outer space" Well that's depressing.
nexthash 6y ago
From a practical standpoint, if a private space company were to move its center of operations to outer space it may end up as its own "state". As long as it has people loyal to the company owners, it could create its own rules and fend off any nation that tries to take jurisdiction. This would be similar to a feudal lord enforcing his own rules with a small army of private retainers. Realistically though, this would only happen on an independent base on Mars or the Moon, or a fully self-sufficient space station. Otherwise, Earth-dependence would allow nations to influence space operations and push their jurisdiction into outer-space, similar to European colonial endeavors. Maybe the solution is to create a new, separate state that has jurisdiction and military control over the entirety of outer space not tied to any particular nation?
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  The thing about a space colony is an invasion is not too easy. On the other hand, a blockade is pretty easy.
  - handedness 6y ago
    Thirdly: A debilitating attack if you don't seek to preserve anything of the colony, is also relatively easy.
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      If the colony has one or more nukes it could establish mutually assured destruction or at least a significant deterrent.
      - handedness 6y ago
        And so shall history echo with rhymes, even in a vacuum.
      - numpad0 6y ago
        Well, a habitat with propulsion in space is itself a deterrent.
      - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
        For a colony further up the gravity well that produces resources locally, "rods from god" style weapons suddenly make much more sense than for earth-based nations. Nukes might simply not be worth the effort.
      - BelenusMordred 6y ago
        You don't need nukes at orbital speeds. A tungsten rod has equivalent power.
        vl 6y ago
        Not even close! An easy way to make upper boundary estimate: let’s say you use Falcon Heavy to deliver your kinetic weapon. Falcon Heavy burns around 500 tons of fuel. This is upper boundary for energy of your payload (since most of the energy goes to lifting rocket itself and air resistance). So even ultra-heavy payload of 64 tons will have way less then 0.5 kilotons of energy (TNT equivalent used for nukes). Any nuke is way beyond that. Of course, another way to estimate is to not to be lazy and actually multiply mv^2/2. Truly massive 64 ton kinetic weapon reaching target at 7 km/s will have energy of 1.6x10^12 J. Modest 20 kiloton nuke has energy of 8.4x10^13 J. I.e. 50 times more.
        numpad0 6y ago
        > let’s say you use Falcon Heavy to deliver your kinetic weapon. Why? pick up an NEO and aim for Sydney, or wherever it needs to go. Easy, unless your settlement isn't orbital or you don't have electric propulsion.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    In this snapshot of a moment, yes. But consider these things: 1. Space colonies, especially remote ones (e.g. not Moon, but Mars or Titan), are strongly motivated to be maximally independent as soon as possible. Whoever leads them must think about the possibility that the supply ships stop coming, either for some temporary disruption (pandemics on Earth, cough, cough, or even a war back home), or permanently (something has gone seriously wrong on the blue planet). And imports from Earth are expensive, because they have to be lifted out of the Earth's gravitational well. This means that the colony will try to produce everything necessary in situ for good reasons; such a colony will not be easily brought to its knees by a blockade. 2. It is easy to block a colony physically, but they will still be able to communicate back to Earth and argue their cause in front of the rest of the humanity. This will undermine the will of Earthly powers to maintain the blockade. 3. We are now in a rare situation when only one nation (the U.S.) is approaching the capability to send ships to the rest of the Solar System. It is not unlike the situation when only the Portuguese mastered the carrack and were the only ones to sail regularly from Europe to India in the late 1400s. But this situation will not last and I would guess that by 2050, at least five or six sovereign entities will have the same capability. By 2100 for sure. And their political differences will be exploited. It is unlikely that all of them would decide to start a common punitive embargo against a rebel colony.
    - ozim 6y ago
      For the point number 3 you might be too much under influence of SpaceX marketing and launches. China is on their way to mars as well with Tianwen-1, India is ramping up their space program, ESA is launching their stuff with Ariane vehicle as far as Jupiter, Russians with Angara have plan for crewed moon flyby in 2029. So it is not like other nations won't have that capability soon after US and not like US has it right now or next year. Second part is that there is still not that much of commercial gain in going to Mars, Moon or other place. Most of the money is made in LEO with satellite communications, gps, utilities. Space mining is not going to be profitable for really long time into the future. Where going to India was profitable right away if you had a ship to carry spices you were really ahead of the others. Space ship capability is just the starting point and we still have to find something that is worth enough to send those ships there, even with SpaceX reusable rockets it is still not worth to mine rare earth elements somewhere else in the solar system.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > Maybe the solution is to create a new, separate state that has jurisdiction and military control over the entirety of outer space Sounds like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta would be a good fit for that. They already have (partial) recognition, but no territory, so taking control of space would fix that anomaly. Also, bizarrely, it wouldn't be the first time they were used as a loophole to solve a political/military problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta#Air_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...
  - pseingatl 6y ago
    marslegalcode.org
- hahajk 6y ago
  The Space Liability Convention basically says that all space objects are tied to a nation. While that law is designed to make international disputes easier to handle (India can sue the US instead of SpaceX for instance), i think it prevents a space object from claiming sovereignty. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention
- Animats 6y ago
  Musk has been talking along those lines for his Mars project.
- pseingatl 6y ago
  marslegalcode.org introduces a legal code for the Mars Colony and addresses some of these questions. Need a copy of the Code?
Gunax 6y ago
I thought space is international water.
- airstrike 6y ago
  So was T-3. FTA: "After all, T-3 was in some sense the literal high seas, being high-latitude frozen seawater. Except, the law of the sea applies only to navigable areas, and T-3 wasn’t navigable."
  - garmaine 6y ago
    Your quote makes the opposite claim.
    - mxcrossb 6y ago
      To me this is the flaw in the article. The T-3 situation was only hard because it wasn’t clear if it was land or sea. But I don’t see why this should be a problem in space, just consider it the high seas.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        It isn't obvious that the two contexts are so similar that customs developed in one will be useful in the other.
        garmaine 6y ago
        No it is not obvious. There are entirely different governing laws (Outer Space Treaty vs whatever land or sea treaty applied to T-3, which wasn't clear). Had this happened in space, with the details otherwise the same, it would be 100% clear which jurisdiction applied: that of the nation which was registered under the OST as responsible for the hab/trailer in which the murder occurred. Had the murder happened outside of a hab, in EVA suits for example, it would be a bit more complicated. But it is our general understanding that in those circumstances the Law of the High Seas would apply. The specific caveat of the article that was discussed (is a long-lived arctic iceberg a island or international waters?) probably wouldn't apply. All of space is generally assumed to be international waters, for the moment.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jessaustin 6y ago
T-3 could be analogous to e.g. an asteroid upon which numerous parties have landed. Any built object in which humans might live, however, was built on behalf of a particular party. Everyone onboard was hired by that same party. If you don't like how that party handles incidents of stolen wine, don't hire on. The people from the next crater over, though, they'll have to approach slowly, in small groups, and only on invitation. If they steal anything they're getting spaced.
wahern 6y ago
What the article fails to explain is that there are three broad categories of jurisdiction: territorial, personal, and subject-matter. Courts require all three jurisdictions to have power to hear a case; certainly in Common Law jurisdictions, but analytically the basic breakdown and principles carry over to any legal system. When it comes to international relations, the point of tension almost always regards territorial jurisdiction. Exercise of territorial jurisdiction usually reflects an absolute and exclusive claim over resources, people (i.e. personal jurisdiction), and activities (i.e. subject-matter jurisdiction). But not always, and not necessarily. One way to cabin the effect of territorial jurisdiction when there exist or could exist overlapping claims of authority is to carefully qualify personal and subject-matter jurisdiction. (Remember, you need all three.) If you grant a court territorial jurisdiction but qualify personal and subject-matter jurisdiction to eliminate or minimize conflicting effective jurisdiction, then nobody will mistake your claim of territorial jurisdiction for a power grab. The Slate article conspicuously doesn't mention that both the perpetrator and victim of the murder on T-3 were American nationals, perhaps because it would have simplified the problem and made the solution obvious to people without a legal background, even if they couldn't articulate it in legalese. From a theoretical perspective the fact that one of the parties, especially the perpetrator, was American basically resolves the whole thing. Nobody will care about your claim of territorial jurisdiction if you qualify personal jurisdiction to your own nationals. That's why the United States requiring and enforcing nationals living abroad to pay Federal income tax, even for foreign-sourced income, doesn't result in international incidents even though in such cases there's significant jurisdictional overlap--multiple sovereigns are laying claim to the same people and assets, but not in a threatening sense that nation-states would care about. So the answer to T-3 was obvious. The only real problem was that the statutes and organic law granting jurisdiction at the time were too narrow on their face, and the courts were reticent to read into them jurisdiction, as American courts usually are (reticent). Predictably, and per Wikipedia, the consequence of T-3 was the passage of 18 U.S. Code § 7(7): > The term "special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States", as used in this title, includes: ... (7) Any place outside the jurisdiction of any nation with respect to an offense by or against a national of the United States. -- https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/7#7 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/7#7 Now, that still requires in any particular case answering the question of whether another state had jurisdiction at the time of some event, but that question (or at least that type of question) is unavoidable. You don't need a complex, comprehensive international treaty and framework to resolve and fix these problems. In fact, it's usually premature to that do that without actual experience of real-world incidents as there is no universal solution to or metric for balancing competing jurisdictional interests. (Just as in programming: the best solution to a functional problem often only makes itself known after you see and analyze real-world cases. Often by trying to solve problems anticipatorily you end up with unnecessary and burdensome complexity, plus an incomplete solution because of unforeseen cases and exceptions.) Anyhow, international treaties can only ever offer incremental improvements, if at all, by applying the same basic principles and technique in ever finer detail. Thus we have clause 6, > (6) Any vehicle used or designed for flight or navigation in space and on the registry of the United States pursuant to the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies and the Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space, while that vehicle is in flight, which is from the moment when all external doors are closed on Earth following embarkation until the moment when one such door is opened on Earth for disembarkation or in the case of a forced landing, until the competent authorities take over the responsibility for the vehicle and for persons and property aboard. Which basically applies to spaceships the rule that already existed regarding traditional ships in international maritime law. I can imagine the courts of some countries assuming such jurisdiction implicitly by analogy with or extension of [their interpretation of] maritime law, without requiring new statutes. Indeed, that's how international maritime law developed--organically from practical necessity, basic legal principles, and recognition of customary behavior, usually preceding formal codification, if any. The basic problems here are not at all new, and the answers are not at all difficult from an abstract perspective, especially once you recognize that overlapping claims of authority are natural and unavoidable--it's only the consequences that ultimately matter. (Indeed, reconciling conflicting claims of right is fundamentally what any legal system is about.) The issues only get "thorny" on a very technical level. Journalists and academics often use slight of hand (e.g. not specifying nationality) to make issues appear as weighty dilemmas, otherwise nobody would pay them any attention. Plus, people like reading about "gotchas" in the law, as it reinforces their notion that the law is arbitrary and contrary to common sense.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Great story, but they forgot to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone), the other candidate, but at a different scale.
- MichaelZuo 6y ago
  In the real world it seems rather likely the presiding judge(s) would follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    But how is that fair or logical? How can a subject be convicted of a law that was not violated? The subject has a responsibility to know the law, but how can they if it's not articulated in statute/code? The judiciary would be guessing as to why the legislature left out a specific condition, which would be essentially legislating from the bench. The spirit of the law is only invoked on the side of leniency (to my knowledge).
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    See the article, where they 1/2 just happened with a plea bargain not to appeal so the issue would stay unaddressed. I don't mind judges doing this, but I do mind legislatures not fixing the problem once it's discovered. That's like regular devs not fixing the bugs "because the admins will just restart the program when it crashes in prod".
minikites 6y ago
Space law has been written about extensively: https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=CALL%2B&searchArg=kzd&searchType=1 https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=CALL%2B&sear...
- pseingatl 6y ago
  But there has only been one suggestion for a comprensive legal code to support the multi-national Mars Colony: marslegalcode.org.
jpollock 6y ago
I remember reading a long section talking about the applicability of Canadian law, which included a section about it applying to any spaceship where the Queen was aboard in her capacity as the Queen of Canada, but I can't find it now. I did find this in the Canadian Criminal Code: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/page-3.html#docCont https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/page-3.html#do... Space Station — Canadian crew members (2.3) Despite anything in this Act or any other Act, a Canadian crew member who, during a space flight, commits an act or omission outside Canada that if committed in Canada would constitute an indictable offence is deemed to have committed that act or omission in Canada, if that act or omission is committed (a) on, or in relation to, a flight element of the Space Station; or (b) on any means of transportation to or from the Space Station. Space Station — crew members of Partner States (2.31) Despite anything in this Act or any other Act, a crew member of a Partner State who commits an act or omission outside Canada during a space flight on, or in relation to, a flight element of the Space Station or on any means of transportation to and from the Space Station that if committed in Canada would constitute an indictable offence is deemed to have committed that act or omission in Canada, if that act or omission (a) threatens the life or security of a Canadian crew member; or (b) is committed on or in relation to, or damages, a flight element provided by Canada.
young_unixer 6y ago
Any earthly law can apply in space only to the extent that people in space can be convinced to comply. If astronauts don't want to comply, what are we gonna do? Fire a space missile?
- petre 6y ago
  There's no need for violence or space rockets. Rather apply a more boring approach: cut supplies and wait patiently, which basically amounts to doing nothing. If the space ship/colony is self sufficient and can operate without supllies, then it can probably declare independence. Anyone not content with that can apply diplomatic pressure or start a space war over it.
chmod775 6y ago
It's a mistake to think of states and law as these neat, clearly defined things. Nowadays law is generally a tool used by a group of people to make coexistence and societal processes smoother. On the grander scale might makes right and whoever has the ability and will to make and enforce law will do so. If however there are no laws, there can be no crime, by definition, and thus there is no crime going unpunished. Does it matter right now? No. Will it in 50 years? Probably not still. Looking at our planet what we understand as modern law has generally only emerged in large groups of people. It's debatable whether any small group truly needs it.
- deathgrips 6y ago
  >Does it matter right now? No. Will it in 50 years? Probably not still. Looking at our planet what we understand as modern law has generally only emerged in large groups of people. It's debatable whether any small group truly needs it. It takes a special lack of self awareness to type this out on an internet forum in 2021.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Looking at our planet what we understand as modern law has generally only emerged in large groups of people. It's debatable whether any small group truly needs it. Laws - and hierarchy, generally - evolve with the size of the group that tries to live together. Small tribes of a hundred people didn't need them, but past that number people organically develop structures. But that's irrelevant to first people living in space. They are not an independent small group, merely a long arm of the large (and increasingly global) society that sent them there. They do not own the ship on which they came, or the station on which they reside. Every artifact they use has investments and expectations of other people embedded in it. Their very presence in space is something commanded by the people back on Earth. Situation may change if there are space settlements large enough to require their own layer of internal governance (say, 100+ astronauts). These may start pushing towards increased self-governance over time, especially as they maintain and build their own infrastructure and eventually start having children. Of course, existing power structures will be reluctant to let them go, so any independence movement will be of the usual "might makes right" type. But we're very far from that point. Definitely more than 50 years.
howlgarnish 6y ago
According to Wikipedia, the loophole has since been closed: > The ambiguity was later resolved (at least for the United States) by an amendment to the Federal Criminal Code, which added a provision establishing federal jurisdiction when "...the offense is committed by or against a national of the United States at a place outside the jurisdiction of any nation", intended in part to address these issues.[6] It became law as 18 U.S.C. § 7(7) in 1984.[7] Of course, things will get interesting when the offense is committed against the national of another country with the same claim, meaning they would both have jurisdiction.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
Minor nitpick: After all, T-3 was in some sense the literal high seas, being high-latitude frozen seawater. T-3 was an iceberg calved from a glacier, and thus frozen freshwater.
dash2 6y ago
As I understand it, murder in space is easy to deal with. You simply call a meeting to decide who the murderer was. After a majority vote, the guilty party is evacuated from the airlock.
- emteycz 6y ago
  Nobody said it can't be dealt with at all. Where's the justice in your approach though?
  - gb 6y ago
    It's a joke about Among Us.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Justice is certainly a sliding scale. The remote, dependent culture of a space station may have to make hard decision. For instance, out the airlock with the plaintiff because they are expendable and the accused is the only one who can maintain the air recyclers. And so on.
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  In theory yes, but in practice you'll most likely to face the following issue: in space, people often are specialists. So what if the mechanic goes bananas, kills someone and then it turns out he is the only one with some in-depth knowledge of the engines and letting him out may be even more risky than keeping on board.
pseingatl 6y ago
There's marslegalcode.org, an effort to provide a comprehensive legal code for the colony. Get a free copy of the code by writing admin at andaluspublishing.com. Then there's the US District Court for China, which exercised criminal jurisdiction over Americans (and a few others) committing crimes in the concessions in China in the 1920's and 1930's.
rurban 6y ago
Contrary to the title it is exactly how to deal with murder in space. Legislation is lacking, but they still did the right thing. Which is probably an easy thing to do in a relative handwavy legislation as in the US.
Santosh83 6y ago
Somewhat related: what are your favourite murder mystery/detective stories primarily set in space or with interplanetary travel as a major backdrop?
hikerclimber 6y ago
murder is bound to happen in space. it is inevitable.
pontifier 6y ago
I can hazzard a guess that there has been a murder on the sentinel island, and the sentinalese people handled it. In the far future ships will be their own islands of justice, unless some overbearing space government tries to protect even those who do not want to be governed. But can that even work, and if so, for how long? Imagine a libertarian owned spacecraft in which the inhabitants decided to just leave the sphere of influence of that government. Would they be chased? What about children born on that ship? What if those children were abused? How far should we chase them? I feel like humanity should punish some crimes universally, but murder isn't necessarily the worst crime. We do need some system of space justice, but I'm not sure what form it should take.

126 points by Hooke 6y ago

> "inevitable murder in outer space" Well that's depressing.

From a practical standpoint, if a private space company were to move its center of operations to outer space it may end up as its own "state". As long as it has people loyal to the company owners, it could create its own rules and fend off any nation that tries to take jurisdiction. This would be similar to a feudal lord enforcing his own rules with a small army of private retainers. Realistically though, this would only happen on an independent base on Mars or the Moon, or a fully self-sufficient space station. Otherwise, Earth-dependence would allow nations to influence space operations and push their jurisdiction into outer-space, similar to European colonial endeavors. Maybe the solution is to create a new, separate state that has jurisdiction and military control over the entirety of outer space not tied to any particular nation?

adrianmonk 6y ago
The thing about a space colony is an invasion is not too easy. On the other hand, a blockade is pretty easy.
- handedness 6y ago
  Thirdly: A debilitating attack if you don't seek to preserve anything of the colony, is also relatively easy.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    If the colony has one or more nukes it could establish mutually assured destruction or at least a significant deterrent.
    - handedness 6y ago
      And so shall history echo with rhymes, even in a vacuum.
    - numpad0 6y ago
      Well, a habitat with propulsion in space is itself a deterrent.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
      For a colony further up the gravity well that produces resources locally, "rods from god" style weapons suddenly make much more sense than for earth-based nations. Nukes might simply not be worth the effort.
    - BelenusMordred 6y ago
      You don't need nukes at orbital speeds. A tungsten rod has equivalent power.
      - vl 6y ago
        Not even close! An easy way to make upper boundary estimate: let’s say you use Falcon Heavy to deliver your kinetic weapon. Falcon Heavy burns around 500 tons of fuel. This is upper boundary for energy of your payload (since most of the energy goes to lifting rocket itself and air resistance). So even ultra-heavy payload of 64 tons will have way less then 0.5 kilotons of energy (TNT equivalent used for nukes). Any nuke is way beyond that. Of course, another way to estimate is to not to be lazy and actually multiply mv^2/2. Truly massive 64 ton kinetic weapon reaching target at 7 km/s will have energy of 1.6x10^12 J. Modest 20 kiloton nuke has energy of 8.4x10^13 J. I.e. 50 times more.
        numpad0 6y ago
        > let’s say you use Falcon Heavy to deliver your kinetic weapon. Why? pick up an NEO and aim for Sydney, or wherever it needs to go. Easy, unless your settlement isn't orbital or you don't have electric propulsion.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  In this snapshot of a moment, yes. But consider these things: 1. Space colonies, especially remote ones (e.g. not Moon, but Mars or Titan), are strongly motivated to be maximally independent as soon as possible. Whoever leads them must think about the possibility that the supply ships stop coming, either for some temporary disruption (pandemics on Earth, cough, cough, or even a war back home), or permanently (something has gone seriously wrong on the blue planet). And imports from Earth are expensive, because they have to be lifted out of the Earth's gravitational well. This means that the colony will try to produce everything necessary in situ for good reasons; such a colony will not be easily brought to its knees by a blockade. 2. It is easy to block a colony physically, but they will still be able to communicate back to Earth and argue their cause in front of the rest of the humanity. This will undermine the will of Earthly powers to maintain the blockade. 3. We are now in a rare situation when only one nation (the U.S.) is approaching the capability to send ships to the rest of the Solar System. It is not unlike the situation when only the Portuguese mastered the carrack and were the only ones to sail regularly from Europe to India in the late 1400s. But this situation will not last and I would guess that by 2050, at least five or six sovereign entities will have the same capability. By 2100 for sure. And their political differences will be exploited. It is unlikely that all of them would decide to start a common punitive embargo against a rebel colony.
  - ozim 6y ago
    For the point number 3 you might be too much under influence of SpaceX marketing and launches. China is on their way to mars as well with Tianwen-1, India is ramping up their space program, ESA is launching their stuff with Ariane vehicle as far as Jupiter, Russians with Angara have plan for crewed moon flyby in 2029. So it is not like other nations won't have that capability soon after US and not like US has it right now or next year. Second part is that there is still not that much of commercial gain in going to Mars, Moon or other place. Most of the money is made in LEO with satellite communications, gps, utilities. Space mining is not going to be profitable for really long time into the future. Where going to India was profitable right away if you had a ship to carry spices you were really ahead of the others. Space ship capability is just the starting point and we still have to find something that is worth enough to send those ships there, even with SpaceX reusable rockets it is still not worth to mine rare earth elements somewhere else in the solar system.
dane-pgp 6y ago
> Maybe the solution is to create a new, separate state that has jurisdiction and military control over the entirety of outer space Sounds like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta would be a good fit for that. They already have (partial) recognition, but no territory, so taking control of space would fix that anomaly. Also, bizarrely, it wouldn't be the first time they were used as a loophole to solve a political/military problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta#Air_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...
- pseingatl 6y ago
  marslegalcode.org
hahajk 6y ago
The Space Liability Convention basically says that all space objects are tied to a nation. While that law is designed to make international disputes easier to handle (India can sue the US instead of SpaceX for instance), i think it prevents a space object from claiming sovereignty. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention
Animats 6y ago
Musk has been talking along those lines for his Mars project.
pseingatl 6y ago
marslegalcode.org introduces a legal code for the Mars Colony and addresses some of these questions. Need a copy of the Code?

Gunax 6y ago

I thought space is international water.

airstrike 6y ago
So was T-3. FTA: "After all, T-3 was in some sense the literal high seas, being high-latitude frozen seawater. Except, the law of the sea applies only to navigable areas, and T-3 wasn’t navigable."
- garmaine 6y ago
  Your quote makes the opposite claim.
  - mxcrossb 6y ago
    To me this is the flaw in the article. The T-3 situation was only hard because it wasn’t clear if it was land or sea. But I don’t see why this should be a problem in space, just consider it the high seas.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      It isn't obvious that the two contexts are so similar that customs developed in one will be useful in the other.
      - garmaine 6y ago
        No it is not obvious. There are entirely different governing laws (Outer Space Treaty vs whatever land or sea treaty applied to T-3, which wasn't clear). Had this happened in space, with the details otherwise the same, it would be 100% clear which jurisdiction applied: that of the nation which was registered under the OST as responsible for the hab/trailer in which the murder occurred. Had the murder happened outside of a hab, in EVA suits for example, it would be a bit more complicated. But it is our general understanding that in those circumstances the Law of the High Seas would apply. The specific caveat of the article that was discussed (is a long-lived arctic iceberg a island or international waters?) probably wouldn't apply. All of space is generally assumed to be international waters, for the moment.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jessaustin 6y ago

T-3 could be analogous to e.g. an asteroid upon which numerous parties have landed. Any built object in which humans might live, however, was built on behalf of a particular party. Everyone onboard was hired by that same party. If you don't like how that party handles incidents of stolen wine, don't hire on. The people from the next crater over, though, they'll have to approach slowly, in small groups, and only on invitation. If they steal anything they're getting spaced.

wahern 6y ago

What the article fails to explain is that there are three broad categories of jurisdiction: territorial, personal, and subject-matter. Courts require all three jurisdictions to have power to hear a case; certainly in Common Law jurisdictions, but analytically the basic breakdown and principles carry over to any legal system. When it comes to international relations, the point of tension almost always regards territorial jurisdiction. Exercise of territorial jurisdiction usually reflects an absolute and exclusive claim over resources, people (i.e. personal jurisdiction), and activities (i.e. subject-matter jurisdiction). But not always, and not necessarily. One way to cabin the effect of territorial jurisdiction when there exist or could exist overlapping claims of authority is to carefully qualify personal and subject-matter jurisdiction. (Remember, you need all three.) If you grant a court territorial jurisdiction but qualify personal and subject-matter jurisdiction to eliminate or minimize conflicting effective jurisdiction, then nobody will mistake your claim of territorial jurisdiction for a power grab. The Slate article conspicuously doesn't mention that both the perpetrator and victim of the murder on T-3 were American nationals, perhaps because it would have simplified the problem and made the solution obvious to people without a legal background, even if they couldn't articulate it in legalese. From a theoretical perspective the fact that one of the parties, especially the perpetrator, was American basically resolves the whole thing. Nobody will care about your claim of territorial jurisdiction if you qualify personal jurisdiction to your own nationals. That's why the United States requiring and enforcing nationals living abroad to pay Federal income tax, even for foreign-sourced income, doesn't result in international incidents even though in such cases there's significant jurisdictional overlap--multiple sovereigns are laying claim to the same people and assets, but not in a threatening sense that nation-states would care about. So the answer to T-3 was obvious. The only real problem was that the statutes and organic law granting jurisdiction at the time were too narrow on their face, and the courts were reticent to read into them jurisdiction, as American courts usually are (reticent). Predictably, and per Wikipedia, the consequence of T-3 was the passage of 18 U.S. Code § 7(7): > The term "special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States", as used in this title, includes: ... (7) Any place outside the jurisdiction of any nation with respect to an offense by or against a national of the United States. -- https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/7#7 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/7#7 Now, that still requires in any particular case answering the question of whether another state had jurisdiction at the time of some event, but that question (or at least that type of question) is unavoidable. You don't need a complex, comprehensive international treaty and framework to resolve and fix these problems. In fact, it's usually premature to that do that without actual experience of real-world incidents as there is no universal solution to or metric for balancing competing jurisdictional interests. (Just as in programming: the best solution to a functional problem often only makes itself known after you see and analyze real-world cases. Often by trying to solve problems anticipatorily you end up with unnecessary and burdensome complexity, plus an incomplete solution because of unforeseen cases and exceptions.) Anyhow, international treaties can only ever offer incremental improvements, if at all, by applying the same basic principles and technique in ever finer detail. Thus we have clause 6, > (6) Any vehicle used or designed for flight or navigation in space and on the registry of the United States pursuant to the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies and the Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space, while that vehicle is in flight, which is from the moment when all external doors are closed on Earth following embarkation until the moment when one such door is opened on Earth for disembarkation or in the case of a forced landing, until the competent authorities take over the responsibility for the vehicle and for persons and property aboard. Which basically applies to spaceships the rule that already existed regarding traditional ships in international maritime law. I can imagine the courts of some countries assuming such jurisdiction implicitly by analogy with or extension of [their interpretation of] maritime law, without requiring new statutes. Indeed, that's how international maritime law developed--organically from practical necessity, basic legal principles, and recognition of customary behavior, usually preceding formal codification, if any. The basic problems here are not at all new, and the answers are not at all difficult from an abstract perspective, especially once you recognize that overlapping claims of authority are natural and unavoidable--it's only the consequences that ultimately matter. (Indeed, reconciling conflicting claims of right is fundamentally what any legal system is about.) The issues only get "thorny" on a very technical level. Journalists and academics often use slight of hand (e.g. not specifying nationality) to make issues appear as weighty dilemmas, otherwise nobody would pay them any attention. Plus, people like reading about "gotchas" in the law, as it reinforces their notion that the law is arbitrary and contrary to common sense.

Ericson2314 6y ago

Great story, but they forgot to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone), the other candidate, but at a different scale.

MichaelZuo 6y ago
In the real world it seems rather likely the presiding judge(s) would follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law.
- giantg2 6y ago
  But how is that fair or logical? How can a subject be convicted of a law that was not violated? The subject has a responsibility to know the law, but how can they if it's not articulated in statute/code? The judiciary would be guessing as to why the legislature left out a specific condition, which would be essentially legislating from the bench. The spirit of the law is only invoked on the side of leniency (to my knowledge).
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  See the article, where they 1/2 just happened with a plea bargain not to appeal so the issue would stay unaddressed. I don't mind judges doing this, but I do mind legislatures not fixing the problem once it's discovered. That's like regular devs not fixing the bugs "because the admins will just restart the program when it crashes in prod".

minikites 6y ago

Space law has been written about extensively: https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=CALL%2B&searchArg=kzd&searchType=1 https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=CALL%2B&sear...

pseingatl 6y ago
But there has only been one suggestion for a comprensive legal code to support the multi-national Mars Colony: marslegalcode.org.

jpollock 6y ago

I remember reading a long section talking about the applicability of Canadian law, which included a section about it applying to any spaceship where the Queen was aboard in her capacity as the Queen of Canada, but I can't find it now. I did find this in the Canadian Criminal Code: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/page-3.html#docCont https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/page-3.html#do... Space Station — Canadian crew members (2.3) Despite anything in this Act or any other Act, a Canadian crew member who, during a space flight, commits an act or omission outside Canada that if committed in Canada would constitute an indictable offence is deemed to have committed that act or omission in Canada, if that act or omission is committed (a) on, or in relation to, a flight element of the Space Station; or (b) on any means of transportation to or from the Space Station. Space Station — crew members of Partner States (2.31) Despite anything in this Act or any other Act, a crew member of a Partner State who commits an act or omission outside Canada during a space flight on, or in relation to, a flight element of the Space Station or on any means of transportation to and from the Space Station that if committed in Canada would constitute an indictable offence is deemed to have committed that act or omission in Canada, if that act or omission (a) threatens the life or security of a Canadian crew member; or (b) is committed on or in relation to, or damages, a flight element provided by Canada.

young_unixer 6y ago

Any earthly law can apply in space only to the extent that people in space can be convinced to comply. If astronauts don't want to comply, what are we gonna do? Fire a space missile?

petre 6y ago
There's no need for violence or space rockets. Rather apply a more boring approach: cut supplies and wait patiently, which basically amounts to doing nothing. If the space ship/colony is self sufficient and can operate without supllies, then it can probably declare independence. Anyone not content with that can apply diplomatic pressure or start a space war over it.

chmod775 6y ago

It's a mistake to think of states and law as these neat, clearly defined things. Nowadays law is generally a tool used by a group of people to make coexistence and societal processes smoother. On the grander scale might makes right and whoever has the ability and will to make and enforce law will do so. If however there are no laws, there can be no crime, by definition, and thus there is no crime going unpunished. Does it matter right now? No. Will it in 50 years? Probably not still. Looking at our planet what we understand as modern law has generally only emerged in large groups of people. It's debatable whether any small group truly needs it.

deathgrips 6y ago
>Does it matter right now? No. Will it in 50 years? Probably not still. Looking at our planet what we understand as modern law has generally only emerged in large groups of people. It's debatable whether any small group truly needs it. It takes a special lack of self awareness to type this out on an internet forum in 2021.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> Looking at our planet what we understand as modern law has generally only emerged in large groups of people. It's debatable whether any small group truly needs it. Laws - and hierarchy, generally - evolve with the size of the group that tries to live together. Small tribes of a hundred people didn't need them, but past that number people organically develop structures. But that's irrelevant to first people living in space. They are not an independent small group, merely a long arm of the large (and increasingly global) society that sent them there. They do not own the ship on which they came, or the station on which they reside. Every artifact they use has investments and expectations of other people embedded in it. Their very presence in space is something commanded by the people back on Earth. Situation may change if there are space settlements large enough to require their own layer of internal governance (say, 100+ astronauts). These may start pushing towards increased self-governance over time, especially as they maintain and build their own infrastructure and eventually start having children. Of course, existing power structures will be reluctant to let them go, so any independence movement will be of the usual "might makes right" type. But we're very far from that point. Definitely more than 50 years.

howlgarnish 6y ago

According to Wikipedia, the loophole has since been closed: > The ambiguity was later resolved (at least for the United States) by an amendment to the Federal Criminal Code, which added a provision establishing federal jurisdiction when "...the offense is committed by or against a national of the United States at a place outside the jurisdiction of any nation", intended in part to address these issues.[6] It became law as 18 U.S.C. § 7(7) in 1984.[7] Of course, things will get interesting when the offense is committed against the national of another country with the same claim, meaning they would both have jurisdiction.

dreamcompiler 6y ago

Minor nitpick: After all, T-3 was in some sense the literal high seas, being high-latitude frozen seawater. T-3 was an iceberg calved from a glacier, and thus frozen freshwater.

dash2 6y ago

As I understand it, murder in space is easy to deal with. You simply call a meeting to decide who the murderer was. After a majority vote, the guilty party is evacuated from the airlock.

emteycz 6y ago
Nobody said it can't be dealt with at all. Where's the justice in your approach though?
- gb 6y ago
  It's a joke about Among Us.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Justice is certainly a sliding scale. The remote, dependent culture of a space station may have to make hard decision. For instance, out the airlock with the plaintiff because they are expendable and the accused is the only one who can maintain the air recyclers. And so on.
cosmodisk 6y ago
In theory yes, but in practice you'll most likely to face the following issue: in space, people often are specialists. So what if the mechanic goes bananas, kills someone and then it turns out he is the only one with some in-depth knowledge of the engines and letting him out may be even more risky than keeping on board.

pseingatl 6y ago

There's marslegalcode.org, an effort to provide a comprehensive legal code for the colony. Get a free copy of the code by writing admin at andaluspublishing.com. Then there's the US District Court for China, which exercised criminal jurisdiction over Americans (and a few others) committing crimes in the concessions in China in the 1920's and 1930's.

rurban 6y ago

Contrary to the title it is exactly how to deal with murder in space. Legislation is lacking, but they still did the right thing. Which is probably an easy thing to do in a relative handwavy legislation as in the US.

Santosh83 6y ago

Somewhat related: what are your favourite murder mystery/detective stories primarily set in space or with interplanetary travel as a major backdrop?

hikerclimber 6y ago

murder is bound to happen in space. it is inevitable.

pontifier 6y ago

I can hazzard a guess that there has been a murder on the sentinel island, and the sentinalese people handled it. In the far future ships will be their own islands of justice, unless some overbearing space government tries to protect even those who do not want to be governed. But can that even work, and if so, for how long? Imagine a libertarian owned spacecraft in which the inhabitants decided to just leave the sphere of influence of that government. Would they be chased? What about children born on that ship? What if those children were abused? How far should we chase them? I feel like humanity should punish some crimes universally, but murder isn't necessarily the worst crime. We do need some system of space justice, but I'm not sure what form it should take.