About the Society
The American Space Law Society is a South Carolina nonprofit conducting research on the law, governance, and politics of human activity beyond Earth.
The law governing human activity beyond Earth was written for a period that has ended. The treaties date from the 1960s and 1970s, when two states conducted essentially all activity in space and the questions before them were questions between governments. Activity is now largely commercial, the number of participating states has multiplied, and the institutions built to settle disputes among a handful of powers are being asked to settle them among many.
The Society studies that gap: what the existing law actually requires, how the institutions charged with developing it are structured, and which interests determine what those institutions are able to agree. The work is descriptive before it is prescriptive. The Society takes the view that the field is poorly served by accounts of what the law ought to be that are not grounded in an accurate account of what it is.
The American Space Law Society is incorporated in South Carolina as a nonprofit corporation. It has not received a determination of federal tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service.
The Society was founded in 2023.