Description
It has often been said that there is no space court, and that trying to litigate the fine points of space law is a dead end. In practice, what this means is that we space lawyers and practitioners have abandoned one of the more promising avenues of updating and creating new norms for regulating space activities. However, this is not the case, or at least it should not be the case. In climate change, individuals and small states have used international courts to bring up issues of voice, justice, inclusion, and to demand action from powerful states in mitigating climate change. Similarly in the South China Sea territorial dispute, smaller states like the Philippines, have used arbitration to counter the claims of China over the South China Sea, and to build a coalition of other small states around the arbitral award. Using these examples, the paper will explore how we can use international courts to develop and expand space law in interesting ways, making it more inclusive, and responsive.
