Book Reviews : Japan's American Interlude. By KAZUO KAWAI. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Pp. vi, 257. $5.00.)

• Author: Douglas H. Mendel
• Published date: 01 September 1960
• Date: 01 September 1960
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591296001300329
• Subject Matter: Articles

816
The concept of the International Astronautical Federation Colloquium on
Space Law emerged from conversations between the editors of the Proceedings
while they were engaged in a lecture tour of American universities during the
autumn of 1957 and at subsequent meetings in Europe. During the First Collo-
quium, held in The Hague in 1958, the participants voted to establish a Per-
manent Legal Committee of leading jurists and social scientists to consider prob-
lems evolving from the conquest of space. The papers read at this Colloquium
provide the substance for the Proceedings.
A number of the chief issues emerging from human penetrations of outer
space are described by the Chairman of the Colloquium, Andrew G. Haley,
in a paper entitled &dquo;Space Age Presents Immediate Legal Problems.&dquo; Several
of these problems -
as in the Jessup and Taubenfeld volume - pertain to the
use of radio and television frequencies. Others are concerned with various im-
plications of national sovereignty as the states of Earth pursue their penetrations
of outer space.
The moon may be alighted upon by human beings within the next five or
ten years, Haley asserts, and if in the meantime we do not reach an understand-
ing concerning its status, the nation achieving this feat may well, under classical
principles of terrestrial international law, claim sovereignty. Stephen Gorove,
Professor of Law, New York Law School, points out in a subsequent paper in
the Proceedings,
,
He who controls the Cosmic Space
_
’
Rules not only the Earth
But the whole Universe.
The remaining twenty-four papers in the Proceedings -
prepared by law-
yers, political scientists, statemen, military men and other specialists from a
variety of nations -
discuss the implications of space penetration in terms of
this premise and of the many complex problems that already derive from it.
Both the Proceedings and the volume by Jessup and Taubenfeld leave the
reader with a conviction that the space age is upon...