How Not to Deal with Murder in Space (2020)
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.<p>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.<p>The Slate article conspicuously doesn&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;s why the United States requiring and <i>enforcing</i> nationals living abroad to pay Federal income tax, even for foreign-sourced income, doesn&#x27;t result in international incidents even though in such cases there&#x27;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.<p>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):<p>&gt; The term &quot;special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States&quot;, 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.<p>-- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;7#7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;7#7</a><p>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&#x27;t need a complex, comprehensive international treaty and framework to resolve and fix these problems. In fact, it&#x27;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,<p>&gt; (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.<p>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&#x27;s how international maritime law developed--organically from practical necessity, basic legal principles, and recognition of customary behavior, usually preceding formal codification, if any.<p>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&#x27;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 &quot;thorny&quot; 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 &quot;gotchas&quot; in the law, as it reinforces their notion that the law is arbitrary and contrary to common sense.