Interstellar Law - Technology

Why, indeed, is there the need for technological issues to be discussed in the context of Interstellar Law?

Briefly put, as technology changes, the law must keep in sync - otherwise, the law becomes unable to be effective.

Yet, as Stephen Hawking points out, the law can be used against new technological views. The reasons for the misuse of the law can vary.

The Church opposed Galileo because of theological threats of the new world view - the Church wanting to protect its Ptolemaic earth-centred view of the universe, with Rome at the centre.

Similarly, the Nazis opposed the concepts of Relativity simply because it originated with a Jew, namely Albert Einstein.

Yet it is clear from Hawking's survey that technology undergoes considerable changes over time. Copernicus and Galileo conceived of planetary orbits being perfectly circular because ancient philosophic views deemed the circle to be geometrically perfect. Hence the universe must be perfect - but calculations of orbits were askew. But hundreds of years later, Kepler solved the problem by realising that planetary orbits move in ellipses, not circles.

Other problems in philosophic assumptions also provided issues.

Theological views placed man and earth at the centre of creation and the universe. Yet increasingly, it became clear that man and earth are on an outer ring of a rather non-descript galaxy - one of a multitude.

So how does the placing of the earth in the cosmos affect the law?

As technology changes our view of the world around us, the law must accommodate the change in view.

This is Mr. Risman's 21st law text. Mr. Risman is an Honours LL.B. graduate from the University of London, and obtained his LL.M from the same institution. Mr. Risman is a member of the Society of Legal Scholars of the United Kingdom and Ireland. He has advised the UK Supreme Court, and has spoken at Legal Conferences in the UK and abroad.