The next one hundred years

From: "Ian Woollard"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] The next one hundred years

> It's not entirely comparable.
>
> e.g. you can't sue Mount Everest; a Space Launch company
> can be sued.
>

Now we entered a very swampy arena, that of legal issues in space.

Nearly all the English-Speaking world uses a legal system that is completely
alien for me. Brazil, as well as all the continental Europe and its
ex-colonies, use the Roman legal system, where you have a precisely defined
set of laws and, when someone is prosecuted, positive and negative evidences
are analyzed and compared with the Law and so there is not much room for
unexpected results. In the English system, however, as far as I understand,
not only the laws (which are loosely defined, as far as I know), but also
precedent cases and the conjuncture of the society were a supposed crime was
perpetrated are analyzed, and the lawyers have to convince the jury based on
that - and, for that reason, verdicts are highly unpredictable.

So, I don't completely understand (for instance) the American legal system
(by the way, the paragraph above may have a lot of misinterpretations, and I
apologize in advance for that), and so I can't say which legal cautions a
US-based space tourism company could take. If the space tourist signs a bill
declaring that he is aware that space travel involves risks and that the
company should not be sued in case of his/her death, can someone still sue
the company?

And, if there is *no* safe way for a company in US, England or Australia
cover its back against lawsuits, why not base your company in another
country were the rules of the legal game are clear, stable and will not
allow inconvenient lawsuits? In the globalized world, you can choose the
exactly right place both in economic and legal terms for your enterprise.

> -Ian.
[snikt]