Select Tenets of Space Law as Jus Cogen

Space Law is deemed to be a branch of International Law and follows the dictum of pacta sunt servanda. This implies that specialibus treaties and conventions operate between “signatories and ratifiers”. It thus becomes a moot question whether the Space Law is applicable to other states and equally obligatory on them or that defiance is conceivable, maybe to facilitate the cause of non-state actors. This apprehension magnifies because except for Outer Space Treaty, ratifications for other conventions and agreements are rather limited. Thus, the sweep of Space Law is not global despite UN initiatives and Resolutions. There is however limited consensus that Outer Space Treaty, because of its wide acceptance, can be treated as Customary Law of Outer Space. Because its obligatory ambit is wide enough to be effective on space-faring states though not universal enough to cover all states, present and future. This needs judicious advocacy by space scholars to propagate OST as customary norms. By itself, Outer Space Treaty is one of the finest international instruments embodying new jurisprudence (non-appropriation principle, access to space for all states, even non-members), some principles of jus naturale (Common Heritage of Mankind and Sharing of Scientific Information and International Cooperation) and some established tenets of International Law (state responsibility and liability concept). International Law has its jus cogens as peremptory norms binding on all states. It seems desirable to select and evolve some precepts of OST as Jus Cogens of Space Law. These need no declaration or acceptance by any sovereign authority yet tend to become binding as supra-law. To attain this status, the selected principles need to be “lobby-ed” for opinion juris of Space Law scholars. This is a call in this direction. G.S. Sachdeva (&) NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, India e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 R.V. Rao et al. (eds.), Recent Developments in Space Law, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4926-2_2 7