Let’s say that, at some point in the future, extant life is found on Mars - in the form of microbes or extremely primitive lichens (or something like that).
Further study reveals that life is probably not present anywhere else on the planet - with Martian life inhabiting an area of just a few acres.
Now, a private company decides that it’s ready to build the first hotel on Mars, and their chosen site just happens to be the spot where the life was discovered. Building the installation will almost certainly kill the organisms that live there.
Obviously, this scenario is unlikely and (at least) several decades away, so assume that all the relevant environmental laws have gone unchanged from their current state. Would there be any legal basis, under the Endangered Species Act, an international treaty, or any other law, to stop the construction of Hotel Mars?
If laws don’t change, it would probably be legal to kill people on Mars. I don’t know of any law that has jurisdiction in outer space. That leads to an interesting question. What if Neil Armstrong murdered Buzz Aldrin on the moon. He comes back and makes a full confession. Could he have been charged with murder?
The Outer Space Treaty governs activities in space, and looks to have been ratified by just about anybody who is likely to launch things into space, or from whose territory something is likely to be launched. Article VI specifies that States Parties to the treaty also have responsibility for regulating the activities of their non-governmental entities.
There is nothing specifically about environmental protection or the preservation of endangered Martian wildlife, however Article IX states:
That could probably be stretched to fit–extraterrestrial life would be of obvious scientific interest, and no one else is going to be able to peacefully study said life if you kill it all off by building a hotel on top of it.
In practice, getting to Mars is sufficiently difficult that the international community should have plenty of time to enact stronger and more specific language before any hotel-building tycoon can get up there and gum up the works.
Many American laws apply extraterritorially, to American citizens abroad.
In the case of Neil Armstrong killing Buzz Aldrin on the moon, considering that he was in the active employ of the federal government at the time, a good argument could be made that he was under the jurisdiction of the United States, and that he could be charged with murder when he got back to Earth.
See above–killing another country’s astronauts would surely constitute “harmful interference” in their peaceful exploration of space (Article IX); furthermore, Article V requires everyone to render aid to each other’s astronauts.
Additionally, U.S. law defines the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States to include any “vehicle used or designed for flight or navigation in space and on the registry of the United States” from the moment the doors are closed on Earth until they are re-opened upon the vessel’s return to Earth; as well as any “place outside the jurisdiction of any nation with respect to an offense by or against a national of the United States” (which would presumably cover Mars). So our hypothetical homicidal astronaut would be on the hook for murder committed “within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States” for murdering someone aboard a U.S. spacecraft, or for murdering a U.S. astronaut in outer space, or for a U.S. astronaut murdering another person. (Killing a Martian–now that could get legally interesting.)
First of all, “legal” implies that the act would fall within the established bounds of statute, case, or common law. As there is no established law governing activities in space, the act would be by definition extralegal, although one could apply an extension of exiting law in a fashion described by MEBuckner in limited cases.
The Outer Space Treaty and other treaties and memoranda of agreement are agreements between nations and do not apply to individuals by themselves. However, they can be applied to agents of nations, including legal persons (both natural and corporate) that are citizens or established under the flag of a nation, and nations themselves are generally held responsible for the behavior of agents. The state in question may in turn apply its laws to that citizen even if the act was outside of the recognized jurisdiction; in absence of any other established jurisdiction, a nation could possibly apply laws at the point of entry (that being the point at which the incident in question became a terrestrial matter), or if it were some serious violation of a treaty, prosecute for treason or sedition.
Except that the legal system rarely anticipates novel forms of crime and tort; witness the confusion of laws concerning the Internet and software intellectual property, and international law is even more of hodgepodge as it doesn’t even share a common set of essential principles or precepts. Laws will emerge when people start causing trouble for each other in space, which will be about five minutes after someone discovers a valuable resource or establishes an orbiting casino.
As for terminating an extraterrestrial, I don’t think existing law could be successfully applied. If the creature in question were determined to be sentient in a way recognizable to us, one might be able to make the argument that they should be considered “a person” under law, but killing a member of an extraterrestrial species not identified as protected as most is vandalism or destruction of natural resources or somesuch. Depending on the composition, it might not even be considered to be alive, as there is no definitive legal definition of life. (To be fair, the scientific definitions aren’t much better, generally consisting of words like “anabolism”, “homeostasis” and “autopoiesis”.)
Of course, if you are a megalomaniac trillionaire with the financial and technological resources to go to Mars just to stomp on some Martian lichen, the simple answer is just to use your resources to remain out of the reach of terrestrial authorities, and if they really give you a hard time, redirect a few passing comets toward the Earth until they give up. Or have the FBI ship you a few spare nukes as part of their “Faster and Furious-er” campaign to fight nuclear weapon proliferation.
That scenario is just plain crazy. Why not think of something more plausible? Like say Buzz punching Neil right in the nose. That could happen! Then we would be talking space assault charges! :dubious:
