Space Law and Science Fiction Literature | Saskia Vermeylen | TEDxLancasterU

New technological and scientific developments, together with increased privatisation and commercialisation of space activities, put pressure to reform current international space law. As future activities in space may include space settlements, resource mining and space tourism, a radical vision on how to govern space resources is needed. Utopian literature can play a key role in the consideration of alternative governance regimes. This talk explores science fiction literature as a source of legal imagination and speculative jurisprudence with the main aim to develop new space law that can guide a more ethical relationship between law and technology in future space endeavours. Dr Saskia Vermeylen is a critical legal scholar working in the area of property theory and resource frontiers. She joined Strathclyde University’s Law School in July 2016 as a Chancellor’s Fellow. She studies indigenous peoples’ cultural expressions as a source of law and is currently finishing a monograph on critical property theory drawing upon the work of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas. As part of her interest in property theory she’s also embarking on a new research project on the legal and ethical meaning of ‘common heritage of mankind’, a concept that is currently much debated in the context of outer space mining. She has just been awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship to study the relationship between Utopian Literatures and Space Law. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx