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As part of our Space series, we recorded a short interview with Michelle Hanlon and Caryn Schenewerk, two former Portia Project guests who are leaders in Space Law, conducted right after they stepped off the stage at the inaugural Space Beach Law Lab conference in Long Beach, California. This one gets substantive, and dips into hot topics in space policy and regulation. Plus, for those aspiring space lawyers out there, get great advice on how to break into this field. Enjoy! 

Relevant episode links:

Space Beach Law Lab , Center for Air and Space Law at Ole Miss , For All Moonkind , Caryn Schenewerk - Linkedin 

About Michelle Hanlon:

Michelle is a Co-Founder and the President of For All Moonkind, Inc., a nonprofit corporation that is the only organization in the world focused on protecting human cultural heritage in outer space. For All Moonkind has been recognized by the United Nations as a Permanent Observer to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Michelle is the President of the National Space Society and is on the Advisory Board of several start-ups involved in commercial space activities including orbital debris removal, remote sensing and the support of lunar resource extraction.

About Caryn Schenewerk:

Caryn is honored to serve as an adjunct professor of commercial space law at Georgetown University Law Center and recently co-authored a textbook, International Space Laws and Space Laws of the United States. Prior to joining the space industry, Caryn served as Deputy Associate Director for Legislative Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President. Caryn has also served as Counsel, Policy Director and Deputy Chief of Staff on Capitol Hill; her last Hill position was with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Caryn started her legal career in international trade law.

Welcome to a special edition of the show on-site at Space Beach Law Lab in Long Beach, California. I'm very pleased to have some amazing women who are former guests of the show in their own episodes and foremost thinkers in the area of space law. Welcome Michelle Hanlon, Director of the Center for Air and Space Law at Ole Miss and Founder of For All Moonkind, and Caryn Schenewerk who is an amazing advocate for the commercial space industry and has her consulting company as well. Welcome both of you.  

Thank you so much.  

Thank you.  

Space Beach Law Lab 

Thanks so much for doing this summary or snippet of some of the thought leadership that you've shown at Law Lab. The first thing that I wanted to throw across the bow is what is the significance of having a space law conference in Southern California. This is the Space Beach Law Lab's inaugural edition. What does that signify for the industry or spaces?  

Southern California, the Long Beach area, has a long history of space activities in aerospace. Aviation initially and down the aerospace industry is taking flight here. The effort locally to identify Long Beach as Space Beach is a pretty impressive one and it's been married with efforts to attract businesses to the area. We have a lot of opportunities to talk about space law and policy in a variety of places but there won't be here in the Southern California area. It's a good opportunity to start the practice of bringing space law and policy conversations to where the practice occurs where the engineering teams and the headquarters of many of the companies employ space lawyers, whether in-house or out-of-house. 

It shows the growing influence of the space industry. I had the fortune of meeting the mayor of Long Beach. He's very excited about how we're going to develop. Why would I look at space? What can you do with space? How can we get more space involved? He wants to be the first mayor with a space policy council. Efforts like this to spread the space message are important.  

That's very interesting. I hadn't known that about them but I knew that Long Beach is very forward-thinking in a number of different ways, including their efforts for air mobility as well. They have a lot of initiatives towards forward-thinking.  

You look at the companies that are here. We have companies that are involved in human space labs and building habitats, like vast future destinations. We have a number of companies that are interested in some of the ISAM and exploration activities. They're across all sectors of defense, civil, and commercial space.  

It does make sense not only from the newer generation of companies starting here from SpaceX and relativity in a number of companies that were here in the South Bay in particular but also before that. The original aerospace defense was The Aerospace Corporation, where my dad worked, and Ford Aerospace, where my dad also worked in Orange County. It makes sense. The framework from the previous companies is already here and the talent forces are here too. 

Space Legislative Policy Issues 

At Space Beach Law Lab, both of you came down from the days talking on a panel about space policy, legislative priorities, and things like that. I wanted to get a sense and maybe you can share what are some of the top space legislative or policy issues either being discussed or that aren't being discussed but should. Let's put it that way.  

Michelle and I have the privilege of teaching young students about what's happening in space law and policy. The hot topic is one that we've been talking about for a long time but it's fun to tie it directly to the outer space treaty. This happens in a direct line between what's happening in Congress and what this treaty from 1967 says, which is to the extent that private actors are going to go to space, and I'm paraphrasing, then the nation responsible for those actors has to provide “authorization and continue supervision” of their activities. 

The conversation that we're having in Congress and policy circles in and outside of the Beltway and the United States is on that specific topic. How do we responsibly regulate the activities of our nationals that fall outside the bounds of our current regulations? We have regulations governing telecommunications in space, remote sensing in space, and launch and re-entry. What we are talking about here is a couple. Let me give some examples. It’s activities like human habitats and lunar rovers, and ISAM activities in space servicing assembly manufacturing. These activities have not been delegated to a specific agency in the United States.  

The Federal Communications Commission has taken some initiative. 

The space bureau there is very active. Good on them because they see an opportunity, a vacuum so to speak, are stepping into that, have NPRM on the oversight of ISAM activities, and have indeed provided authorization for 1 of the 3 activities that I listed which are lunar rovers, intuitive machines, and extra body. We're both like since by the FCC. We see some activity there that the FCC would argue doesn't need Congressional authorization to move forward.  

They interpret that that is within the bounds of their authorities. The White House has said, “We want to see that delegated to either the company.” In some cases, the Department of Transportation and in some cases, the Department of Commerce. Congress seemingly has an opinion on that that differs from the White House and the FCC. You've got a lot of players in the ring trying to figure out what will come of it and who will be the victor. 

We talk to people who are engulfed in space the way we are. A lot of people wonder what cares because the space is huge. Why are we worried about regulating, authorizing, and supervising? There are two main reasons. One is protecting the taxpayer. The United States is internationally responsible for any damage that is done by a US national space. We have a physical obligation to make sure that these companies are not doing very risky things or doing very risky things but not putting other objects in space or people on Earth in danger. 

The United States is internationally responsible for any damage that is done by the US National Space. We have a physical obligation to make sure that these companies are not doing very risky things. 

The other reason is there are a lot of new activities and people are coming up with a lot of new, fun, and awesome ideas that you might think, “What’s wrong with that? Let's send it.” It wasn't a Coke can. “Let's send a bottle of sports drink to the moon and take pictures of it. How cool would that be?” “Sure.” Every soft drink company wants to do that. “Let's put a big ad in orbit.” Eventually, we have a law in the United States which prohibits putting blatant advertising on orbit. You can put it in Colombia. Colombia must be cutting itself on the back left and right. 

They think, “Can you send us to the moon?” One of the missions had human remains on it. This isn't about what they shouldn't have sent the human remains. This isn't that conversation. The conversation is we need to start thinking about what we want to regulate, how we want to regulate it, and as Caryn very eloquently said and explained, who we want to regulate it.  

The industry supports this. This is not an action of the government taking steps in industries opposing and thereby slowing this question or answer down. It's more about the idea that industry can do this. We're not forbidden from taking these actions. Yet, when you're putting together a business plan, fundraising against it, and trying to schedule your activities, one would want to know that when it gets time for launch, there won't be some reason that you're unable to launch or integrate with your launch vehicle. 

The challenge with that is most regulatory oversight, the application process, and the review process for these kinds of activities can take years. If you're planning to launch in 2025 or 2024, a company needs to be working through this process as soon as today. With an undefined process, it's problematic to have certainty of results.  

Caryn, you had some very eloquent testimony before Congress on this question of how we can make things a little smoother. Can we make some decisions a little faster? Can we integrate it between the agencies? You did a beautiful job justifying and presenting that information to Congress.  

Thank you. 

Michelle, you had an interesting opportunity. I thought you did a beautiful job also testifying to a non-space committee about space mining and natural resources committee. There were some members of Congress on that committee who were saying, “What are were talking about space? We don't think that's our daily work. Why are we doing this? Are we allowed to do this? Is it in this arena?”  

There's something important about that in terms of getting the word out to others, even if you are not the space aficionado. Everybody needs to be thinking about this. This has a much broader impact on humanity. Maybe some other committees and members of Congress should be thinking about this, too. That's an important educational component.  

It goes to what we say, “Everyone is affected by space.” Honestly, every committee in Congress probably thinks about space. There's likely a solution that is space-based or space-enhanced for whatever problems they're looking at. The National Resource Committee wasn’t very political. For me, it was a tremendous opportunity to be able to talk about space resource utilization and the fact that there are space resources. We don't want them to be managed by the Department of the Interior but we do want the Department of Interior to understand there are other resources that they need to keep in mind when they're thinking about managing our country's resources.  

Everyone is affected by space. 

That's an important question, too. Even if you're making decisions on Earth, you should be making those policy decisions to understand what else would be going on Earth.  

This is important. As you know, Michelle, the Department of Interior references an alphabet soup of agencies that are part of what would be the inner agency review with regard to space activities that have been laid out in the White House. It has this framework for how their proposal for mission authorization would be implemented to adjudicate reviews of space activities. It could be the case that the Department of Interior would determine that it had some interest in the conversation or had expertise hopefully to contribute to the conversation to find the solution. 

I don't think that it can be overstated and to the extent that any one of us has the time to do it on top of our day jobs the effort to educate, as Michelle was saying, the populace on the importance of space whether that's monitoring water, ice melt, cultural efforts of the use of fertilizer, and the movement of ships that could be illegally moving people. These are all capabilities and so many more that space offers to understand what's happening on our planet and contribute meaningfully to humanity's improvement or safety.  

You raise a good point about the Department of Interior because they're also on the National Space Council. We're trying to engage the secretary in this conversation about the navigation objecting to the human remains being sent to the moon. There’s an official government thought process going on with respect to them.  

Collective Action For Norm-Setting 

That's a great idea to facilitate the dialogue, shall we say, instead of having open letters and statements like, “What? No one told us.” One of the things that came up on the panel was the question of even if there isn't legislation or we haven't streamlined the agency process, do you have to wait for the government to act or is there something that companies and others can do to set norms and start setting the norms for behavior in certain areas?  

Companies can act collectively and/or individually. I always advocate for collective action. I'm a big fan of coalition building. I use the phrase on the panel, competimates. Some of my best accomplishments as an advocate have been times when I've been able to hold together people who want to compete on their merits but want to change the law and policy so that they can compete in an optimal way. The overall industry and its activities are not inhibited. That's an important aspect of trying to move any kind of policy forward.  

If you have too many fragmented voices or companies coming out, then that kind of money is the water like, “What are you asking us to do?” 

There's that piece and the, “Can we compete because we're competing by virtue of trying to do the best thing,” versus a race to the bottom. How can we raise the bar? How can we ensure that some raise from the bottom? If we all agree on what the floor is and try to do better from there, we're all better off.  

You raised a good point in the panel. You were uplifting that the cast of characters in space have only good intentions. Nobody is in it for the money at this point. They're in it because they believe it. If we can get these foundational norms agreed upon among this cast of good actors and then take that, and it becomes a norm and codified, when we get those bad actors and we know they're going to come, we've already had a baseline of behaviors.  

It's much more powerful at a commercial level than at a national level because commerce has no boundaries or sovereign borders. If we can find those 3 or 4 “commercial” companies to also agree to those norms or get all 36 itemizations of those commercial companies, then we are creating norms that will buy not just the United States but a lot more professional companies around the world.  

In the context of law and being law professors in an effort to develop what would become customer international law, to start with norm's behavior, we should have enough practice and good opinions around that. Arguably, it’s that interpretation of the treaties, acting practice, and even our legislative actions being into the potential build of the customer international around which we might someday be able to hold people accountable to some level. 

I'm glad you said that Caryn, because that's something that people don't often think of. I’m thinking about just the domestic level but space law has many layers. As a result, maybe that kind of standard setting domestically may not have the same legal locations that it would internationally. That's very important to the domestic. 

It's also another way that space law is similar to other areas of the law, where there's an international practice component. We are incredibly unique in some ways but in other ways, it's like everything else in the law.  

Everyone always brings up maritime law, mentioning the law of the sea. High seas are like space. I'd like to point out that that's not the case at all. Don’t forget physics. The universe truly is infinite. When we look at the law of the sea, what we did was codified centuries of tradition. That's where we are with space. We don't want to take the law of the sea and put it in space. We want to create the traditions that will ultimately become the law of space.  

I essentially install shots in my students' seats when they say. “Shouldn’t we look for the law to sea?” Very early on, this is the conversation that we have exactly. It's an excellent and important point. 

The Artemis Accords is not a treaty. I tell my students all the time, “You'll get five points taken up if you ever do that.” That’s right up to the top. 

Is it an important norm? It’s sort of a stop and then forward.  

It’s an example of norm-setting and trying to build potentially some very long on it.  

Getting Into Space Law 

Don't go too far too fast. We're not there yet but it could be towards a norm of that. The last question would be for those law students or even lawyers who might be thinking, “Space sounds interesting. How would I get into that? How do I become a space lawyer?” Whether it's a first, second, or third career, do you have any advice? 

I have a lot of advice but we'll try to keep it simple. One of the things that I thought about as I looked out of the audience that's here for the Space Beach Law Lab and I spoke to this myself is that I didn't get my start at Space Law. I'm guessing that there are very few people in the audience whose law school activities and whose first job out of law school was in space law. That is increasingly happening. A big shift in my conversation with students and folks who want to become space lawyers from when I started teaching is you can come out of law school and get a job as a space lawyer right out of law school, which is so exciting. I've seen some of my students do that and they're amazing.  

With that said, if you're looking to transition or go to space law eventually but want to explore other options, there are a number of legal practice areas that feed very easily into space law like government contracts, export control, mergers and securities, and the financing side. You see a lot of GCs of space companies that came from a finance background. First and foremost, you need money to build space technology that runs into space operations. You're usually interested in somebody who can facilitate the company. 

It's an early need for the company.  

The space lawyer is not usually the first higher. That's true. Taking a space law course, having something interesting to say and contribute, and showing up at conferences like this to learn and network is always important no matter what industry you're interested in engaging in. With space, there are a number of pathways, whether it's core activities like export finance, government contracts, or even more employment law. As companies grow and build litigation experience, those all are experiences that will be needed and can feed into a space law practice. 

Otherwise, there are amazing programs like Michelle's at Georgetown, Mississippi, where I'm an adjunct professor. I have two space law classes. We have an LLM National Security, which some of the students do on a path to being in space but there are a number of programs specifically for space law that are great in the country that you can attend to do in LLM.  

We also in Mississippi have the JV concentration. If you want to come to the law school of Mississippi, you can get started early on that and do the JV in three and a half years or something. I want to echo what Caryn said. Space law is a funny thing. Pretty soon, it's not going to be space law because everything they do on Earth, we're going to need to do in space. Those first general counsels on these startup companies are from a finance or contracts background.  

I like to tell students to get five years of experience. It's very unusual to graduate from law school and go into a general counsel. Go get your lean on five years of experience at a law firm. Here at Space Beach Law Lab, I’ve been talking to lawyers at firms that never have space practices. You can get to a law firm with a space law practice.  

Steven Freeland from Western Sydney University and his wife Donna Lawler, who’s also a space lawyer, did an op-ed a couple of years ago where they said, “Ten years from now if you have not taken a space law course, you will likely malpractice your client.” That's how everyone's space law will be in all of our lives and I firmly believe that. I am on a platform to get space law right up there with con law. I would make one here so much more interesting.  

Space law will be in all of our lives. 

I don't want to miss the opportunity to point out how much experience young attorneys can get in government service. One of the things that I testified to Congress about is the need for experts who are working in government who are looking at the application materials and adjudicating those. Those include lawyers at the FCC, FAA, and Department of Commerce, or a remote sensing office, especially as they grow their practice areas where you never see their faces. That legal experience is especially married to the policy experience you get in government. Understanding how to navigate government can give people a good starting place for successful careers in and out of government to contribute to the industry.  

Caryn, I was struck when you first started talking about there's been a change where you could get out of law school and have a space-focused job. It reminds me of the evolution of the appellate practice with my generation and soon after. All of us were litigators and trialers. We found appellate law and transitioned into that. It's valuable to have that broader experience to bring to it. 

Newer lawyers coming up in law school can be appellate lawyers from the get-go. Whether you think that's a good idea or bad idea, that's different but you can do it and you could never have done that years ago. It's an interesting evolution of an area of law to see that. When that moment happens, it suddenly becomes something that you can go into directly. That's an important change in the development of everything. When you mentioned that stage, it was fun to see that. 

I might look forward to but I'm not sure how I feel about the same in the day when more legal subject matter experts are needed to advise folks doing appellate practice. I'm not sure.  

I don't know. It shows growth but I'm not sure how we feel about that growth maybe. There’s a little bit too much litigation maybe, I don't know. I just thought, “That's an interesting turning point.” That goes to the point, Michelle, of what you're saying. Everyone is going to have some knowledge of this. It's the growth of companies in space and exploration in space that's happening and all of this is downstream of that, which is an exciting time to be alive.  

Caryn teaches it at Georgetown and we're seeing more law schools offering about 1 or 2 of space law classes. I encourage you if you're in law school and you have that opportunity to take advantage of it because it's a wildly fun area of the law. It needs innovation, inspiration, and creativity. Even if you don't practice space law when you get out of law school, you're going to need to understand it.  

Even if you don't practice space law, when you get out of law school, you're going to need it. You're going to need to understand it. 

I ended up as a space lawyer because I started in an administrative law practice. It’s in a practice area that was focused on the Code of Federal Regulations. That led me to a point where when a space law question came up that was with regard to the CFR, I raised my hand and said, “I'll take it. I understand how to think through these kinds of problems, research the NPRM and the preamble, and understand the context. People around the table and other lawyers were looking at me like, “What if you don't know this language?”  

That's important overall to think about transferable skills. It’s skills in different areas you might label different things but there are skills that are helpful and translate well to different kinds of work. To your point Michelle, we need that. We need to have translatable skills but also different perspectives that you're bringing as a result of your different experiences with space law. 

MC, I want to give a shout-out to you and a lot of your colleagues in the LLM program. These are people who have 15, 20, or 30 years of experience who are taking these classes because they understand the depth of that space law ad. It's exciting for me to see because as Caryn points out, all these space companies need normal lawyers who know what space law is and that's what we're producing. 

It’s recommendable.  

You both are super inspiring to me and amazing lawyers and people. I'm so glad that you were able to join and share some of the thought leadership you had on stage at the panel and other things you've given a lot of strong thought to in your careers. Thank you both.  

Thank you.