Space, Cyber and Telecom Law Curriculum

This seminar will explore structural/organizational issues (e.g., separation of powers, federalism) related to U.S. foreign policy-making as well as U.S. foreign policy in a number of substantive areas.  Areas of foreign policy examined include the war on terrorism, international economic policy, and current foreign policy crises. This course is available to online LL.M. students. Enrollment Limit 12

This course will examine the historical, political and strategic foundations of contemporary arms control and disarmament regimes and will evaluate the nature and effectiveness of supporting legal frameworks.  Specific topics will include: prohibited weapons under international law; agreements banning various conventional weapons; the successes and failures of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention; nuclear arms limitation agreements and underlying nuclear deterrence doctrines; the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement, and; future arms control initiatives related to new and emerging new military technologies. 

This course focuses on public international air law, with emphasis on the Chicago Convention of 1944 and the International Civil Aviation Organization, the Annexes thereto and the exchange of air traffic rights by way of bilateral air service agreements. This course will also cover drones and the most important criminal air law treaties. This course will furthermore cover selected areas of private international air law including air carrier liability under the Warsaw and Montreal Conventions, respectively the Rome Convention alternatively tort law. It will also include the role of the GATS and the EU in aviation law. Finally, attention will be paid to how US aviation law operates within this international regime. Grade will be based on a final exam. This course is available to online LL.M. students.

This course explores a range of legal issues that arise online, focusing on how the law applies online and affects users. Topics include civil and criminal jurisdictional and choice of law issues, such as what states’ and countries’ laws apply to activities that occur on a global platform, and how do those jurisdictions enforce their laws on users and companies around the world. The course also considers a range of specific substantive issues such as online contract formation, basic regulation of encryption, the operation and history of Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act, and domestic surveillance topics such as the Wiretap and Stored Communications Acts, 4th Amendment topics, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This course is available to online LL.M. students. Pre-requisite: Technology Governance and Regulation: Concepts.

Students who have taken Cyberlaw cannot take Cyberlaw: Jurisdiction and Laws Governing Users.

This class provides an introduction to various legal frameworks relating to data- and cybersecurity, such as data breach notification laws, regulatory data security requirements such as contained in HIPAA and GLBA, and the patchwork of statute and common law tools available for addressing cybersecurity concerns. It also prepares students to interact with professionals in other fields relevant to cybersecurity practice, and broader policy discussions about cybersecurity law and policy. This course is available to online LLM students. Pre-requisite: Technology Governance and Regulation: Concepts.

This course provides an overview of the law and policy governing spectrum management in the United States. Broad coverage includes spectrum allocation and domestic assignment, the FCC/NTIA jurisdictional split, and Title III of the Communications Act. Specific coverage includes spectrum auctions, the debate over licensed and unlicensed spectrum use, and issues related to licensing satellite spectrum for use in the U.S. This course is available to online LL.M. students.

Commercial space, telecommunications and cyber industries are global industries that are heavily dependent on international technology transfers, product sales and investments. Accordingly, trade control regimes, both domestic and international, have a large impact on these industries. The U.S. trade control regimes, particularly the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Export Administration Regulations (EAR), Foreign Assets Control Regulations (FACR) and controls on foreign investments in US industries, are of particular significance given the leading role of the United States in space, telecommunications and cyber industries. This course will provide an overview of ITAR, EAR, FACR and regulations of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) as well as discussion of the foreign policy and national security interests influencing the implementation of U.S. laws, regulations and policy. Particular emphasis will be given to compliance risk assessments and risk mitigation relating to business activities involving spacecraft, cyber, encryption and foreign investment in the United States. This course is available to online LL.M. students.

This course examines the nature and scope of transnational and international criminal law and explores the relationship between human rights law and state sovereignty. Specific topics include: state sovereignty and extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction; immunity from jurisdiction; nationality; extradition; international criminal law, including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes; the International Criminal Court; the ad hoc international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and; international or hybrid criminal tribunals and special courts for other countries, including Sierra Leone, Lebanon and Kosovo.

This course covers both private (contractual) and public (government regulation) aspects of international business transactions. Specific topics covered include international sales contracts and the Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG), regulation of foreign investment and bilateral investment treaties (BITs),  private international dispute resolution (including choice of forum and choice of law clauses, international commercial arbitration and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards), U.S. customs law, responses to fairly and unfairly traded imports, embargoes/boycotts and U.S. anti-boycott law and regulations, and international bribery and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The problem-oriented casebook presents students with practical problems in international business to solve — or manage risks — for hypothetical clients. Students will learn the law governing the particular problem the first class of each week and then apply the law to the facts of the problem in the subsequent class(es) that week. This course is available to online LL.M. students. 

This course examines international legal issues related to emerging conflicts in cyberspace and explores threats to international cyber security posed by a wide range of hostile cyber acts, from damaging cyber mischief and crime to cyber warfare. The primary focus of the course is on the legal frameworks that may apply to hostile acts in cyber space, including the domestic criminal laws of states, international law, and particularly the law of armed conflict. The course compares various forms of cybercrime with state-sponsored efforts to disrupt, deny, degrade or destroy information in computer networks and systems, explores private and governmental roles in cyberspace, and assesses the appropriate legal responses to increasingly diverse state-sponsored military and intelligence operations in cyberspace, including those related to data exploitation, espionage and sabotage. This course is available to online LL.M. students.

This course is intended to build upon and expand students understanding of international and transnational law garnered in the mandatory 1L course. It studies applicable law for real-world international and transnational problems faced by governments, businesses, human rights/environmental non-governmental organizations and individuals by looking at national (including federal and state), international (including treaty and customary international law) and private (e.g. corporate codes of conduct) rules, as well as examining how such rules are made and how they interact. It next examines methods of resolving transnational disputes both at the national and international levels and how decisions can be enforced at both the national and international levels. Several mock exercises have students involved in international negotiations, litigation and interagency meetings. The course also examines recent international law cases within the U.S. Supreme Court. This course is available to online LL.M. students.

In this course students will be expected to participate in biweekly brown bag lunch sessions of space, cyber and telecom law topics throughout the year and produce a 5,000-7,000 word article of publishable quality. Faculty and students in the space, cyber and telecom law program will share and discuss research topics and ongoing developments in the space, cyber, and telecom field.  In the second half of Spring semester students will present the paper written for the class. LL.M. students will register for this course in the spring semester but  are expected to participate in the biweekly brown bag lunch sessions throughout the year. This course at the biweekly sessions are for LL.M. students only, though a J.D. may request to attend a specific session on a topic of interest. (This course is available to online LL.M. students.)

This course examines international and U.S. law relevant to the handling of national security matters. On the domestic level, we will study the allocation of power under the Constitution between Congress and the president with respect to war powers and will assess the role of the courts as a check on the political branches in this area, particularly as it relates to ongoing efforts to fight terrorism. Domestic statutory authorities, especially the War Powers Resolution, will also be covered. To illustrate and better understand some of the challenges confronting individual liberties in time of war, several contemporary U.S. national security problems will be examined, particularly the military detention of suspected terrorists and their trial by military commissions. Other controversial U.S. national security initiatives, such as covert intelligence operations and the targeted killing of suspected terrorists (particularly by unmanned aerial vehicles), will be assessed in the context of both domestic and international law. The second half of the course focuses on international law governing the use of force, conflict management and collective security arrangements. Special attention will be given to the U.N. Charter, the doctrine of self-defense, arguments setting forth justifications for the unilateral use of force, intervention in internal conflicts, and the institutional framework for collective efforts to maintain international peace and security, including peacekeeping operations and peace enforcement actions.

This course addresses the national security aspects of space law, including legal issues related to new and merging space technologies.  It includes an examination of key space arms control issues, U.S. national security space strategy/U.S. military space doctrine, the international law framework governing military uses of space and space weapons, significant contemporary challenges and initiatives in the area of national security space law, and efforts to prevent an arms race in outer space and its weaponization. This course is available to online LL.M. students.

In view of the increasing commercialisation and privatisation of space activities and their applications, there is an increasing need at the national level to implement the international space treaties and some other international space law — notably by means of the establishment of national space legislation, including licensing regimes dealing for with liability issues or other control mechanisms. The course will discuss the various ways in which countries across the world have chosen, or are choosing, to implement relevant international requirements as well as to assert national space policies by means of such national law. A prominent place in this context will be taken by discussion of national U.S. law on such activities as satellite communications, satellite remote sensing and space tourism. This course is available to online LL.M. students. Pre-requisite: Space Law. Student grade is based on post-class paper based on in-class presentation.

This course introduces students to the legal, policy, economic, and technological issues surrounding the regulation of communications networks and infrastructure. It is structured primarily around the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and related laws and covers topics including regulation of broadcast radio and television, cable and satellite television, the telephone network, cellular and wireless communications, and the internet. Several themes will be explored throughout the course, including the operation of regulatory agencies and administrative law, First Amendment issues relating to the regulation of speech on these networks, the relationship between antitrust and regulation, the role of regulation in promoting technological innovation, the economics of bundling and of network industries, and the social and distributive challenges of providing universal access to communications networks. Discussion will use current topics as case studies. This course is available to online LL.M. students. Pre-requisite: Technology Governance and Regulation: Concepts.

Students who have taken Domestic Telecommunications cannot take Platforms: Networks and Infrastructure.

This course deals with the law and practice of content governance in both online and more traditional media. The course will begin with an overview of basic First Amendment principles, and then proceed to more specific doctrines concerning the regulation of various types of sensitive subject matter including incitement, hate speech, pornography and misinformation. The course will then examine the content governance practices of privately-owned online platforms. From here, the course will consider the First Amendment and statutory doctrines that shield and protect the editorial and content governance practices of various types of intermediaries—newspapers, broadcasters, cable providers, search engines, social platforms and online platforms more generally. Finally, the course will discuss various levers of state influence over platforms’ handling of third-party content. This course is available to online LL.M. students. Pre-requisite: Technology Governance and Regulation: Concepts.

This course provides an introduction to the laws and regulations that govern information privacy in the United States and around the world and the struggles of protecting individual privacy in the modern era. A central focus is on the meaning of informational, reputational, and dignitary harms. The course considers the Constitutional, common law, and statutory mechanisms that control access to and use of information about individuals; the broad and often conflicting definitions of and principles behind these mechanisms; and different institutional approaches to regulating access to personal information, from self-regulation to criminal law, from states and localities to international treaty. Evaluation by exam or other written assignments. This course is available to online LLM students. Pre-requisite: Technology Governance and Regulation: Concepts.

Students who have taken Privacy Law cannot take Privacy: Informational, Reputational & Dignitary Harms.

This course will give a very brief overview of space law, as well as general international law and telecommunications law (because these latter two areas of law are so integrally connected to space law; the Outer Space Treaty incorporates the UN Charter and general international law) and train students how to research in these three areas of law. The course will place particular emphasis on space law. Students will have research problems to solve in all three areas of law. This course is only open to LL.M. students and J.D. students who have declared space and/or telecommunications law as an area of concentrated study, however,  J.D. students who have already taken, or are currently taking, Advanced Legal Research (Law 733) cannot take the Researching Space Law course.

U.S. Space policy has favored increasing commercialization for almost four decades. Over 300 commercial space launches have occurred since the first one in 1989.  New commercial activities — including ferrying cargo to and from the International Space Station and performing research and experiments for the private sector on the ISS — are becoming routine. Soon human transportation and asteroid mining will be part of the commercial space landscape. This course will review and examine the history of presidential space policies regarding space commercialization. It also will explore the work of all key federal agencies charged with licensing and regulating the commercial space transportation and satellite industries. The course will address the statutes that give these agencies this authority and the rules that the agencies administer and enforce. The role of NASA also will be explored as the non-regulatory agency that could have a significant impact on the success of private sector-led commercial space ventures. The largest portion of the course will focus on agreements that form relationships in the commercial space industry. These include Launch Service Agreements, Satellite Purchase Agreements, Transponder Sale/Lease Agreements, Non-Disclosure Agreements, Satellite Launch and In-Orbit Insurance contracts, and Hosted Payload Agreements. The course also will look at new contract forms being used by NASA in its growing role as a consumer of commercial space services and at the agreements that set forth the relationship between the launch site operator and launch vehicle operator. The course concludes with students engaging in a simulation of a condensed commercial space business transaction – from business plan to launch. This course is available to online LL.M. students.

This course will provide a basic overview of international space law with primary emphasis on the civilian and commercial dimensions of space law and policy, including civilian governance of space, satellite launch, satellite navigation and satellite remote sensing. Course coverage will include the five major international treaties dealing directly with space (the Outer Space Treaty, Liability Convention, Registration Convention, Rescue and Return Agreement, and Moon Treaty) and the application of these Cold War era treaties to modern space activities, some other international treaty regimes such as that of the international space station, “soft law” instruments such as UN Resolutions or the Charter on Space and Major Disasters attempting to regulate space, as well as the mechanisms for the creation and negotiation of international space law, including the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, to address new or growing problems such as orbital debris and space traffic management, private commercial spaceflight ("space tourism") and the exploitation of celestial resources. This course is available to online LL.M. students.

This single credit, pass/fail class is offered to all students at the beginning of each semester. The course serves as a foundation for other courses in the technology governance curriculum. It starts by introducing technical concepts, such as how computers and the internet work, in a manner accessible to all students. It then continues with foundational legal concepts, such as the First and Fourth Amendments. The third portion of the class introduces regulatory concepts such as administrative and antitrust law. This course is available to online LL.M. students