Jurisprudential Space Junk: Treaties and New Technologies

Abstract

New technologies have fundamentally altered the ways in which international law develops, evolves, and sometimes inappropriately persists. This chapter discusses the problem of “jurisprudential space junk”: treaty laws that are theoretically in force but actually simply clutter the relevant legal regime. After reviewing problems associated with multilateral treaties regulating new technologies, this chapter suggests that other, more flexible forms of international lawmaking — namely, soft law and customary international law — will sometimes be far better suited to international technological governance.

Keywords: international law, treaties, technology