Warsaw Convention, Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Convention

The Warsaw Convention is an international convention which regulates liability for international carriage of persons, luggage or goods performed by aircraft for reward.

Originally signed in 1929 in Warsaw (hence the name), it was amended in 1955 at The Hague and in 1975 in Montreal. United States courts have held that, at least for some purposes, the Warsaw Convention is a different instrument from the Warsaw Convention as Amended by the Hague Protocol.

In particular, the Warsaw Convention:

• mandates carriers to issue passenger tickets;
• requires carriers to issue baggage checks for checked luggage;
• creates a limitation period of 2 years within which a claim must be brought (Article 29); and
• sets a carrier's liability to at least:
  • 250,000 Francs or 16,600 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) for personal injury;
  • 17 SDR per kilogram for checked luggage and cargo,
  • 5,000 Francs or 332 SDR for the hand luggage of a traveller.

The sums limiting liability were originally given in Francs (defined in terms of a particular quantity of gold by article 22 paragraph 5 of the convention). These sums were amended by the Montreal Additional Protocol No. 2 to substitute an expression given in terms of SDR's. These sums are valid in the absence of a differing agreement (on a higher sum) with the carrier. Agreements on lower sums are null and void.

On April 1, 2007, the exchange rate was 1.00 SDR = 1.135 EUR or 1.00 SDR = 1.51 USD.

A court may also award a claiming party's costs, unless the carrier made an offer within 6 months of the loss (or at least 6 months before the beginning of any legal proceedings) which the claiming party has failed to beat.

The Montreal Convention, signed in 1999, will replace the Warsaw Convention system, once Montreal has been ratified by all states. Until then, however, there will be a patchwork of rules governing international carriage by air, as different states will be parties to different agreements (or no agreement at all).

• This page was last modified on 4 February 2008, at 16:36.
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Kenneth Beaumont, Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Beaumont

Major Kenneth Macdonald Beaumont CBE DSO (10 February 1884 – 24 June 1965) is the individual probably most responsible for the development of international aviation law.

Beaumont served in the Army Service Corps in the First World War, reaching the rank of Major and being awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1918 for his services during the capture of Jerusalem.

After becoming a joint partner in 1911 of the London based legal practice, Beaumont and Son, (originally formed as a family practice by his grandfather in 1836) Major Beaumont turned the practice's focus to aviation law following an Imperial Airways accident in 1924. He was one of the three original legal advisers on the IATA (International Air Transport Association although it was then called the International Air Traffic Association) Legal Committee and served in this capacity from 1925 to 1946. In the early part of his career at the IATA he was responsible for drafting the terms and conditions for passenger tickets, baggage checks and consignment notes for cargo. In 1929 Major Beaumont attended, as an observer on behalf of the IATA, a conference in Warsaw at which the Warsaw Convention for the unification of certain rules relating to international carriage by air was drafted. He was instrumental in persuading the conference members not to schedule to the Convention standard forms of tickets, baggage checks and consignment notes.

Major Beaumont was elected Chairman of the C.I.T.E.J.A. (Comité International Technique d'Experts Juridiques Aérien) - soon to become the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) in 1946, of which he was also elected Chairman whilst serving as its UK representative. The terms of his engagement were expressed by Lord Nathan thus:

We understand that you know more about the international aspects of air law than we do at the Ministry. In these circumstances, are you prepared to attend meetings of the C.I.T.E.J.A. on the understanding that you receive no brief or instructions from us and that, if we approve of the way in which you handle these meetings, we shall receive the credit and that, if we do not approve, your employment will be terminated?

He was elected President of the legal committee of the ICAO in 1954. Major Beaumont was the author of a draft Convention intended to replace the Warsaw Convention but although, to his regret, his draft was not adopted, many of its provisions appeared in the Hague Protocol 1955. He retired from the ICAO in 1957, but continued to attend meetings as an observer on behalf of the International Chamber of Commerce and the International Law Association.

Major Beaumont was the co-author of Shawcross and Beaumont, the standard authoritative legal text on aviation.

Although best remembered for his contributions to the field of aviation law, he was also a championship figure skater and served as a referee or judge of World, European and Olympic Figure Skating Championships. He served as the President of the Royal Philatelic Society, London, and of the National Skating Association of Great Britain.

His family motto was: "Cartun pete finem" (Seek a sure end)

• This page was last modified on 10 January 2008, at 12:54.
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Avitation Law, Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_law

Aviation law is the branch of law that concerns flight, air travel, and associated legal and business concerns. Some of its area of concern overlaps that of admiralty law and in many cases, aviation law is considered a matter of international law due to the nature of air travel. However, the business aspects of airlines and their regulation also fall under aviation law. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), governs applied aspects of flight. In the international realm, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) provide general rules and mediates international concerns to an extent regarding aviation law. The ICAO is a specialized agency of the United Nations.

In the United States and most European nations, aviation law is considered a federal or state-level concern and is regulated thereby at that level. In the U.S., states cannot govern aviation matters in most cases directly but look to Federal laws and case law for this function instead. Aviation law, however, is not in the United States held under the same Federal mandate of jurisdiction as admiralty law; that is, which the United States Constitution provides for the administration of admiralty, it does not provide such for aviation law. Space law, which governs matters in outer space beyond the Earth's atmosphere, is a rather new area of law but one that already has its own journals and academic support. Expectedly, much of space law is connected to aviation law.

• This page was last modified on 8 March 2008, at 01:47.
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The Law of the Air by Arnold Duncan McNair

The Law of the Air by Arnold Duncan McNair, Michael R. E. Kerr, Robert A. MacCrindle
The University of Toronto Law Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1957), pp. 111-112

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0042-0220(1957)12%3A1%3C111%3ATLOTA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-9

Air and Space Law, Peace Palace Library

http://www.ppl.nl/100years/topics/airandspacelaw/

Air and Space Law

Space dog Laika.

Air Law and Space Law are disciplines in international law of quite recent date. At the same time, however, they cover the Carnegie Foundation's first century. After the Wright brothers successfully launched the first plane in 1903 the twentieth century became an era in which the significance of the power driven aircraft was only to grow. The rise of commercial aviation diminished global distances. The discovery of outer space (Sputnik in 1957, dog Laika in 1958, Yuri Gagarin in 1961, Apollo 11 on the Moon in 1969) added a fresh element. With the International Space Station under construction, Space Law has become a defining legal aspect of our age.

Air Law, history, scope and definition

It is rather remarkable that air law preceded the actual technology involved. Air law was being formulated even before the Wright Brothers' take off. Paul Fauchille wrote his seminal article "Le domaine aérien et le régime juridique des aérostats" in 1901, in volume 8 of the still young French scholarly journal Revue Générale de Droit International Public founded in 1893. He presented his views at a meeting of the Institut de droit international in Neuchâtel in 1900. Aircraft inthe way the Wright Brothers envisaged it, power driven and navigable, was as yet unknown and unforeseen, and therefore naturally left out of Fauchille's considerations. Within a few years his approach, the general legal framework of air law and its details, mostly concerned with sovereignty over airspace, became obsolete for its lack of realism.

Johanna (Jenny) Francina Lycklama à Nijeholt, De Luchtvaart in het volkenrecht ('Aerial Navigation according to the Law of Nations').

Dutch interest In the Netherlands the first doctoral thesis on air law, by Johanna (Jenny) Francina Lycklama à Nijeholt,De Luchtvaart in het Volkenrecht ('Aerial Navigation according to the Law of Nations'), was published in 1910. Like all pioneers she compared air law with the legal regime of the seas. Was air a 'mare liberum'? Was air a 'res nullius'? Is air free without limitations, free except for certain sovereignty rights of the ground state required in the interest of self-preservation, e.g. limitations up to the height of 1000 m? Is there a lower zone of territorial airspace or do ground states have exclusive rights to the superincumbent air column, with the addition of a servitude of innocent passage for foreign non-military aircraft?

Legislating air In the Paris Convention of 1919 the complete sovereignty regulation was formulated in Article 1 and the still valid 1944 Chicago Convention worded the innocent passage element. National interests prevailed after the First World War but in 1920 the battle for the freedom of the air was fought and legally settled.

In an appendix in Lord A.D. McNair's The Law of the Air (1964) reference is made to the history of the maxim (uncommon, of course, from a Roman Law point of view) "cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum et ad inferos" ("Whosoever has the soil, also owns to the heavens above and to the center beneath"); the maxim's current meaning is brought about by 20th century air traffic.

In the United Kingdom Shawcross & Beaumont compiled a loose leaf publication that has been continuing until today, entitled, quite simply, Air Law. In France we find Marcel Le Goff's Manuel de droit aérien, droit public (1954) and Maurice Lemoine's Traité de droit aérien (1947). In Germany at the Institute for Air and Space Law in Cologne Karl-Heinz Böckstiegel is the leading figure in the field.

The Dutch tradition was continued in the second half of the twentieth century by the Utrecht University professor Isabella Henrietta Philepina Diederiks-Verschoor. She became a prominent scholar of international reputation. Professor Diederiks-Verschoor is best known for An Introduction to Air Law and her Introduction to Space Law.

Because of issues closely related to air law, like airport security, air piracy, hyjacking, terrorism (cases such as KAL 007 and Lockerbie), air law is considered as one of the focal topics in international law. Fare bargaining and landing rights, noise, pollution and influence upon rural and urban planning touch international law.

Tanja L. Zwaan, Space Law.

Space law, a Cold War phenomenon? Tanja L. Zwaan, then co-director of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University, started her contribution to Space Law: Views of the Future (1988) with the following statement: "Too many publications dealing with outer space law start with the words: 'After the launching of the first Sputnik in 1957...'" ("The Influence of the Achievements and Failures of the Past on the Future of Outer Space Law"). Other scholars, however, trace the origins of space law to as far back as 1934, when Eygene Korovin, professor of international law at the Institute for Soviet Law in Moscow, published his article on the international legal aspects of the stratophere, "La conquête de la stratosphère et le droit international" in Revue Générale de Droit International Public (vol. 41, pp. 675-686). Korovin is seen as the father of scientific international space law in the Soviet Union. With surprising clairvoyance he foresaw that aviation in outer space ('stratosphère‘) would develop along the same lines as in the lower air layers: "Expérience scientifique et sportive d‘abord; instrument de guerre ensuite, et, enfin moyen perfectionné de commerce international" (p. 677). He concludes by relating the conquest of airspace to the problems of international security (p. 686).

In space law once again legal regulation, or at least preparations for formalization, preceded technology. Space law developed into a topic which was to be covered frequently by Soviet researchers in Russia and its satellite states. Manfred Lachs from Poland, Judge, later President at the International Court of Justice, published The Law of Outer Space: An Experience in Contemporary Law-Making in 1972. He advises to use analogies creatively and follow the most progressive tendencies in international law for the definition of the scope of space law (p. 21). In Chapter XII, 'The Law-Making Process', Lachs opposes the presumption that outer space had been "a lawless area or legal vacuum" since it had always been subject to international law (p. 135). The book is based on Lachs's lecture at the The Hague Academy of International Law, published in Recueil des Cours, 1964, pp. 1-116, 'The International Law of Outer Space'.

G.P. Zhukov, International Space Law.

Soviet interest, Soviet interests Undoubtly the Soviet interest in space law relates to the Cold War, to East-West relations, Ballistic Missile Defense Systems, Anti-Satellites Satellites (ASAT'), to SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) or Star Wars, to space war threats, arms race in outer space, military use of space, arms control in outer space, war prevention, demilitarization, disarmament of outer space and détente, and even to the desire for a nuclear weapon-free outer space zone. G.P. Zhukov and V.S. Vereschetin (as well as G.I. Tunkin) reflect the Soviet efforts to prevent war, a world war, an outer space war. They argue in favour of peaceful use of the outer space; they reject a customary international law and natural law to be applied to or to regulate outer space, because in the Soviet view legal relations in outer space have to be in accordance with general principles of international law: opposition against national appropriation of outer space, peaceful coexistence, international cooperation in exploring and using outer space for peaceful purposes.

Gennady Zhukov (with Yuri Kolosov) published International Space Law in 1984, a translation from the Russian original. In 1985 V.S. Vereshchetin, presently Judge at the International Court of Justice, co-authored a book on developments in international law regarding the Soviet programme towards peace. He promoted the peaceful exploration and use of outer space on various occasions, e.g., in the 1986 United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) publication Prevention of the Arms Race in Outer Space. In 1969, the year a small step for man but a giant leap for mankind was taken by Neil Armstrong, Hungarian scholar Gyula Gal published his Space Law. Gal uses line illustrations of vertical projections of state sovereignty over independently moving air and space columns so as to show why unlimited state sovereignty - usque ad infinitum - is incorrect when referring to positive law and to fundamental facts of natural science (p. 67). See also Aerospace Law (1969) by Nicolas Mateesco Matte, pp. 46-47.

The cover of Gal's book and some of the illustrations.

Nandasiri Jasentuliyana, internationally recognized author of the four volume Manual on Space Law (1979) and Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Office in Vienna and Director of the Office for Outer Space, summarized all issues on space and the United Nations in International Space Law and the United Nations (1999): "It was natural that this responsibility to regulate the new environment would fall upon the United Nations, which had been established to ‘maintain international peace and security‘" (p. 1).

Relevant developments towards codification were started by the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) in 1958. The Outer Space Treaty dates from 1967, an elaboration resulted in the 1979 Moon Agreement in which international use of the moon and exploration of its resources in particular were addressed. In the Moon Agreement the moon deliberately wasn't identified as res nullius, but as a res communis, a res extra-commercium or the common heritage of mankind.

For Grotius the freedom of airspace began beyond the range of a hunter's weapon. Today's space law is one of the newest branches on the tree of international law and follows developments in space technology. The steps defined in 1934 by Korovin appeared to be realistic after all: after the initial stage of adventure came the military involvement during the Cold War and today satellites in outer space are part of the earth' system of television broadcasting, telecommunication and maritime services through INMARSAT etc., and meteorological and other scientific research is performed in or monitored from outer space.

© Peace Palace Library, 2004

Law of the Air, Carl Zollman

Written in 1927, published by The Bruce Publishing Co.

Law of the Air, Columbia Encyclopedia

See http://www.questia.com/library/encyclopedia/air_law_of_the.jsp

in the broadest sense, all law connected with the use of the air, including radio and satellite transmissions; more commonly, it refers to laws concerning civil aviation. The development of large-scale air transport after World War I brought with it the need for regulation, both national and international. In 1919 a meeting of the victorious nations of World War I resulted in the International Convention for Air Navigation, commonly called the Paris Convention. The convention recognized the sovereignty of each state over its own air space without prejudice to innocent passage by aircraft of another state. It also provided that each aircraft (like each ship) must have a registered nationality. Rules were adopted as to the airworthiness of aircraft and the certification and licensing of pilots. The United States was among the 33 signatory nations but did not ratify the convention; nevertheless U.S. air laws were modeled on it. The Warsaw Convention on International Carriage by Air (1929) determined that the owner or operator of the carrier is liable for any injury, death, or property damage. World War II emphasized the need for sounder regulation of international air transport and for uniformity of equipment, laws, and regulation. An international civil aviation conference of 52 nations, not including the USSR, met in Chicago in 1944. There was much discussion of the "five freedoms of the air"—freedom to fly across the territory of a state without landing; freedom to land for nontraffic purposes; the right to disembark in a foreign country traffic from the country of registry of the aircraft; the right to pick up in a foreign country traffic destined for the country of registry; and the right to carry traffic between two foreign countries. The first two were accepted, but the fifth was bitterly opposed; only the first two were included in the International Air Services Transit Agreement, which was generally signed. The convention set up a provisional body that in 1947 became the International Civil Aviation Organization, affiliated with the United Nations. There have been several general conferences since the Chicago Convention and many bilateral agreements have been concluded by parties to it. In the United States, deregulation of the airline industry in the late 1970s led to the eventual dissolution of the Civil Aeronautics Board. Since 1984, U.S. air laws have been administered by the Federal Aviation Administration, a division of the Department of Transportation. The successful launching of satellites necessitated the development of space law.

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