4.18.2006
Scenes from the Journal
It's great to have friends at important places, like the University of Mississippi. Yesterday, although it wasn't my birthday, I received in the mail a box filled with not roses or champagne, cookies or candy, but something more exciting and cooler -- a few dozen pristine back issues of the illustrious Journal of Space Law.Wow. My thanks to Journal editor-in-chief Prof. Joanne Gabrynowicz, and her assistant Julie Baker. It's not the complete collection, but this is indeed a box of gems, and a slice of space law history.
I see articles I last read in law school (exactly 78,964 years ago). And a look back through the volumes quickly confirms over the years everybody who's anybody in space law has written for the Journal. Folks like of course, Stephen Gorove and Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz, as wall as Frans G. von der Dunk, Edward R. Finch, Jr., Carl Q. Christol, Eilene M. Galloway, Paul G. Dembling, Bin Cheng, Pamela L. Meredith and Glenn H. Reynolds, to name just a few luminaries.
The coverage, as always, is international. The perspective is cosmic. From the first volume of the Journal published in 1973, topics have included law, policy, regulation and politics of space programs, satellites, remote sensing, space stations, moon and Mars missions, international cooperation, exploration, launch vehicles, insurance, finance, military space, UN activities, space colonies, commercialization, new ventures, tourism and more. The publication regularly features updates on case law, as well as book reviews and commentary.
In the Journal's 25th anniversary issue in 1998, Prof. Vladlen S. Vereshchetin wrote, the "Journal of Space Law takes pride of place among the legal periodicals dealing with the issues of law relating to the exploration and use of outer space. In fact, it is the only legal journal in the world devoted exclusively to this fascinating new discipline." This remains true.
I'm looking forward to the Journal's 2006 issues. As I've mentioned, as we await Journal availability on Lexis and Westlaw (long overdue, and that's my only complaint), as well as updates to the Journal's web page, you can purchase individual articles as well as back copies -- just send a note to Joanne, jsl@olemiss.edu.
(But don't ask Joanne for those famous recent photos of her speaking in Saudi Arabia wearing an abaya. So far she has declined to release the images for Web consumption. However, I'm slowly wearing her down on this.... ;)
