Abstract
I propose that a federal system of government, able to implement the principle of subsidiarity on interplanetary scales, will be the most appropriate form of political organisation to guide the future colonisation of the Solar System. Only a federal system will simultaneously satisfy the three key criteria of (1) accommodating and protecting social and cultural diversity among Solar System colonies; (2) minimising the risk of conflict between these diverse colonies and with the Earth; and (3) protecting the rights and liberties of individual human beings throughout the Solar System. No other form of political organisation is likely to leave humanity in a better position to exploit the opportunities, and minimise the risks, associated with building a Solar System-wide civilisation.
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Notes
- 1.
For example Second Treatise of Government, Paragraph 212: “When any one, or more, shall take upon them to make laws, whom the people have not appointed so to do, they make laws without authority, which the people are not therefore bound to obey.”
- 2.
Treaty of Lisbon (2009), Article 3(b), Paragraph 3: “Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level.” http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1408652989843&uri=CELEX:C2007/306/01
- 3.
Treaty of Lisbon (2009), Article 6, Paragraph 2: “The Union shall accede to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.” And Paragraph 3: “Fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and as they result from the constitutional traditions common to the Member States, shall constitute general principles of the Union's law”.
- 4.
Recent revelations that the US National Security Agency has been indiscriminately harvesting telephone and internet records of millions of US citizens imply that constitutional protections of privacy, or at least the spirit of those protections, are currently being ignored by the executive branch of the federal government. The 4th Amendment clearly states that: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Hopefully, the checks and balances built into the US federal system will ensure that the protections guaranteed by the 4th Amendment are soon restored, as this will demonstrate the proper functioning of the federal constitution as envisaged by its founders. The alternative would presage a slide into totalitarianism by the world’s oldest constitutional democracy, and does not bear thinking about.
- 5.
Currently international activities in space are governed by the United Nations Outer Space Treaty (strictly the ‘Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and other Celestial Bodies’), which entered into force in October 1967. Currently this treaty has 102 states parties, including all major space powers. Although it has served the international community well for much of the space age to-date, it is inadequate for dealing with issues that will soon be upon us. These include the exploitation of extraterrestrial raw materials; the regulation of space tourism; and, in the context of this book, the rights and liberties of the inhabitants of space colonies (which needless-to-say were not considered at the time the Treaty was formulated). Attempts to extend the reach of the 1967 Treaty (e.g. the ‘Treaty Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies’ of 1979, the so-called Moon Treaty) have not been very successful (the Moon Treaty has not been ratified by any major space power). It is therefore clear that there is a large area of international space law that will need to be developed if space activities in the first part of the 21st century are to be properly regulated (see, e.g., the thoughtful discussion by Goldman 1985). That such activities will need to be regulated can hardly be doubted, given the risk that some of them (e.g. changing the orbits of asteroids to better facilitate resource extraction) may pose a serious risk to Earth’s inhabitants, and the more mundane consideration that private companies are unlikely to invest in space (either for resource exploitation or tourism) unless their investments are protected by an appropriate legal framework.
- 6.
Especially Amendments I and IV through X; clearly, Amendment II would not be helpful in an interplanetary context, and Amendment III seems hardly relevant. Of course, any actual interplanetary Bill of Rights would have to be constructed so as to be relevant to the particular social and physical conditions within which individual rights are to be protected.
- 7.
As discussed by Crawford (1995b), if faster-than-light travel or communication proves to be possible then it would be possible to establish interstellar political institutions, including interstellar federations. However there are at present no reasons to believe that faster-than-light travel could ever be technologically feasible, even if, given certain assumptions, it appears that it may be theoretically possible within the framework of General Relativity.
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Crawford, I.A. (2015). Interplanetary Federalism: Maximising the Chances of Extraterrestrial Peace, Diversity and Liberty. In: Cockell, C. (eds) The Meaning of Liberty Beyond Earth. Space and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09567-7_13
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