SPLAWG

That’s right, this little mastermind is going to the slammer. The only real question here isn’t about guilt, but punishment. So let’s get right to it. Ender’s entire life had been devoted to killing the buggers. Ender had the actus reus. Firing the particle demoleculorizer thing was voluntary and intentional – he reasoned through it. He had the correct mens rea, he fired the it with the intention and for the purpose of destroying the bugger’s planet. “But wait,” you’re probably thinking, “Ender didn’t know it was real life! He can’t be held responsible for annihilating an entire species of intelligent beings when he thought it was just a simulation.” Thinking real life is a videogame is a mistake of fact – not a valid excuse When it comes to mistakes, only mistakes of law (and sometimes hybrid mistakes – but those don’t make sense, so we’re not going to talk about them) are valid. The best example of this is SpongeBob. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Free Ballo...

For thousands of years, humanity has wondered how the world would end. The ancient Sumerians, for example, thought a planet called Nibiru was on a collision course with Earth. The speculations have only increased in recent years: A meteor (like the imaginary one that attracted a strong following during the 2016 U.S Presidential Election), nuclear war , global warming , or even artificial intelligence (which Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, recently called our “biggest existential threat ”). But what if they were wrong? What if instead, it will be giant slug-like intergalactic creatures called Vogons who destroy the earth to make room for a hyperspatial express route? In addition to being somewhat of a bummer (after all, then we would never live to see a world of fully autonomous cars , supersonic hyperloops , and ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces ), the scenario poses the all-important question: Is there a legal remedy? The civil legal issues raised by de...

Those not up-to-date on the world of claymation and it’s pioneers, Wallace and Gromit, catch up here . The tale of their Grand Day Out is one full of extraterrestrial . . . treaty breaking! (For the full list of Top 10 Space Crimes, go here .) The Story: Wallace takes advantage of the Moon So Wallace and his cunning pet Gromit are on the Moon. You know it’s the real moon because it’s made of cheese — “Moon-ster” most likely. On the Moon made of Moon-ster they encounter the Cooker: a mysterious vending-machine-security-guard robot planted on the Moon most likely by COPUOS, a mysterious bunch that hides behind an ominous acronym they say means “ Committee On the Peaceful Uses Of Space .” Once the Cooker is activated, it finds Wallace’s homemade rocket ship to be illegally parked on the Moon. The Cooker leaves a citation on the rocket ship. The Cooker next spies Wallace harvesting the moon-ster moon cheese. The Cooker doesn’t like that. Eventually, the Cooke...

Today we discuss Space Crime #9, which examines the actions of one Dr. Mann in the film Interstellar — by actions, I mean pretty much everything he does in the movie. Anyone who’s seen it knows that Mann messed up (pun intended). So, logically the next question is just what would happen if Mann, or rather his estate (*spoiler alert* he dies), were taken to court. (Read the full list of the galaxy’s greatest space crimes here .) To begin: He falsified the data about his “habitable” planet He tried to kill his fellow space travelers and actually succeeded with one of them And he damaged their ship the Endurance in his suicidal attempt to manually dock their other ship To make sure that he gets his day in court we need to figure out (1) where a case could be brought and (2) what the claims would be. Proper Forum The first question we have got to address is where this case can be brought. Article VIII of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty states, a ...

Mars: The next frontier Elon Musk has been all over space news in recent years with his now famous goal to take humans to our red sister planet . Despite what you may think, he’s not the only one; MarsOne (debatably), NASA , and Mars Base Camp , all have plans to put humans on Mars in the next few decades. Though there are some very convincing skeptics ( Neil Degrasse Tyson ); many people, myself included, are excited to see if Space X can pull it off and to see the subsequent flux in space law . ( See here for more on Musk). There is just one problem.  Haven’t we already gone to Mars?  Didn’t Matt Damon already make it there?  Well, not exactly.  But he did play a convincing Martian.  Mark Watney — the lovable sarcastic astronaut, the man who stakes a personal claim to many firsts in space for humans, even being the first space pirate.   (Go here for the complete list of top 10 space crimes.) What it takes to be a space pirate (a.k.a Spirate...