Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 23:59:16 +0100 (CET)
From: Heiko Recktenwald <uzs106-AT-ibm.rhrz.uni-bonn.de>
Subject: Hugo de Groot aka Grotius and Cyberspacio (fwd)


Well its not on cyberspace in general, but it gives a good impression:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:51:02 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: INT-LAW Hugo de Groot aka Grotius and Cyberspacio

The best modern work on Grotius's thought I know is the collection of
essays put together by Yasuaki Onuma for Cambridge University Press c.
1995.  It points out that Grotius did NOT posit a unitary legal order as
asserted by Lauterpacht in his famous essay on the Grotius view of
international law in the British Yearbook c. 1950.  Instead, to Grotius
there were competing normative orders (moral "law," "divine law," "law of
nations" (i.e., coincident municipal laws of many states), "positive
international law," "laws of chivalry" etc.).  And he did NOT support mare
liberum in his mature work, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625, 1631, 1632,
1646).  As to applying Grotius's views of maritime law to space, I know of
no work on the subject, probably because Grotius's real views, when
examined closely, do NOT support the arguments Western scholars would like
to make today.  There are several works (Hague lectures, etc.) supporting
free use of space for communications (probably something from people
connected with INTELSAT; I reviewed at least one or two of them for the
Am. J. of Int'l Law many years ago) and there was some fuss raised by
equatorial states about charging for the use of "their" space segments
resting on the ancient Justinian private law notion of property rights
extending ad infernum usque ad coelum.  The INTELSAT response was to move
their devices to 22,300 miles over the high seas while vehemently denying
the "rights" of equatorial states to charge them even if they had left
them over land.  The "practice accepted as law" by space-competent states
has been to assert their launches and flights over other people's
territory set a precedent best viewed as "law."  I will await the
development of a capacity to shoot them down, or launches by China et al.
over the US (Alaska?) before coming to that easy and favorable conclusion.
Too much for an e-mail.




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