SPACE and the return of Rome

Abstract

Rapid development and increased human impact in outer space has necessitated space sustainability strategies. To protect the continued use of outer space and celestial bodies, policy makers and scholars have proposed and attempted to manage the domain through a variety of mechanisms e.g. treaty formulation, cooperative engagement/assertion, adherence to the Common Heritage of Mankind principle (CHM) and International Law. However, despite nearly 65 years of space activity, questions about how the domain is defined and how sovereignty is applied remain, with commonly used terms being controversial and imprecise. By examining fundamental concepts and early legal principles applied to modern shared resources, we can better understand both the essential attributes and development of the space domain. We assert that the principles of res nullius and res communis can be used to both define shared resource domains and measure their operational development. We understand these principles not as distinct categories, but as a continuum, upon which all shared resource domains lie, thus presenting an alternative framework for describing the shared domain.