Hierarchical taxonomy of state responsibility for forward contamination by non-governmental space activities under corpus juris spatialis
- Paper number
IAC-11,E7,1,21,x11056
- Author
Mr. Prateek Bagaria, India
- Year
2011
- Abstract
The current corpus juris spatialis incorporates several articles, which explicitly or implicitly tend to assign responsibility to a particular state for forward contamination by a non-governmental activity in outer space. There have been several ‘schools of theories’ and conflicting interpretations regarding these provisions. The main reason behind this mystification is twofold: its variation from the prevalent practice under general international law and secondly due to multiplicity of provision which seem to provide differential basis to assign international responsibility under international space law. The purpose of this paper is to firstly study the relation between of ‘state responsibility’ and ‘effective jurisdiction’ and lay down the prevalent hierarchy to assign responsibility under general international law. This paper will then analyse the principle of lex specialis, pari materia treaties and ‘harmonious construction’ and their importance in treaty interpretation. The paper then looks to the provisions of the Outer Space treaty, Liability Convention and Registration Convention to identify the various provisions, which assign, explicitly or implicitly, international responsibility to a particular state. The paper will move on to identify the reason for creating a special regime of responsibility for international space law and establish its use in remedying the present scenario. The paper will further draw out the similarity between registration of a ship and a space object. The paper will proceed to examine various situations, which can be regarded as forward contamination under ‘Corpus Juris Spatialis’. Having identified the impugned provisions, their scope,their similarity with other practices under international law and the history behind them, the paper then turns to highlighting points of ‘alleged conflict’ between them and analyse differential basis of State responsibility highlighted in them . Using the principles of interpretation of treaties and general principles of international law, the paper then tries to resolve the ‘alleged conflict’ between the impugned provisions regarding State Responsibility. Based on the aforementioned analysis the paper will propose a renewed approach to the ‘allegedly conflicting provisions’ if form of a hierarchical taxonomy. It ends by differentiating between State Responsibility and liability and making conclusions, on the possible ways liability could be affixed for such forward contamination.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)