OXFORD,
Miss. – A project at the University of Mississippi to archive the
professional papers of the late Andrew G. Haley, considered the world’s
first space law practitioner, has uncovered some notable correspondence
from U.S. presidents, a famous science fiction writer and well-known
international politicians.
Michael Dodge, who graduated from the
UM School of Law in May 2008 with a Certificate in Remote Sensing, Air
and Space Law, works as an assistant research counsel with the National
Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law at the law school. This
past fall, he began organizing the boxes of Haley’s papers for
archiving and creating an online finding aid for researchers.
He
came across signatures from famous people such as John F. Kennedy,
Gerald Ford and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. “It was
exciting to discover all of the correspondence dating back decades
dealing with space law,” Dodge said.
The 42 boxes of files
include the late attorney’s personal, space-related correspondence and
files, which were donated by his son Andrew Jr. to the late Stephen
Gorove, after Haley’s death in 1966. Gorove, who taught at the UM law
school from 1965 to 1988, was also among the first attorneys to tackle
the issues of space law.
“The papers are a remarkable contribution to the history of space law and are in pristine condition,” said Joanne Gabrynowicz, the center’s director. “The center was fortunate to be able to bring in Dr. Stephen Doyle, who was Haley’s law clerk in the 1960s, to help establish the provenance and organization of the collection. The archive is a valuable asset for space lawyers and Cold War historians alike.”
The papers are available for searching online by visiting: http://www.spacelaw.olemiss.edu/archive/haleyarchive.htm. Their availability to the public is expected to be valuable to historians, legal researchers and scholars interested in the history of both national and international space law.
Among the many notable papers in the collection is a 1956 letter from Clarke detailing his ideas on how communications and other satellites would be used in the future.
“It’s amazing because so much of what we consider real science today was projected by Clarke years before the actual technology existed,” said Michelle Aten, the center’s assistant director. “He was thinking about the idea of geosynchronous orbits long before the first satellite was launched.”
Geosynchronous orbits enable communications satellites to remain in orbit over the same location on Earth constantly and are sometimes referred to as Clarke orbits because of his proposal of the idea.
In the letter to Haley, Clarke states that his interests lie along the lines of space-based satellite relays. The letter goes on to discuss the future of space-based systems predicting worldwide person-to-person radio communication, direct broadcasting and a position-finding system. Interestingly, Clarke closes the letter by saying, “I’ll get on with my science fiction and wait to say I told you so.”
The Haley papers also include numerous international letters such as documents from the Cold War era. One particular letter from the then-president of the International Institute on Space Law, who was Bulgarian, centers on the fact that he had been accused of spying for the United States. He was later arrested and executed. Other letters deal with the actual founding of the IISL and the American Bar Association’s acknowledgement of space law as a critical field of legal study.
For more information about the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law, visit http://www.spacelaw.olemiss.edu/ .